Pernia Qureshi walks into her tony Defence Colony office in Delhi dressed in Nike workout tights and a spaghetti top. It’s hard to tell that a few hours ago Qureshi, 26, was at a promotional event for her upcoming Bollywood film, Jaanisaar, directed by fashion designer and filmmaker Muzaffar Ali.

Qureshi wears many hats — a trained Kuchipudi dancer, fashionista, author of Be Stylish with Pernia Qureshi and the woman behind the luxury fashion portal, PerniasPopUpShop.com.

But perhaps she’s best known as the stylist who created actress Sonam Kapoor’s look in the film Aisha in 2010. And now she’s poised to make her debut as an actress.

In her office she’s comfortable in the familiar role of a fashion entrepreneur running a successful online fashion store that attracts around 10 lakh visitors a month. Online, she retails luxury clothes including India’s best known signatures like Rohit Bal, Anamika and Tarun Tahiliani. There’s more: jewellery, men’s clothes as well as outfits similar to those worn by movie stars. PerniasPopUpShop.com has a foothold in more than 100 countries including the US, the UK and Australia.

Qureshi says that she juggled Jaanisaar, slated for an August 7 release, easily with her work and isn’t worried that the film is already being compared to Muzaffar’s last film, Umrao Jaan.

Set in the 1870s, Jaanisaar is a love story of a courtesan, Noor, played by Qureshi, and a prince, played by Pakistani actor Imran Abbas Naqvi. The film has been shot in Lucknow.

But Qureshi says that similarities between the two films are limited to the fact that both are period dramas and their leading women are courtesans. “Noor is an extrovert who dares to oppose the British,” Qureshi says.

The lead role saw her coaching herself to suppress the American accent that she acquired during her student days in the US. Muzaffar would sit for hours while she dubbed her dialogues. “Though I speak Urdu with my mother, the Lucknow dialect is very different,” she says.

Qureshi was also trained with kathak maestro Pandit Birju Maharaj. “I’m a Kuchipudi dancer and learning kathak meant that I had to change my body postures completely as the two dances are very different,” she says.

She may be a new face on the silver screen, but Qureshi is quite surefooted in Bollywood. When she designed the costumes for Aisha, the film got talked about more for what Sonam was wearing. Qureshi landed the film by chance when Sonam’s sister, Rhea, the producer of Aisha, met Qureshi at a party and liked what she was wearing. “I dressed Sonam the way I personally dress,” she adds.

Soon Qureshi realised that the real fun lay in front of the camera. “I was a bit bored as a costume designer,” she adds. She decided then that her next Bollywood outing would be in front of the camera.

Around this time in 2011 she had a short-lived marriage to Arjun Prasad, a London-based chartered accountant. “I am single now,” she says firmly. She also refuses to talk about her father, the meat exporter, who has been involved in recent controversies.

In 2012 she decided to launch her online shopping fashion portal and her dreams of acting were put on the back-burner.

Jaanisaar also happened quite by chance. Muzaffar liked Qureshi’s Kuchipudi dance performance at Jahan e-Khusrau, the annual Sufi music festival that he organises at Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi. Later, he met her to discuss the film.

Meera Ali, the co-producer and costume designer of Jaanisaar was impressed with Qureshi’s dedication. “We gave Pernia the script and asked her to understand the character. Within a few months, she was back after having prepared for the role,” says Meera.

Movies weren’t really on Qureshi’s mind when after her schooling in 2005, she headed for The George Washington University in Washington DC, to study law. But it was fashion that really drew her. “While studying, I would surf fashion sites obsessively,” she says. Qureshi interned with the styling teams of leading fashion magazines like Elle and Harper’s Bazaar, New York.

An avid online shopper, Qureshi says that she wasn’t impressed with the online shopping experience in India when it came to high-end fashion. So the idea for an online site was born.

Qureshi started PerniasPopUpShop.com with just 18 designers on board in 2012 and within six months she had many more signing up. She also launched her own label, Pernia Qureshi, the same year with an eclectic collection of classic and modern outfits like maxi dresses, chiffon kaftans and embroidered net saris. “It’s an extension of my closet,” she says. A creative head works on the designs but Qureshi finalises them.

Will the acting career take her places like her entrepreneurship has? We will just have to wait and watch.