For Shraddha Subramanian, who today serves as the Founder and CEO of Sparkling Soul, entrepreneurship was never part of her original plan. She had built a successful corporate career, working in leadership roles at Morgan Stanley and HSBC, and was comfortable with the path she had chosen. A former national-level hurdler, she had also carried the discipline of sport and a naturally positive outlook into her professional life.
But as fate would have it, her life changed direction in 2012. Shraddha Subramanian was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Until then, she had been focused on her career and family, with no immediate plans to start a business. But the experience forced her to look inward and think differently about what she wanted to do with her life. “This is the journey of a leap of faith,” she says.
During her recovery, she thought that if someone who considered herself happy and positive could go through such an experience, what were other people dealing with silently? That thought eventually became the seed for what would later become Sparkling Soul.
In 2013, during a regular trip to London, she wrote in her journal that she wanted to take what she had learnt through her corporate career to a wider audience. She wanted to become an author and a mother, and, over time, began exploring the idea of helping people navigate their professional and personal challenges. After a year, she found an unexpected indication that coaching could become her calling.
In 2013, HSBC had sent her for a two-day workshop on self-introspection, branding and networking. She later designed and conducted a half-day workshop called “It’s All About Me” for around 250 senior leaders at the organisation. Participants began approaching her with their professional and personal challenges.
“I realised that leadership is lonely, and they got so many breakthroughs speaking with me. I never knew I was coaching them then,” she recalls.
Shraddha Subramanian completed her first coaching certification in 2017. A year later, she took a sabbatical to explore coaching, wrote her first book and eventually decided not to return to corporate life. Finally, Sparkling Soul was born in 2018, which Shraddha describes as a platform to enable business leaders, founders, directors, and board members to follow intuitive decision-making and create exponential personal & professional growth by unlocking internal potential.
Helping leaders make better decisions
At the heart of her work is what Shraddha calls “Decision Intelligence”. She believes that leaders are often not stuck because they lack information. They may have the data and analysis they need, but personal beliefs, values, past experiences and biases can make it difficult to act.
“When I work with business leaders, I start with understanding where they are stuck and precisely why they are stuck is because there are very many pending decisions yet to be taken,” she says.
One of the biggest challenges she sees among founders is knowing when to let go. Entrepreneurs can become deeply attached to products, services or business models that helped them build the company but may no longer support its next stage of growth. She calls this the “game of attachment and detachment”.
Leadership shaped by life experiences
Shraddha’s leadership philosophy has also been shaped by her experiences as an athlete and entrepreneur. A failed attempt to qualify for the India Camp as a young hurdler taught her to keep going. Cancer taught her resilience, while losing both her parents within a little over a year taught her to trust herself and move forward.
Shraddha Subramanian believes leaders today need to be inclusive, intuitive, influential and focused on impact. For her, intuition does not replace data. “Data is an indicator. It doesn’t decide for you. You make the decision,” she says.
Her vision for Sparkling Soul is to take this approach further. By 2031, she aims to impact 1,000 organization, business leaders and founders. Her work has also expanded into sports, including mental performance coaching for two Paralympians preparing for the Asian Games 2026 and Paralympics 2028.
What makes a leader stand out?
Shraddha’s philosophy:
- INCLUSIVE – You may not have all the answers. You can still count on the team to find those collectively.
- INTUITIVE – In a world driven by data, intuition helps leaders listen deeper, stay present and move with clarity.
- INFLUENCE – Leadership is about walking the talk and creating the space for people to grow and lead with you.
- IMPACT – A leader’s true impact lies not just in business results, but in the growth and wellbeing they leave behind.
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