Correcting children begins at a tender age, when they are in the midst of picking up cues and making sense of the big world, filling in missing pieces with their own imagination. Children learn with all senses and seek stimulation to help themselves understand their environment. Words and sounds are important fragments of their world, loaded with communication and meaning. Bigtionary is brought to you by Gary Grewal, a furniture designer, artist and dad; Shanoo Bhatia, a communication designer and mum, and Sharmila Kharab a senior corporate executive and mum; inspired by their own children's early language, they constantly encouraged their 'play with words & sounds'. Appalled by the pressure that a child endures, to grow up quickly� - speak right, eat right, sit right and be conscientious and politically correct, the three of them came together to experiment with the idea of Bigtionary in a real school setting and received an overwhelming response. This was the genesis of Bigtionary - the world's BIG dictionary of children's words.
Sharmila is a French aficionado, having completed her Diplôme in the French Language. She has taken her passion to the next level and teaches students of international school French as well as students aspiring to do the Alliance DELF exams. Parent to a boy and the pleasure derived from interaction with children and communicating with them on a daily basis has inspired her to drop her corporate career and focus full-time on teaching and pursue other children related activities such as creating a site that will allow parents to capture their children’s meaningful words and create a large dictionary- Bigtionary
As part of her past experience she was the Senior Director of Business Development in India for RCI, based at the Bangalore office, Sharmila was responsible for driving RCI's shared business development goals across India. She has 25 years of diverse experience in steering business set-ups, Business Development and Key Account Management in the airlines, hotels & Global Distribution Systems.
Prior to joining RCI, Sharmila held a leadership role at Amadeus India where her key objective was to increase market-share in a highly competitive market environment, achieve revenue targets and operationally manage over 100 people. She also worked as the Commercial Director South West Asia for Abacus International and was responsible for driving market and strategic growth for India, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh.
Sharmila has graduated in Commerce from Sydenham College of Commerce and Economics, at Mumbai, additionally has a post-graduate Doctorate in Management. She has also studied French at the Alliance Française de Bombay and holds several degrees in the language.
