By N. Lothungbeni Humtsoe

New Delhi, Mar 13 (IANSlife): "When I told my family and friends that I wanted to take up acting as a profession they were like seriously? Like my family has only writers, doctors, lawyers and engineers, but they were supportive and requested me to graduate first," reveals actor Tisca Chopra.

"So, I actually filmed my first film while I was still in college. It's an interesting turn of events that I then did a movie about education "Taare Zameen Par" which then made my father realise how much value films have in helping education."

Actor, author and producer Tisca Chopra who shared a platform with actress Sayani Gupta, and Airbnb Host Ranjana Patil during a panel discussion on #BreakTheBias hosted by Airbnb said, "Any talk of gender equality is useless, women are financially independent. Today it's not brute strength that is real strength in the world, real strength is financial strength and intellectual strength both of which entrepreneurs need in good measure and can create in good measure. So, I would tell women entrepreneurs to educate themselves, learn the business that they're planning to get into take advice from other people and set up their business and not be afraid of failing because then no entrepreneur would make it. People fail but it depends on how fast you get up after the failure. So, ok yeah I am going to fail that's fine but move beyond that. That's what I would say to women entrepreneurs."

Tisca, believes that if you're going to be waiting for someone else to do something for you, you're going to be waiting a very long time. She started acting, directing and producing in the spirit of entrepreneurship. "You can't wait for the industry to offer you the same kind of roles as you want for yourself. So the next step is let me do this for myself, let me try and write something, so I wrote 'Chutney' in 2016, 'Chhuri' in 2017 and then in 2019 we released 'Rubaru', all three short films have done really well and now I'm on my way to directing a feature film. If you do it yourself at least you know that you tried your best and you give it your best shot. I think that's the best that anyone could hope for in this lifetime." she said.

Chopra, whose tight schedule make her travel for work non stop, also states that "Airbnb is such a wonderful, holistic and natural experience of a location, staying with people as they do in that culture. I'm not a big fan of curated hotel experiences, because I feel that they are very sanitizsd and impersonal; I think that the time has come for us to be far more personal with each other far more intimate with each other, in terms of how we eat, how we welcome one into our homes."

Adding, "I want to travel solo a few times a year because I think that I need that time to be able to fill myself up with experiences, not being a mother, a daughter or anybody, but just being a human being walking this planet."