Even after becoming a qualified CA, Shubhi decided to follow her childhood passion for dancing. She kept practicing Kathak and eventually was able to make dance her profession by founding her dance academy.

Shubhi Johari is a Kathak dancer and the founder of Samantaa Dance Academy in New Delhi. She has been pursuing Kathak for the past twenty-two years.

Shubhi hails from New Delhi. She received her formal training in Kathak from the National Institute of Kathak in New Delhi itself. Besides this, she is also a qualified CA.

Recalling her childhood, Shubhi says that she spent her childhood in Delhi. She studied at Bal Bharti Public School in Delhi itself. She began learning Kathak at the age of three. At the age of ten, she applied at the Kathak Kendra in Delhi to receive her training in Kathak formally. She says learning Kathak at a young age in the company of great Kathak dancers played a huge role in shaping her personality.

After completing her school education, Shubhi did her bachelors from Delhi itself. Thereafter, she started pursuing the CA course. Meanwhile, she also continued learning Kathak. However, after becoming a CA, it became really challenging for Surbhi to juggle her CA practice and Kathak. She then decided to pursue only Kathak for a couple of years and in the event she wasn’t able to do anything sustainable in Kathak, she would resume practicing as a CA. But, with her hard work, she was able to stabilize herself as a Kathak dancer and never looked back. She founded her own dance company at the age of twenty-one. And it’s been twenty-two years since she has been pursuing Kathak, Surbhi says.

Shubhi shares that prior to founding her dance company, she worked with Drishtikon Dance Foundation Studio in New Delhi. She says she learned a lot from her mentor, Aditi Mangaldas at the academy. Besides, she also got to work with eminent dancers which added a lot to her learning and it all helped her in founding her company.

Regarding her mistakes, Shubhi says that she has not committed any major mistakes as such. However, due to her ignorance, she made some silly mistakes in her career. She says being an introvert she wouldn’t talk to people much and owing to that often her introversion would be mistaken for her arrogance by people.

Shubhi thinks that alone one can’t do much. It’s teamwork that makes things happen at scale. Being able to create her own team of people who make things happen for her, is her biggest achievement, Shubhi says.

When asked about her role models, Shubhi says that she considers her guru, from whom she learned Kathak, her inspiration and mentor. Besides, Aditi Mangaldas, whom she has admired since her childhood, is her role model.

Her Life Mantra is that your decisions and the choices you make, inevitably affect where you go in life and what you do as your career. Besides, she says that just being yourself and always believing in yourself will make things fall into place for you which is her other life mantra.

In her spare time, Shubhi loves to travel to see the world through a different lens. Besides, she likes to watch Bollywood movies in her free time.