Navya Naveli Nanda: It has always been clear that I don’t want to act

Navya Naveli Nanda has been on a quest to carve out her own path away from the arclights of Bollywood. Amitabh Bachchan’s granddaughter, who is more interested in the ‘business side’ of her family, reveals her family helpded her understand the evolved concept of gender roles.

“I have fortunately grown up in a family where everyone has always been very equal to both genders. No one has ever really implied any gender role on one specific person,” the 25-year-old tells us, adding, “That definitely gave me a lot of clarity on what things should be like. I was grateful to grow up in an environment that didn’t enforce any gender roles onto me”.

Navya, the daughter of Shweta Bachchan and businessman-husband Nikhil Nanda, has been working towards various social causes such as women empowerment, gender equality and social justice through her passion project. Just as her brother Agastya Nanda is gearing up for his debut, we ask if she ever thought of acting?

“Well, I also come from a business family too. So, I was very clear that (I don’t want to join acting and do this). At the end of college, I realised that this is what I wanted to do,” she admits.

In sync with her passion, she came to Delhi earlier this month for the first leg of her Yuvaa’s pan India roadshow You Grow, Girl, which touched upon all issues related to the youth, from the world they want to see to tackling the issue of street harassment.

“I come from a family and a community of strong women, and I have always stood up for women empowerment, or their rights. I knew that I was privileged and fortunate enough to be given a platform where I could do that and I could voice some of those issues. So, I tried to accumulate and put everything together to try and maximise the impact that would come out of actually speaking up about things,” she mentions while talking about what drives her passion project.

Talking about coming to Delhi, Navya, who has been winning recognition and accolades for her work in the health sector as well , confesses, “It is great to be back home in the city where I grew up. I lived here for 13 years. I am happy that the first leg of the roadshow was in Delhi”.