In a rare and insightful podcast interview on YouTube with global influencer, creator and investor Masoom Minawala yesterday, Shloka Ambani, businesswoman, philanthropist and Mukesh and Nita Ambani’s eldest daughter-in-law, made an unfiltered and from-the-heart statement on motherhood in which she candidly revealed how she manages her work, dreams and simply being “Mom” to young Prithvi and Veda, her kids with Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited Chairman Akash Ambani.
Shloka, who was joined by Maniti Shah, her co-founder of ConnectFor, a platform that links volunteers with NGOs across India, admitted that working on something meaningful has given her life more purpose. For Shloka, who studied anthropology at Princeton and later did law at the London School of Economics, being part of a non-profit organisation like ConnectFor gives her a chance to create something meaningful that her children can be proud of. “It’s about leaving behind a legacy that shows kids the value of doing something good for others,” she added.
As to how she juggles all these responsibilities, Shloka said her method was to take pride in telling her kids that “just like you go to school, Mama has to go to the office”. Elaborating further, the dynamic Ambani bahu spelled it out, “We’re all doing something to better ourselves. You need to be aware of the world around you. You need to think, ‘What can I do for it?’ I think for me, it has doubled my resolve because you are creating something for someone you are fully invested in, who is going to be influenced by it. I was passionate about something and I really followed what I wanted to do, and I want them (her kids) to do the same thing.”
Most important to her in this mission and journey with ConnectFor, Shloka said, was her family’s support. Her biggest achievement so far has simply been keeping the organisation going and that wouldn’t have happened without the constant encouragement from her and co-founder Maniti Shah’s families. “None of this would’ve worked if our families didn’t stand by us or believe in us as much as we believed in ourselves,” she said, adding that their parents and husbands, especially Akash Ambani, are genuinely proud of their work. “It feels really special when they say, ‘This is what my wife does.’ We’ve been very lucky.”
Masoom Minawala posed the question in her heartwarming chat packed with life lessons with the “audacious minds behind ConnectFor” – Ever felt stuck choosing between paycheck and purpose? Shloka and Maniti proved you can have both and still change 100,000 lives. ConnectFor began as “two twenty-somethings scribbling ideas on a whiteboard” and snowballed into a platform that has matched one lakh volunteers with 1,000-plus NGOs and saved the sector 21 crore. Along the way they battled funding droughts, high team turnover, and the demands of new motherhood, yet kept doubling down on a single promise: purpose over profit, always. True currency is lives touched, not rupees earned.
Expanding on the ConnectFor philosophy, Shloka delivered a powerful message as the mother of Prithvi and Veda by saying, “Not that I need them to work in the social space, but more that it doesn't matter how niche something feels, if you feel strongly about something, you will make opportunities happen. It's really about what kind of message you are leaving behind.” Opening up about the dream she has for them and also all the young minds around her, Shloka passionately said, “They need to know that all careers are okay. It’s okay to do something that may take a while, may seem like a slow start, but you just have to go every day and believe that you're building something of value."
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