Women who lead: APRW's Anu Gupta reflects on her career break and professional journey

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This March, MARKETING-INTERACTIVE is excited to launch its "Women who lead" podcast series, celebrating the powerful female leaders in the marketing and advertising industry across the region.

In the debut episode, Anu Gupta takes us on an inspiring journey, starting from her days as a 21-year-old in a student exchange program to becoming the director of the integrated communications agency APRW in Singapore. She opens up about the challenges and triumphs of her career break and how she made a remarkable comeback. As a mother of two, Gupta also shares what matters most to her—her family.

Throughout her career, Gupta has been pivotal in positioning APRW as a key strategic partner for companies looking to expand globally, particularly into Indonesia. Before that, she founded Watermelon PR in 2003, while based in Dubai.

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MARKETING-INTERACTIVE: What was the journey like to get to where you are today, as a director at APRW?

Gupta: When I sit back and reflect, I can see a very clear path of how I got here, but of course, one never knew this from day one and one never knows where life is going to take you. I was raised in India, where I started my professional career in communications. Although I never studied communications - I studied economics - I was very lucky that someone gave me a job in a PR agency. I had no idea what public relations even meant. All I knew was that it was going to pay me at the end of the month. Later, I realised, I was good at this.

I was able to see it as more of a science than an art.

Couple of years later, I moved to Dubai and began Watermelon PR after a friend convinced me to start my own agency. I wasn’t great as a boss, and I don’t think I was a great person to work with. I had a lot to learn, and I was very young.

In 2008, I followed my husband in a move to Singapore, when I was quite burnt out from doing Watermelon. I decided I was not going to work for four to five years of my life to have my second child then. Those five years were transformational because it taught me many things. APRW happened to me in 2017, as I happened to know one of the directors. I was 40 years old at that point. I went a lot with my gut and instinct, and I loved what I saw so I walked in as the sixth owner here to set up my own practice.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE: Did you ever have moments of doubt and anxiety during your career break?

Gupta: Many times. I don’t think this applies to just women, it could apply to anybody who feels that they need a reset in their lives. I had tons of anxiety over the years, asking “will I get a job?”, “is someone going to give me a job?”, “what’s the right time to go back?”, and “are the kids going to miss me, am I still going to be a great mother?”. I think I left those questions behind long ago. However, it’s something that’s very natural for people, to question things while on a career break.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE: What was the transition like for you returning to work, after years of not touching it?

Gupta: It was difficult in a lot of ways. From a personal standpoint, you’d want to be ready to let go because you’ve been around at home a lot up to that point. I was hands-on, and I believe I added value to the house as a mother having been around 24/7. Suddenly that’s going away, you kind of lose control of things you’ve always controlled.

I believe there is a transition period where you must give yourself time, give the kids time, and the entire household time to adapt. Secondly, there’s the professional aspect. I was very unsure of who was going to give me work.

You have to have a lot of conviction in yourself, to say that “I’m still relevant, I still know how to do things”.

You have to give yourself a lot of time to adjust. However, I have never taken my job so seriously that it starts to impact my home. I will never carry my work into my home if I’ve had a bad day.

I remember Cho Pei Lin, she’s the managing director of APRW, and the first meeting we had, she said “I’m not worried about you, and how you’re going to get business. You ran a business in Dubai and I’m sure you know how to go and get business. It's more of an adjustment coming to a new setup and having colleagues you don’t know and building your own equity inside the organisation”.

Those things became more important to me. How can I build value for myself within the organisation? How can they start to trust me? How do they feel that I’m a part of the team? That takes time, it's not something you can just solve in a couple of months.

MARKETING-INTERACTIVE: What would you consider to be a defining moment in your life or career?

Gupta: On the professional front, this is something I keep very close to my heart which is the expansion APRW did into Indonesia. When we did it, we thought it was a very easy journey to take but now when I reflect on the seven years, I’m wondering how did we do that? There have been a lot of sleepless nights, a lot of questioning ourselves and I had to be away from the kids and family. I looked at my hotel ceiling many of those nights and wondered why am I even here?

Today, I see the result of what we’ve done: the kind of team we’ve built in Indonesia, the culture we’ve been able to bring to a country that’s new to us, and the kind of friends we made along the way. No one even knew who APRW was five years ago when we were setting up there, and today I know at least 50 to 60 people whom I can consider as friends. I think that is a good feeling to go to sleep with.

To catch to the rest of the conversation with Anu Gupta, tune in to the Women who lead podcast series on Spotify, or listen on the go:

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