A conversation with Oshian, influencer marketing strategist, builder of real relationships, and someone figuring it out one version at a time.
Some people walk into a conversation already performing. Oshian does not.
She works in one of the most visible corners of modern marketing, influencer and content-led growth for D2C beauty brands. The work is fast, relational, and requires a particular kind of emotional intelligence that job descriptions rarely capture.
But what makes this conversation worth reading is not the professional part. It is the personal part. The part where she admits she is tired. Where she says she wants independence and connection at the same time and does not know how to have both. Where she names the quiet pressure that this phase of life puts on all of us, the pressure to keep moving, keep growing, keep proving, without ever asking if the direction is even right.
That honesty is rare. And it is exactly what we are here for.
ON LIVING MULTIPLE VERSIONS OF YOURSELF
Who is Oshian right now, across all the different lives you are living?
Right now, I feel like I am living multiple versions of myself all at once.
There is the version that has spent years doing everything right: studying hard, building a career, chasing growth. That part of me is strong, driven, always thinking about what is next.
Then there is the everyday version, showing up at work, giving so much energy, socialising even when I do not feel like it. And by the time I come home, I am often exhausted, craving silence more than anything else.
In my personal relationships, I am still expected to be present and emotionally invested. When I do not have that energy, it gets misunderstood as distance. That is hard. It is not that I do not care. It is just that I am tired.
I deeply want both independence and connection. I want to build a life for myself, but I also long for someone to share it with. And that is where I feel a little stuck.
“It is not that I do not care. It is just that I am tired.”
We hear this more than almost anything else in our conversations with women in this phase of life. The exhaustion that gets read as coldness. The need for silence that gets read as withdrawal. What Oshian is describing is not a personality flaw. It is what happens when you are giving everything to everything, and there is simply not enough left for everyone. That deserves to be said out loud.
ON WHAT INFLUENCER MARKETING ACTUALLY IS
What is something about influencer marketing or content-led growth that people outside the industry often misunderstand?
People think it is just about collabs or getting a creator to post. It is actually a lot more strategic, and a lot more human than that.
Creators today are not just influencers. They are niche voices with very specific audiences who genuinely believe in what they say. What makes or breaks a campaign is not just who you pick, but how well you understand their content DNA.
The biggest myth is that brands control everything. The best-performing content is rarely scripted. It works when creators are given the freedom to speak in their own voice. The moment content feels transactional or forced, audiences can tell. And that is when trust drops.
“The best-performing content is rarely scripted.”
This is the part the industry does not say loudly enough. Control is the instinct of every brand manager who has ever had a campaign go sideways. But Oshian is pointing at something more useful: trust the creator’s relationship with their audience, because that relationship is the whole point. You cannot buy that in a brief.
ON MEANING VERSUS PERFORMANCE
How do you personally navigate the balance between creating something meaningful and delivering something that performs?
For me, the balance between meaningful content and performance really comes down to understanding what actually connects with people today, and then building from there.
In D2C, numbers matter, no doubt. But I have learned that performance does not always come from the most polished or perfect-looking content. In fact, some of the best results I have seen have come from taking a bet on the right creator, giving them clear direction on the product and its strengths, and then letting them interpret it in a way that feels natural to their audience. That is where the real magic happens.
Short answer. And sometimes the short answer is the most confident one. Oshian does not overcomplicate this because she has already worked it out. Meaningful and performance are not opposites. They are the same thing, if you trust the process.
ON CAMPAIGNS THAT SURPRISED HER
Has there been a campaign or moment where something performed very differently from what you expected? What did that teach you about how audiences actually respond?
There have been instances where we were not even fully sure about a creator’s potential, but the concept clicked, and it ended up driving such a strong response that we saw stock-outs for that SKU. That is when you realise it is not just about who the creator is, but how authentic the content feels.
The audience today is also much wider, especially with growing consumption across tier 2 and tier 3 markets. Content has shifted from being aspirational to being real, relatable, and easy to trust.
