From a working professional to a businesswoman to an actor, Kalpana has accumulated diverse experiences. And on the basis of those experiences, she believes that your perseverance at doing what you do will surely make you successful even after many failures.

Kalpana Rao is an Actress and Motivational Speaker based in Mumbai.

Kalpana was born in Kolkata. The first seven years of her life were spent in Kolkata. And later her parents shifted to Mumbai.

Kalpana shares that growing up, she did not have luxuries at her disposal. But her parents fulfilled her basic needs. She says her parents were not well-off economically, and owing to that her maternal grandparents proposed to them to shift to Mumbai.

Kalpana credits her mother for making her a spiritual person and a believer in Lord Krishna. She also acknowledges the fact that her elder sister always inspired her to stand up on her feet and be independent.

Kalpana shares that she was never a forthcoming person. She always enjoyed being behind the scenes. But on one occasion, her husband requested her to help him in one of his exhibitions. She performed really well and that’s when she realized her outwardness and entrepreneurial abilities. At that time, she was working with CitiBank. She sold her house in Mumbai and moved to Bangalore along with her husband.

In 1994, she, along with her husband, started their business in Bangalore. Everything was going fine until her husband contracted an illness. And after recovering from the illness, her husband became a completely spiritual person with no hankering for materialistic things. It was a turning point in Kalpana’s life. She had to shoulder the responsibilities of the business along with taking care of her children and household chores.

Kalpana says that the kind of field that they were doing their business in was more of a male-dominated field. And due to that, she had to face a lot of challenges to prove her mettle.

Kalpana shares that she always wanted to be an actress. But her mother did not allow her to go for it citing that girls of good families don’t do acting and work on TV.  She says, in 2008 she was diagnosed with Sciatica - a nerve hampering illness and due to that she had to be bedridden. This resulted in her putting on weight and she started having body image issues.

The change came in her life in 2014, when she went to the UK to drop her daughter there for her bachelors. Kalpana says, there she saw women wear clothes that they wanted to wear irrespective of their body shapes and sizes. This gave her confidence and that’s when she decided to change herself and be more accepting of the way she was. She came back to India and started working on improving her physical self. And as it may have been destined, she was offered an acting role of a grandmother in a commercial ad for Honda. She asked her family for this and they gave her a go ahead.

Meanwhile, she was incurring a lot of losses in her business. And in 2008, she finally shut it down. She was fifty-five at that time and thought of doing a job in the corporate sector. But her kids did not agree to itr and asked her to stay at home only as they could send her money for her survival needs. But Kalpana was resolute and she wanted to do something of her own. That’s when her husband suggested why doesn’t she go to Mumbai and try her hand at acting. She was taken aback. She felt a little apprehensive to do acting as she was already fifty-five. But after the constant push from her family in 2008, she moved to Mumbai.

Kalpana shares that she had never stayed away from her home all alone ever before. It was her first time staying in a PG and that experience was surreal. She says she was given a chance to audition for a role on the first day of arriving in Mumbai itself. She auditioned for the role, but instead, she was offered another role which she initially refused. But later, realizing the opportunity, she did that role. Later, she also got to work in a TV commercial alongside Shah Rukh Khan. Three months into coming to Mumbai, she was offered a role in a movie in which Rajnikanth was the protagonist. It was her debut movie. She shot for that role. And when the movie was finally released, everyone lauded her acting skills. Now, it’s been two and a half years since she came to Mumbai and a couple of films in which she acted are about to be released.

Kalpana acknowledges the fact that her husband has always been her guiding light. He encouraged her to pursue her further studies after their wedding. He also mentored her in their business.

If she could go back in time, then Kalpana would want to learn various aspects of doing a business diligently from her husband to be able to run her business successfully.

Besides acting, Kalpana is a motivational speaker too. She uploads her motivational videos on social media like Instagram etc.

Kalpana says, we spend our whole life making others happy, but in the process of making others happy, we tend to forget what  makes us happy. And she thinks that we can’t make others happy unless we ourselves are happy. Therefore, she advises people to first do what makes them happy, and then if they are happy they will make others happy too.