From a College Hobby to a Dance Studio: The Story Behind 2RightFeet

Every studio has an origin story. Ours started in a college dorm, wound through two continents, survived a global pandemic, and ended up in a garage in Melbourne.

The Beginning: BITS Pilani

It started at 20, almost by accident. I joined the dance club in college — BITS Pilani — the way a lot of people do: another line for the resume, something to round out the extracurriculars. But it didn't stay that way for long.

Somewhere between the late-night practice sessions and semi-western routines, dance stopped being an activity and became a language. I found myself voluntarily spending hours in the practice room, not because I had to, but because I couldn't imagine not being there. My closest friendships, my first relationship, the best laughs and the hardest cries of that chapter of my life — dance was woven through all of it. I learned my first real steps from the standout dancers in that club, and it shaped everything that came after.

Then, as it does for most of us, career took over. Dance quietly moved to the backseat.

IIT Bombay: A New World Opens Up

The turning point came when I joined IIT Bombay for my master's and walked into the institute's Dance Club. Until then, my dance vocabulary had been built around semi-western styles. This was different. This was Hip Hop — a whole new world of movement, culture, and community.

I remember standing in the crowd at Mood Indigo, the college's cultural fest, watching some of the best hip hop dancers of that era perform live. I never imagined I'd get to learn from them — but I did. That exposure changed the trajectory of my dancing entirely.

Around the same time, I got selected for a dance competition and had the opportunity to work with the Terence Lewis Dance Academy. I still remember the few minutes I spent in his presence after a showcase, hearing his feedback firsthand. I also got to share a stage with Shahid Kapoor and compete alongside people who are now recognisable names in the Indian entertainment industry. Looking back, it's surreal — but at the time, it just felt like doing what I loved.

Infosys, and Meeting Sonia

My next chapter took me into consulting at Infosys. Even there, dance found its way back in — I ended up leading the in-house dance team through several inter-corporate competitions. It was through this that I met Sonia, who would later become my wife and, eventually, my co-founder at 2RightFeet.

A New Country, A New Chapter

Marriage brought a move to Australia — and dance came with me. I kept teaching, kept training, kept dancing with hip hop crews around Melbourne. Somewhere along the way, I became one of the pioneers of Bollywood-hip hop fusion classes in Melbourne's Indian community, at a time when traditional Bollywood still dominated the scene. By this point, dance wasn't a hobby anymore. It was as routine and essential as eating, breathing, sleeping.

When Sonia and I built our first home in 2019, my one meaningful contribution to the entire process was extending the garage by a metre and putting up mirrors along one wall — so it could double as a practice space. Not just for us, but for a third dancer we were hoping to welcome into the family someday. At the time, that garage mirror was the extent of our ambition.

2020: Joy and Chaos, Together

Our daughter Zoe was born in 2020, and she brought a kind of joy into our lives that's hard to put into words. But the same year, COVID sent the world into lockdown, and everything — including dance — suddenly felt uncertain and fragile.

Parenting a newborn through repeated lockdowns made life feel small and routine in a way it never had before. Looking for something to break the monotony, Sonia and I started talking about getting back into competitive dancing. We gave it a shot — and found some real success.

But competing again opened our eyes to something else: a gap. There wasn't much depth of teaching or understanding around modern and fusion Bollywood dancing in our community. Everyone knew traditional Bollywood. Almost no one was teaching the fusion we'd spent years building our own skills in.

Where It All Began

So we talked it through, the way we always do — and 2RightFeet was born, right there in our garage, on the same mirrored wall I'd built for a family that hadn't fully arrived yet.

What started as one person's college hobby became a shared mission between two people who'd found each other through dance. Today, 2RightFeet is our way of closing that gap — building a space in Melbourne's south-west where Bollywood meets the street, and where every dancer, at every level, can find what dance gave us: joy, community, and a sense of home.