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The Lifestyle Portal – A startup empowering entrepreneurs and aspiring writers

The Lifestyle Portal by Tanya Munshi aims to empower entrepreneurs to expand their business, alongside motivating aspiring wr
The Lifestyle Portal by Tanya Munshi aims to empower entrepreneurs to expand their business, alongside motivating aspiring writers to hone their skills.

The Founder

The Lifestyle Portal founder - Tanya Munshi
The Lifestyle Portal founder – Tanya Munshi

Tanya Munshi, the sole founder of The Lifestyle Portal was born and raised in Asansol, West Bengal, and completed her schooling from Mumbai. Tanya is a former journalist and currently a full-time writer with over 18 years of editorial experience. She has a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Sophia College, Mumbai, and has completed her Post-Graduation in Communications & Media from SNDT Women’s University, Mumbai.

She has worked in the space of content creation and management for websites, children’s books, and e-learning. Having worked for a UK based publishing house for almost a decade, she has had the opportunity to promote, market, and review clients and their services/ products in a competitive and dynamic market.

Her editorial experience has allowed her to write for several publications that have molded the skills based on clients’ requirements. This has been challenging yet enjoyable when pushing one’s boundaries. Through all the experience, Tayna launched The Lifestyle Portal back on 11th February 2011.

The Lifestyle Portal, an e-publishing platform, is her long-harbored dream that offers new-age entrepreneurs a launchpad to promote their work and share their success stories at a global level.

She also mentors professionals, aspiring writers, homemakers, and students through curated Online Writing Programs to empower them to write more confidently. Tanya was also a visiting faculty, teaching Journalism Writing at the MA Program for Media & Communication at the Department of Extension Education, SNDT Women’s University (back in July 2017).

What is the Lifestyle Portal?

The Lifestyle Portal is a 9-year-old e-publishing platform that focuses on entrepreneur profiling, entrepreneur directory listing, workshop reviews, feature stories, and more. Over the past nine years, the founder featured, profiled, and worked with over 190 entrepreneurs across various fields and have collaborated with some of the top brands in the country.

Tanya Munshi, the founder of The Lifestyle Portal also trains, mentors, and guides professionals, aspiring writers, homemakers, and students in content/ creative writing through the startup’s specially curated Online Writing Programs. Since 2018, she has started hosting annual entrepreneurs’ meetups where entrepreneurs, ecopreneurs, ecopreneurs, and change-makers from all walks of life have attended it from across the country.

Check out Tanya Munshi’s – The Lifestyle Portal here.

The idea and inspiration

As a fresher just after post-graduation, while Tanya was looking for jobs, she would often be turned away by publications because, being a fresher with no prior job experience, she couldn’t be hired. Back then, she would feel that if a cleaner is not given a chance, how were they even to start the career! How would employers know what they are capable of if they didn’t hire young and new talent? That was when she was determined to start something of her own where everyone got a chance, especially those starting fresh in their careers.

During the interview with TimesNext, Tanya stated,

“I firmly believe that everyone has a story to tell; and it doesn’t matter how big or small their dreams may be, everyone deserves a fair chance. And that’s what The Lifestyle Portal had been all about since its launch in February 2011.”

Initially, The Lifestyle Portal started as an online portfolio, where Tanya wanted to document her published and unpublished work from the journalism days. Eventually, people started writing to her, wanting to get featured on the platform. This further propelled the dream of wanting to start something of her own that would give all budding entrepreneurs a platform to showcase their talents and tell the world what their product/ service is all about.

Challenges faced The Lifestyle Portal

Tanya said that they are often flooded with a lot of content – the good, the bad, and yes, lots of ugly. The challenge was and still is, at times, to get good quality content to people. Content that is reliable, well researched, and that would help our readers lead a better quality of life. She fiercely writes about entrepreneurs, change-makers, and those who are committed to bringing about a positive change in the field of environment, sustainability, Indian handicraft, handmade products, and girl child education.

According to Tanya, the challenge is also for readers/ consumers to get access to good quality content (print or visual). That’s why she trains professionals in writing so that they can articulate sensibly through the written word and can make a conscious decision of the kind of content they’re consuming. She feels that the challenge is making people understand why it is essential to read and write useful content.

According to Tanya at times, they get overshadowed with tonnes of mediocre blogs/ content platforms that boast of huge readership/ followers on social media. Seldom is it about the quality and validity of the information? It is now more about numbers and sensationalism!

The Lifestyle Portal stays clear of sensationalism and focuses on sanguine articles because that’s the need of the hour – to feed the audience with positivity, hope, encouragement, and optimism.

