For Shashwata Narain and her sister Shobhita, Veera Health is the culmination of a strong camaraderie, and the brave common vision to build a business with impact
Shobhita (left) and Shashwata Narain
Image: Neha Mithbawkar for Forbes India
It was around 2007. Shashwata Narain was in a furious mood. Into her last class of the day, the young girl in high school was itching to teach a lesson. The bell rang, the students stepped out of the campus, and Shashwata bravely confronted a bunch of burly boys who had teased her younger sister Shobhita, a class V student of the same school in Mumbai. “Dare you mess with her,” came the bold warning from the elder sister, who was in class 12. “She is not alone.”
The sisters were inseparable during their school days. “We’re very close. We’ve done everything together,” recalls Shashwata. Studying in the same school, participating in the same extracurricular activities and having a common interest in women’s health only cemented the emotional and intellectual bond between the sisters.
Their lives and career paths, though, diverged after school. Shashwata finished her MBA from Wharton, and studied data science at Yale University. Shobhita studied biology and psychology at Tufts University. In terms of work experience too, both took different roads. While Shashwata sharpened her financial and marketing skills at Barclays Capital, Goldman Sachs, and McKinsey, Shobhita added heft to her health background by working at leading health care companies such as GlaxoSmithKline, Accenture Life Sciences and UnitedHealth. Amid all this, the warmth and care in the relationship stayed intact.
Last year, when the elder sister ran into some sort of trouble in her business venture, the younger one went mysteriously missing.
(This story appears in the 24 September, 2021 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)