Piyasree Dasgupta profiles the 27-year-old woman who is in the business of image makeover

Parvana babycon
If measuring words had never been your forte, the soft-spoken Parvana Babaycon, makes for quite a jaw-dropping experience. She doesn’t speak a word more than necessary, listens to you with absolute patience, she’s least likely to yawn even once even if you go on blabbering about things that don’t interest her vaguely. The composure, which is probably the need of all professionals today and also a rarity in these spiraling work pressure days, is Bobaycon’s trademark.

“This comes with confidence, about yourself, about work,” says Babaycon. The 27-year-old should know it well, since she left a cushy job with an MNC just to make sure that people get back the confidence that they had lost somewhere in the pursuit of work, studies etc.

And Optimum Image Institute, Babaycon’s baby, came into existence in 2008. “The concept of image consultancy is still in a very nascent stage in India, and Kolkata, especially,” says Babycon. Her work involves giving her clients a visual makeover, speech training, personality grooming and also counseling them to improve their presentation. Babaycon, who studied behavioral sciences in the University of Maine, USA, returned India and joined the PriceWaterHouse Coopers.

“There wasn’t much of an employee exchange cell then and I was handling the department where employees from Kolkata were sent to the US and vice-versa,” says Babaycon. It was then that she realised how several talented people failed to exploit their opportunities due to lack of presentation capabilities.

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