Lara Dutta says motherhood didn’t add layers to her identity; instead, it reshaped it entirely. Speaking to Mirror, the actor shared how becoming a mother brought a profound shift in perspective. “Motherhood, for me honestly, was a great leveller because in the initial years it takes away your entire sense of self. It stops being about you. It stopped being about me, and it was constantly about this other little person in my life — and that priority doesn’t change,” she said.

Now a mother to a 13-year-old daughter Saira Bhupathi, Lara says the experience has evolved dramatically. “I’ve got a teenager on my hands now, and it’s completely different. It’s an absolutely different ball game. Today we have a very different relationship from when she was a child,” she added.

Reflecting on her role as a parent today, Lara said, “I feel like I’m learning so much more from her than what I’m able to teach her. My role now is more of a guide and a mentor because I want to raise an incredible human being. My daughter teaches me things every single day.”

Beyond motherhood, Dutta says her entrepreneurial journey has been driven by lived experience rather than trends. “For me it was a lifestyle vision really born honestly from the belief that I think beauty, fashion, lifestyle and wellness are all interconnected expressions of oneself. So over the last three years with Arias, I've kind of thoughtfully tried to build out products that will empower women to embrace every facet of themselves, to feel confident, to feel inspired and beautiful. My prime sort of focus is women in their 30s and 40s who are really embracing possibly a new chapter of life. They're a bit more thoughtful, they're independent, they're intentional. I don't think these women follow trends blindly. They sort of seek out authenticity and meaning in whatever they do today," she said.

On what entrepreneurship means to her, she says it isn’t about selling — it’s about adding value. “For me, as an entrepreneur, I'm not trying to sell. I'm not trying to be a businesswoman who just wants to create a product and sell it to somebody. The idea is to add value to someone's life. I've had the opportunity of working with women through every decade. Your requirements, your outlook, your thought process changes with every decade that you go into. As you mature, you start looking beyond just a trend or beyond just what a product is — you start looking for value in something," she ended.