A Fair Shot

Britain has been good to me.

It gave me a fair shot, though not without its fine print.

It gave me access, took me seriously and offered me a fair shot at moments that changed the course of my life.

But it also came with fine print: glass ceilings, invisible barriers, alongside the quiet sense that some rooms are happy to let you in, just not too far in.

That’s the contradiction I’ve lived with as a South Asian woman building a career and then a business here. 

One of my earliest memories of the UK was when I was about 23 and visiting universities before I’d moved here properly. I went to Oxford, Leeds and several universities in London, meeting course directors for Master of Business Administration (MBA) programmes.

I didn’t come from money. I didn’t have family connections opening doors. I didn’t have the sort of background where people looked at you and assumed you belonged there. 

But I could communicate. I could think on my feet. I could hold a conversation. 

I remember being slightly stunned by how seriously I was taken. 

I could just email and ask for a meeting. And people actually met me. The course directors themselves. 

I still remember hearing things I had never heard in India. "You don’t need to take IELTS*. We can waive the GMAT**. Your English is good enough. We like what you’re doing. We’d like you to come here." 

It sounds like a small thing, but it wasn’t. It was the first time I saw what a level playing field could look like: you turn up and speak for yourself, and someone takes you seriously.

That mattered because I grew up in India, and I say this with a lot of love for the country I come from. 

Talent is not the problem there. Access is. Opportunity is. 

If you don’t come from money, influence or the right network, the path can be much steeper. Even in those early conversations around education, I often felt the first question wasn’t, “Are you good enough?” but, “Do you fit here?”

So when people ask me whether Britain gave me something, the answer is yes. It did. It gave me a chance. It gave me my first proper job. It gave me a route into banking. It gave me contracting opportunities, a property portfolio, and eventually the confidence to start a business.

I’m not going to airbrush that out just because it’s more fashionable to only talk about exclusion. 

The Fine Print

But that’s only half the story.

If corporate Britain taught me anything, it’s that some barriers are hard to deal with precisely because nobody says them out loud.

I felt that very strongly in my corporate career. Every time I applied for a promotion, there was a version of the same story. "Subha wants to run before she can walk". "Subha needs more time." "Subha isn’t quite ready." 

And yet I could often tell the decision had already been made before I walked into the room. 

You sit through enough interviews and talent reviews and you start to see the pattern: Who gets backed. Who gets sponsored. Who gets described as leadership material. Who gets the benefit of the doubt. Who is allowed to be ambitious without being seen as too much.

Then you become an entrepreneur and think maybe you’ve escaped some of that. No hierarchy. No waiting to be chosen. You build the thing yourself.

Except that business has its own version of the same problem. 

There are still moments when I catch myself wondering: would life be different if I were called Sarah instead of Subha? Would more of my emails get opened? Would I get more meetings? Would I have to work quite so hard to be taken seriously?

I don’t know the answer. But I’ve asked myself the question often enough that it refuses to go away.

I remember one tasting with the buyer of a well-known British hospitality business. We had thirty minutes in the diary. We were done in seven.

His laptop stayed open for most of the meeting. He was distracted, checking emails, looking everywhere except at the drinks. 

Maybe he was just having a bad day.

Or maybe he’d already decided what Bodha Drinks was before he tasted it. 

I’ll never know.

But experiences like that stay with you.

Building Between Two Worlds

That, if I’m honest, is a big part of why I started Bodha.

Food has evolved. Drinks, far less so. 

British dining has embraced ingredients and cuisines from around the world. Drinks have moved far less: mostly sugary fizz and water.

Bodha came from wanting to build drinks with the same respect for flavour that chefs bring to food, and from a belief that ingredients should be allowed to travel, cross cultures and speak in more than one accent.

That’s how I think about Bodha now. Not as an Indian drinks brand, and not as a softened version of heritage made palatable for a mainstream audience, but as a way of giving ingredients a passport.

A way of letting them move, evolve, speak to each other and belong in more than one place.

What has helped me in the middle of all this is being shaped by two very different systems.

India gave me hustle, speed and the ability to make do. It also gave me my relationship with food and flavor. 

You learn quickly that things won’t always work in a neat, linear way, so you adapt. You find another way.

The UK gave me something different...

It gave me structure. It taught me that process isn’t bureaucracy; it is a form of respect for customers, colleagues and the commitments you make.

Living between those two worlds has shaped how I build.

India gave me pace, instinct and imagination. Britain taught me rigour, restraint and the discipline to turn an idea into a business. 

The Space Between

People love saying, “Bring your authentic self to work.” 

I’ve never completely bought into it. Not because authenticity isn’t important, but because I don’t think we’re supposed to stay the same.

If you’re paying attention, life should change you. Countries should change you. The people you meet should change you. 

So I’m less interested in authenticity than awareness. 

Be aware of what your upbringing taught you.

Be aware of what this country gave you.

Be aware of when you are adapting in a useful way and when you are sanding yourself down to fit.

Britain gave me a fair shot. It also gave me a very clear view of where the invisible barriers still are.

Both things are true.

I’ve built my life in the space between them....

Subha Balakrishnan is the co-founder of Bodha Drinks, a British drinks brand built around bold flavour and globally inspired ingredients. Her career has spanned banking, contracting and property before she moved into entrepreneurship, bringing together the pace of India with the structure she found in the UK.

Footnotes

*IELTS: The International English Language Testing System, an internationally recognised test used to assess the English-language ability of people applying to study, work or move to an English-speaking country.

**GMAT: The Graduate Management Admission Test, an assessment commonly used by business schools as part of the admissions process for postgraduate management courses.