True To Herself

She’s the daughter of a billionaire, but Pamela Puja Kirpalani has always beaten her own path in life. She tells Yanni Tan why she’s chosen to dedicate her time now to paying it forward.

- Yanni Tan

Comfortably married with two children, Pamela Puja Kirpalani could have bid farewell to a career. After all, the 41-year-old is the daughter of garment tycoon Sunder Genomal, who ranked 87 on Forbes’ 2020 India’s Richest list. In her 20s, she had also done her time climbing the corporate ladder as an investment banker in London, after which she joined the family business, Bangalore-based Page Industries, for two years to set up its successful exports arm.

After years of focusing on her marriage and living around the world with her nuclear family, Pamela has chosen to serve others. If you’d met her in person, you would have noticed, apart from her good manners and graciousness, a sensitive and introspective streak. Perhaps it is this side of her that had kept her up at night during her younger days: “As a young adult, I spent so many evenings scouring over self-help books, pondering over the ‘meaning of life’ and what truly makes us happy from within.”

Over a luncheon held to introduce the first book she authored, called Whole: 11 Universal Truths for an Inspired Life, she tells me about the extreme anxiety and panic attacks she endured in her late 20s. That pushed her towards a profound journey of learning self-healing techniques.

Today, Pamela is a certified international Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) master practitioner, trainer and life coach. After moving to Singapore eight years ago, she set up her firm Inner High Living, which has since conducted training for some of our most prominent public institutions, and counts over 200 life coaching clients.