What made you want to do the work you do? Please share the full story.
I did not start out planning to build a yoga school. I was working a corporate job in Singapore, the kind with long hours and constant travel, and I started attending yoga classes just to manage the stress. What pulled me in was not the physical practice itself but what happened after a few months of showing up. I noticed I was reacting differently to problems at work, sleeping better, and generally feeling more like myself again. That shift made me curious enough to go deeper, so I enrolled in a 200-hour teacher training at Yoga Deep in 2012, not because I wanted to teach but because I wanted to understand why it was working on me. Once I completed the training I realized the demand for accessible, well-structured yoga education online was much bigger than what existed at the time, especially for people who could not attend an in-person studio regularly. Siddhi Yoga started in 2013 as a small attempt to fill that gap and grew from there.
Tell us 3 surprisingly easy and 3 surprisingly difficult things about your business.
Surprisingly easy: finding people who genuinely want to become better yoga teachers, since the motivation on the student side has never been something we had to manufacture. Building relationships with experienced Indian yoga masters willing to teach online was also easier than expected, because many of them wanted a wider platform to share what they knew. Getting positive word of mouth from graduates who then referred future students came naturally too, since a good training experience tends to sell itself.
Surprisingly difficult: maintaining consistent quality across teachers and cohorts as we scaled past a few hundred students a year, since standardizing something as personal as yoga instruction is harder than standardizing a typical online course. Convincing skeptics that an online yoga teacher training can be as rigorous as an in-person one took years of proof, not persuasion. And building enough trust for people to pay upfront for a certification from a company they found online, often from another country entirely, required a level of credibility that took a long time to earn through reviews, accreditation, and track record.
What are the 3 things you like best about your work and why?
I like watching someone go from unsure and stiff on day one of a training to confident and capable of leading a class by the end, because that transformation is visible and immediate in a way that few other businesses get to witness so directly. I also like the intellectual side of the work, digging into Ayurveda, anatomy, and the philosophy behind different yoga traditions, since it keeps me a student even after all these years of running the company.
And I like that the work has a real health impact on people beyond just our graduates, since many of them go on to teach others who are dealing with stress, insomnia, or chronic pain, so the benefit multiplies outward in a way I did not fully appreciate when I started.
What do you think are your 3 biggest weaknesses and how are you overcoming them?
One weakness is that I tend to hold onto operational details longer than I should, which slows down delegation. I have been working on this by documenting processes clearly so my team can run programs without needing my direct input on every decision. A second weakness is that I am naturally more comfortable with the content and teaching side of the business than with the marketing and growth side, so for years our reach was smaller than it should have been given the quality of what we offered.
I addressed this by bringing in people whose strengths cover that gap rather than trying to force myself into a role I am not suited for. A third weakness is that I can be slow to cut programs or offerings that are underperforming because I get attached to the idea behind them, so I have had to build in regular data reviews that force an honest look at what is actually working versus what I wish were working.
Tell us about a time you were dead wrong about something.
Early on I was convinced that a shorter, cheaper certification would attract more students than a rigorous one, so I pushed to simplify one of our early teacher training tracks to make it more accessible. Enrollment did increase for a short period, but completion rates dropped and the graduates who did finish felt underprepared to actually teach, which showed up quickly in negative feedback and a handful of public complaints.
I had assumed price and speed were the biggest barriers to entry, when the real barrier was that people wanted confidence in their own competence more than they wanted convenience. We reversed course within a year, restored the depth of the training, and enrollment actually grew afterward because the reputation for rigor became a selling point rather than an obstacle.
What is the biggest challenge you face each day and how do you handle it?
The biggest challenge I face daily is balancing the depth of what we teach with the pace at which the online education market moves. Students expect fast, convenient access to courses, but yoga and Ayurveda are traditions built on gradual, embodied learning, so there is a constant tension between speed and substance. I handle it by protecting the core curriculum from shortcuts while finding other ways to make the experience more convenient, like flexible scheduling and better support systems, so the depth of the teaching itself never gets compromised even as the delivery gets easier.
What do you value most and why?
I value integrity in teaching, meaning that what we certify someone to do actually reflects what they are capable of doing. In an industry where certifications can be handed out loosely, that distinction matters enormously, because a teacher’s credibility affects the wellbeing of every student they later work with. I hold onto this because I have seen firsthand how much damage a poorly trained instructor can do, both to a student’s body and to their trust in the practice, so protecting that chain of quality feels like the most important thing I am responsible for.
What achievement are you the proudest of and why?
I am proudest of building a certification pathway that Western students without access to traditional Indian ashrams or gurus can trust as legitimate. When we started, there was real skepticism that an online program could carry the same weight as in-person training under a recognized teacher. Reaching the point where our graduates are teaching in over 125 countries, many of them going on to open their own studios, tells me we closed that credibility gap in a way that genuinely expanded who gets to access this knowledge, not just who gets to sell it.
What is your favorite movie and why?
My favorite movie is The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. It follows a group of British retirees who relocate to India expecting one thing and instead find themselves reshaped by the unpredictability and warmth of a culture very different from their own. I connect with it because it mirrors my own experience of encountering India through yoga and Ayurveda, arriving with expectations and leaving with something far more layered and human than I anticipated.
What advice would you give to your younger self and why?
I would tell my younger self to trust the slow path earlier instead of chasing shortcuts to prove the business was working. In the first couple of years I spent a lot of energy trying to grow fast and look successful, when the thing that actually built Siddhi Yoga’s reputation was consistent, unglamorous work on curriculum quality over many years. Knowing that sooner would have saved me from some early missteps, like the shortened certification track that backfired, and let me focus earlier on the depth that eventually became our biggest strength.
Who has been your biggest mentor in life (personal or professional) and how have they helped you?
My biggest mentor has been one of the senior yoga teachers I trained under in India during my early years of deepening my practice, someone who taught with a level of patience and precision I had not encountered before. She never let me move past a pose or a concept until I could explain the why behind it, not just perform the mechanics, which forced me to actually understand anatomy and alignment instead of memorizing sequences. That habit of insisting on real understanding over surface-level competence became the standard I later built into Siddhi Yoga’s own teacher training programs, so her influence shows up in how we certify people today, not just in how I personally practice.
Just for fun, what is your favorite ice cream flavor?
Mango. It reminds me of the fruit stalls near the ashrams in India, and it is one of those flavors that feels seasonal and specific rather than something you can get anywhere year round.