Vanya Mishra is an Indian actress, engineer, entrepreneur and beauty pageant titleholder who was crowned Femina Miss India World in 2012. Vanya was born in Jalandhar, Punjab, raised in Chandigarh and studied electrical engineering at Punjab Engineering College. She represented India at the Miss World 2012 event in China in August 2012. She finished at 5th rank, and won the other two, Miss Multimedia and Beauty with a Purpose titles. She was leading the scoreboard at the Miss World pageant after scoring one of the highest scores in the personal interview round and winning two sub-contests back-to-back. Unlike most of her contemporaries, she chose to pursue her entrepreneurial dream, after declining various Bollywood and TV offers. She has been the co-founder and managing director at her fashion discovery portal, SummerLabel, previously launched on Android.
Early Life
Vanya Mishra was born on 27th Feb 1992 in Jalandhar, India to Indian Army officer, Late Major Navneet Mishra and Ved Mishra. She did her schooling from Chandigarh and was a school topper. She later attended the PEC University of Technology and graduated in 2014 with a Bachelor Of Engineering in Electrical.
In January 2012, at 19 years of age, she was chosen as all India winner Miss Dabur Rose Glow after winning multiple state rounds, getting her an entry into top 20 of Femina Miss India 2012. On March 30th, 2012, she was crowned winner of Pantaloons Femina Miss India World in a glittering ceremony in Mumbai, Maharashtra. The judging panel included famous names such as Ekta Kapoor, Sanjeev Bajaj, Sonu Nigam, Harbhajan Singh, Sakshi Tanwar, Rohit Shetty. She also won 3 major subtitles, Maybelline Most Beautiful eyes, Most Beautiful Skin and Most Photogenic. Her final Q&A round that won her the pageant was "If you were to choose between a thousand poor children to feed or a thousand unemployed people to employ, which one would you chose and why" to which she replied "If I were to chose between these two, I'd feed the children as little children are innocent and cannot help themselves, but I will also like impart them education so that such a scenario doesn't repeat itself". This answer won hearts of Chairperson of Miss World Organisation, Ms. Julia Morley who was one of the esteemed guests. She was crowned by Former Miss World Ivian Sarcos of Venezuela.
Miss World 2012
In the same year, she went to represent India at the prestigious Miss World pageant held in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China. There she competed with 120 global winners from across the world. She was scoreboard leader during the finale. She won two fast-track challenges out of six, Beauty with a Purpose and Social Multimedia. She was one of the top-scorers of personal interview round too. She was also placed as one of the finalist of Top Model round. During Miss World 2012 finale, the finalists were shortlisted to top 30 from 120, to top 15 from top 30 and then lastly final 7 who would face the final Q&A and out of whom 3 winners were announced. She was placed in Top 7 along with South Sudan, Australia, Wales, Jamaica, PR China and Brazil. Wenxia Yu from PR China won the pageant. Her performance back home was applauded and kept live on major prime-time news channels. It garnered great national interest.
Work Career
She has worked as a talent with Miss India organisation under The Times Group. At the end of 2014 after her graduation, she started working on her start-up idea. During her entrepreneurial years, she initiated different business models. One of them was creating a platform for organising and managing public and private events. the idea was eventually pivoted to SummerLabel, a fashion discovery marketplace with the idea of empowering young labels, merchants and smaller designers. The company received an angel funding and was featured in many national dailies such as The Economic Times, The Huffington Post, YourStory etc. She continued being an entrepreneur till January 2017, after which she joined Reliance Jio as Senior Manager.
Awards
Vanya has been a young achiever and recipient of many accolades and awards. As a student engineer with an extraordinary achievement she was conferred with Most Distinguished Student Award by PunjabEngineering College. She received Kalpana Chawla Excellence Award in New Delhi. Hindustan Times rewarded her with young achievers award under HT 30 under 30. She was bestowed with Gr8! Women Achievers Award in Mumbai, televised on Colors channel. As a Miss India winner and entrepreneur she has been invited to various platforms to share her inspiring story and journey with future aspirants and leaders. She has been invited as chief guest at IIT Delhi, IIM Banaglore, IIT Roorkee, BITS-Pilani and more. She has traveled extensively throughout the country giving inspirational talks to young people as National Youth Ambassador, and judged various talent shows. She has traveled to various across India motivating young designers to foray into the world of fashion. Upon sharing panels with top executives from business world and famous sports and entertainment personalities she describes the experience as overwhelming, saying "It's a fabulous feeling to share stage with such talented people at such a young age".