The stock-out detail is worth sitting with. A creator nobody was fully confident in, content nobody could fully predict, and a product that sold out. That is not luck. That is what happens when you stop trying to engineer trust and just let it exist naturally. Tier 2 and tier 3 market growth is reshaping what good content looks like in India, and the brands figuring that out fastest are the ones listening to Oshian’s logic.
ON THE INVISIBLE WORK
How much of your work feels like holding things together quietly, and how do you stay motivated through that?
The real work is in the execution. Identifying creators, negotiating commercials, aligning on concepts, ensuring everything goes live on time. Creators can back out last minute, delays happen, launches are at stake. It tests your patience constantly.
What keeps me going is the relationships I have built. This industry runs on trust. I take pride in having built genuine working relationships with creators, people who come back, who trust the process.
On tougher days, I lean on my personal support system. Because sometimes staying motivated is simply about getting through the day and trusting that it all adds up.
“Beyond the chaos, I am building something meaningful.”
The invisible work is one of the most consistent themes across every conversation in this series. The coordination, the backups, the emotional labour of keeping relationships intact when everything is running late and the stakes are high. Oshian’s answer matters because she names both what sustains her professionally, the relationships she has earned, and what sustains her personally. Neither is separate from the other.
ON KINDNESS AS A NON-NEGOTIABLE
As you grow in your career, what is something you hope does not change about you?
As I grow in my career, one thing I really hope never changes about me is my sense of kindness and how I treat people.
I have experienced work environments where I did not feel respected or supported, especially early on. Being made to feel less than just because you are new can really impact how you see yourself. I remember carrying that stress back home. It also made me realise the kind of leader I do not want to become.
Today, when I work with my team or people who are junior to me, I am very conscious of that. I do not believe in leading with hierarchy or making someone feel small because they have less experience. If anything, I try to create a space where people feel comfortable, heard, and respected, because that is how people actually grow.
I know being kind does not always feel like the easiest path in high-pressure environments, and I have even been told that I should not try to be too nice. But that is just who I am. It is something rooted in how I have been brought up, and I would not want success to take that away from me.
“I would not want success to take that away from me.”
We have been told the same thing. Be less nice. Be tougher. Stop making it so easy for people. And every time we hear it, we think: what a strange thing to tell someone whose kindness is clearly working. Oshian is not naive about the environment she operates in. She just refuses to let it reshape her core. That is not softness. That is conviction.
ON THE RACE NOBODY NAMES
What is something about this phase of life that you feel people do not talk about honestly enough?
I think one thing people do not talk about honestly enough is how much this phase can feel like a constant race, even when everything looks sorted from the outside.
There is this quiet pressure to keep up, to always be moving forward. And somewhere in that, it becomes easy to forget your own pace. We are so focused on the next role, the next milestone, the next validation, that we rarely pause and ask: is this even what I want, or am I just following the flow?
You can have a stable job, be doing well on paper, and still feel confused. That is completely normal. But it is not something we say out loud enough.
“Is this even what I want, or am I just following the flow?”
This is the question this entire series exists to hold space for. Not the answer. The question. The fact that Oshian is asking it out loud, while also building a strong career and maintaining real relationships, is exactly the point. You do not have to have it figured out to be doing well. Those are two different things. And the sooner we stop pretending otherwise, the more honest and useful these conversations become.
A Note From Decoding Draupadi
What stayed with us after this conversation is something Oshian said about the race nobody admits they are running.
The quiet pressure to keep moving, keep proving, keep up. The milestone chasing that happens on autopilot until one day you look up and wonder if you even chose the direction.
We built this series so that question gets to exist without shame. So the women running that race have somewhere to land where the conversation is honest, and the people in the room actually get it.
If this felt like someone you know, share it with her.
— End of Interview —
Oshian is an influencer marketing and brand strategist with experience across D2C beauty and personal care brands. This interview was conducted as part of the Decoding Draupadi Brand Manager Series.
If this article made you think, nod, or text it to a friend: you belong with us. Come find your people @decodingdraupadi.