Shweta was invited back to her alma mater IIM Ahmedabad in 2025 to teach Leadership Storytelling to the PGPX batch.
Shweta Mani
Build My Story (BMS) is a boutique storytelling and coaching firm founded by Shweta Mani. BMS helps businesses and leaders build their own stories and narrate them with clarity and simplicity.
Every business has a story - a story of why it exists, who it serves, and what makes it unique.
What sets BMS apart is its interdisciplinary approach to uncovering and articulating this story.
BMS’s methodology blends principles from three disciplines: Coaching, Storytelling, and Marketing Strategy - creating a triple-fortified process that doesn’t leave narrative clarity to chance. The result? A narrative that not only resonates with businesses and brands, but also captures the attention of their customers and investors.
Shweta founded Build My Story in 2021, during the pandemic, while navigating a career crossroads. While her formal career spanned over two decades - across startups, consulting, and entrepreneurship in three countries - she had also clocked over 8,000 hours of storytelling experience as a passionate blogger.
It was as if her life and career had been preparing her for Build My Story.
Over the years, she had built the very muscles that narrative building demands - the ability to think strategically, cut through clutter, and connect disparate dots across diverse situations. It’s a discipline that requires both a wide-angle lens for perspective and the precision to zoom in and capture nuance.
Her time in startups honed this ability. She believes they are the best training grounds for storytellers - demanding not just 360-degree thinking, but also the rigour to turn ideas into action. Zoom out. Zoom in. Cut through the noise.
Her consulting years, especially leading projects for Big Pharma clients across Southeast Asia, brought another critical layer - crafting insight-led stories from complex data, and presenting them to CEOs and senior leadership teams.
Together, these experiences shaped her core belief: every brand already has a great story - it just needs the right lens to come to life.
After launching BMS, Shweta continued to invest in her capabilities with formal training from the world’s best institutions: Storytelling from Oxford, PowerPoint Storytelling from Duarte (California-based leader in the field), a strategy course from Harvard, and most recently, an ICF Level 2 PCC Coaching Certification.
“Coaching helps me support my clients with more than just knowledge. It allows me to deploy active listening to uncover insights hidden within people - by asking thoughtful questions,” Shweta says.
When a senior female leader at an insurance company was struggling with confidence and executive presence, she reached out to Shweta. Within a few months, her boss noticed a change in how she showed up - and within the year, she received the promotion that had long eluded her.
Beyond 1:1 coaching, Shweta is proud of the outcomes she delivers for her corporate clients.
When fintech company Finnovate was struggling to differentiate in a crowded wealth advisory space, Shweta stepped in to craft a narrative that brought clarity to their communication, defined their mission, and overhauled their brand identity. The result? A doubling of AUM in 12 months.
In a full-circle moment, Shweta was invited back to her alma mater IIM Ahmedabad in 2025 to teach Leadership Storytelling to the PGPX batch.
Over the last four years, she has worked with leaders and teams at companies such as Bajaj Finance, Axis Bank, Bharti AXA, Sundaram Finance, Bajaj Life Insurance, Lead Schools, NGOs like Akanksha and The Nudge, as well as several successful entrepreneurs.
“I’m deeply passionate about the impact our work creates for clients. Every story built, every life transformed - adds to our own story. A story that’s just getting started,” Shweta signs off.
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