The Lifestyle Portal has been around for nine years and has stood the test of time. The team has been focusing on quality feature stories about entrepreneurs, environment, and sustainability, and the work speaks for itself.

The Lifestyle Portal – Partnerships and Collaborations

The Lifestyle Portal

The startup has collaborated with many brands in the past and continues to do so even now. Right from Imagicians (with Jasmine Arora, a celebrity stylist), to The Mountain Walker (Co-Founded by Sanjay Mukherjee, Abhishek Kaushal, and Ameen Shaikh) for a travel project in Nainital, with Startup Tales (Founded by Ronak Banka) as my Content Partner, Let’s Get Lost (a boutique travel firm founded by Aparna Mohan) as our travel partner for our first offsite and Sheroes who have been very encouraging to women entrepreneurs.

Tanya quoted,

“The experience has been truly enriching. The ecosystem that The Lifestyle Portal has set out to achieve has not gone futile as I’ve had fellow entrepreneurs step in and help The Lifestyle Portal grow as we leverage on each other’s strengths and expertise.”

Milestones for The Lifestyle Portal

When she held her first entrepreneur meetup in Mumbai, it was overwhelming to see The Lifestyle Portal community of entrepreneurs step up as Gifting Partners, Sponsors, Speakers, and Participants for the event. This was so successful that it paved the way to the second entrepreneur meetup in Pune last year.

a) Hosting entrepreneur meetups

Mumbai Edition

First Entrepreneur Meetup by The Lifestyle Portal
First Entrepreneur Meetup by The Lifestyle Portal

On Saturday, 11th August 2018, at The Lifestyle Portal’s (TLP) 1st Entrepreneur Meet-up in Mumbai. There were 23 people at the Meetup who all had 23 different businesses. Eighteen of the participants spoke on a given topic (How Challenges helped them) unaware that they were being judged on presentation, concept, and business model.

Pune Edition

2nd Entrepreneur Meet-up by The Lifestyle Portal
2nd Entrepreneur Meetup by The Lifestyle Portal

On Saturday, 23rd November, the startup held the 2nd Entrepreneurs’ Meetup in Pune. Twenty participating entrepreneurs ventured into this space for the first time. The Lifestyle Portal felt proud to have showcased each of these entrepreneurs, ecopreneurs, ecopreneurs, educationists, and farmers at the meetup.

b) As a speaker

Tanya was invited by the Internet And Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) to talk about “Women Entrepreneurs: Breaking the prejudice of Traditional Businesses.” in August 2016 in Pune.

  • As a Speaker at the Accelerate: The Startup Talk session by Millionminds, held at VES College Of Arts, Science And Commerce, Chembur, Mumbai on 6th August 2018.
  • As a Panellist for Panel Discussion on ‘Contemporizing Indian Crafts for attracting the Millennial’ – by National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), Mumbai.

The Lifestyle Portal – Current Growth Status

When the team launched in 2011, it started with a few feature stories and projects mostly related to food and travel. Then gradually, with time, it started featuring entrepreneurs from across the country and the globe.

Initially, the startup only dabbled in entrepreneurial profiling; then, over the years, the team added more verticals such as Entrepreneurial Directory Listing, The Lifestyle Portal’s Exclusive Entrepreneurs’ Club, Curated Content, Workshop Reviews, Photo Shoots, Annual Meet Ups, Offsites and Online Writing Programs.

The Lifestyle Portal has now evolved into a marketing tool that works for both B2C and B2B levels. The Entrepreneur Directory Listing is a contact page of an entrepreneur’s business profiled by the, where readers visiting The Lifestyle Portal will get contact information about everything at a glance. The actual benefit lies where the listing is incorporated with the interview published on our website.

Since articles and posts have far more readership, the startup clubs the article and the listing together, which helps the visitors to learn about the entrepreneur’s business at a glance. Tanya, in the interview, stated that “Also, since we interview every entrepreneur listed by us, there’s a sense of the validity of the information published on The Lifestyle Portal.”

Entrepreneurs featured by The Lifestyle Portal also become a part of the different fields and share, learn, and collaborate, which indirectly helps individual businesses as well.

The Vision

During the interview with TimesNext, Tanya stated –

“Content is our strength, and my vision is to create a benchmark in the world on written content. I aspire to evolve The Lifestyle Portal into a boutique e-publishing firm that not only engages in entrepreneurial profiling but offers our customers and readers a platform to connect and exchange ideas to bring about a positive environmental, sustainable, and a social change in our country.”

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