Anu Hasan is someone who dons many hats. Born into a family of film makers, her foray into the world of films and television was probably a foregone conclusion. But her journey has been anything but predictable.
While her career in the media started in 1993, her entrepreneurial journey commenced in 1996 and she has continued to sustain both.
While in India, She has acted in over 20 films in six languages and has played the lead in 6 TV serials in three languages. Her path breaking titular show Koffee with Anu was the most successful talk show in the history of Tamil Televison. Her cookery show was a series that broke the conventional path of cookery shows and set the blue print for many shows to follow. Her panel shows on Television have been seen as instruments for social change.
Her role in the Russell T Davies series “Cucumber” brought her to the attention of British film makers. Her work in the UK includes English and French commercials, feature film in English, and major TV soaps including Eastenders, Ackley Bridge, HollyOaks and Emmerdale.
She continues to work in the UK and India in films and Television. She has been awarded the Kalaimaamani award – which is the Tamil Nadu State award that recognizes exemplary contribution to art. She also has been awarded the Tamil Nadu State award for best supporting actress.
On her entrepreneurial journey, She has successfully founded and exited companies.
(Shogun Marketing Pvt Ltd – An organisation in the business of marketing financial products for multinational banks and Squash’d Smoothies & Juices – First of its kind in the market, with an all women staff behind the counters at all outlets.)
She was the director for Europe & UK for Ivy Mobility, a digital age company digitizing the value chains of global organisations in multiple sectors via mobility, analytics and cloud-based solutions.
She is one of the founding partners of SyncopeCare, an Intucare initiative that aimed to be the one stop resource platform for Syncope globally. The mobile application for Syncope was arguably the first of its kind in the world.
She runs AH Positive, a company that she founded in 2017 which helps with media and go to market strategies for companies. AH Positive also focuses on developing positive content that impact the society.
She partners with Angel Investors and pre-Seed accelerators to bring start up stories to social media platforms with the dual purpose of encouraging and inspiring founders and would be founders alike.
Anu Hasan has been writing since 1996 and was a monthly columnist for the magazine JFW for over 13 years. She has also been a food critic and travel writer for newspapers. Her first book Sunny Side up was published by Harper Collins and she is currently working on her second.
An eloquent speaker, Anu Hasan’s talk at the IIT in the Intra Mural Lecture series was well received and she continues to be invited to address diverse audiences both in colleges as well as large corporates.