Ep 2 – Karina Aggarwal: Brand strategist, scuba diver, and cancer survivor

Welcome back to Cheers with Nat – the podcast dedicated to cheering on women in drinks.

Before we get started with Episode 2, I wanted to share an exciting update about last week’s guest, Georgia Kelly. 

In true Cheers with Nat fashion, Georgia has also just moved beyond beer! Last week, on the very day her episode was released, she started a new role as a sales rep for Disaronno. Please do take a moment to pop onto LinkedIn and congratulate her, as that’s what this show is all about – cheering on women in drinks. What a start!

And we’ve got another incredible guest up next. 

In today’s episode, you’re going to hear from Karina Aggarwal, better known on Instagram as GiggleWater411.

Considering one of the things Karina loves most about her work is that no two days look alike, we start by digging into her job as a brand strategist and consultant and what it actually entails. We then go all the way back, discussing her childhood interest in Egyptology (and the surprising parallel with her work today), how she created her current role, the hobbies that keep her grounded outside of work, and more.

Just before we get into the episode, I wanted to share a little content warning that we  also talk about Karina’s recent battle with cancer, which she’s been very open about on her social media. If you have a loved one living with cancer, like I do, I know these conversations can be tough to hear, but Karina’s story is a really inspiring one. She lets us in on why she chose to share her battle so publicly, the positive impact she’s had on others by doing so, and the life lessons she’s learned from this experience.

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What stuck with me from this conversation:

• On imposter syndrome: “For me one of the things that has always helped is to know that I’ve done as much as I could from a preparation point of view… The confidence then comes to say, if there’s something that I don’t know, it’s really ok for me to say, ‘Oh wait, that’s an interesting question. Let me try to find out about that. I’m not sure.’ It doesn’t diminish everything else that I know.”
• On her role as a brand strategist: “It may eventually be about selling the product, but you want to establish what the brand is, you want to know who the right audience is to speak to, and how do you speak to the audience.”
• On social media: "The idea is not to say this is the best whiskey or the best beer, it’s always to say this for this reason is why I like to drink it or why it’s on my bar."
• On her journey with cancer:
  • Why she shared it publicly: “I just realised that I wanted people to hear from me. Like, I wanted them to know where I was at at that point in my head. That it wasn’t a sob story. Yes it was a huge thing and I was sort of getting used to it. But that I was ok.”
  • The impact on others: “The other thing that became really important through the journey is that, again, when I first put it out there, I encouraged women to go and get tested. I said it’s not something that we are told and I don’t know why that is… and a lot of women write to me and said, ‘We went. We took our best friends, we took our sisters, we took our mothers. We had been putting it off for a while.’ But it was almost like, if it happened to you, it can happen to us."
  • The impact on herself: “I’ve never been a patient person. I wouldn’t say I am one now. But it did teach me a little bit to, you know, pick my battles a little better. Slow things down a little bit. Not need to be everywhere all at once.”
• On scuba diving: “I struggle with getting my mind to shut down… but being in the ocean and diving and just looking at stuff and thinking about how the symbiosis is between these things and how it functions, that really calms me. It stops my mind from wondering.” 

Links & things:

• Indian indigenous spirits
  • Six Brothers Mahura
  • More on mahura and feni
• Karina’s favourite comeptitions to judge
  • Concours Mondial de Bruxelles
  • Brussels Beer Challenge
• The legend that is RBG
• Book reccs – The Broken Earth Triology

 

Recording info:

• November 2025 in Bangalore, India
• Apologies for the background noise, we were recording in a meeting room in our hotel in India (we were both in Bangalore for the Brews & Spirits Expo) and we had a bit of company on a few occasions!

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