| From building smartphones to developing of software, flying in Space, to challenging the depths of the ocean, women in the 21st century of digital have successfully risen above every cliché not only in the field of technology and science but in every walk of life. One such woman is Yukti Varshneya, CTO at Curedemy. |  |
I am a graduate and master’s in Computer Science, having completed my master’s in 1992 from Banasthali Vidyapith, Rajasthan. My love for mathematics as a subject led me to discover a passion for Information Technology in my second year of B. Sc. Since then, the rest of my career path has been clear to me. My career began as a Trainee at HCL in Delhi. Being married to an engineer and technocrat and now the author and founder of NV Life, we had travel set out in our life journey soon, based on career moves. Soon, I shifted to Singapore and worked there as a Programmer for two years at Chevalier. Through the various ups and downs of some personal loss and valuable learning milestones, which followed, I found myself in the role of a Project Manager at ITC Infotech, Bangalore. As we were flowing ahead, life threw an unforeseen challenge, resulting in a brain stroke, which led to paralysis, impacting my mobility and speech. My recovery was a gift and grace of divinity and blessings. My new life once again had me being my husband’s work partner- with the birth of nvlife.net. From nvlife.net to Curedemy, it has been a challenging yet fulfilling journey.
Eleven years old, deep research-based health and wellbeing organization, NV Life, has been converging ancient wisdom, psychiatry, and modern science to help people learn to reverse any form of suffering humanity faces. Curedemy, as a web-based learning management system platform, has the work of research in the form of five online courses, which bring forth 100+ hours of courseware for its virally growing community. Further, the platform is the alumnus’ mecca for continued learning and sustained transformation of their lives.
What are the various roles and responsibilities that your current role as the CTO entails at Curedemy? What are some of the most challenging aspects of your job, and how do you overcome them?
Curedemy is a platform that I have built from scratch, single-handedly. Until the beginning of 2020, we were at nvlife.net on the web, and this platform was poised as a repository of our research content. The onset of the pandemic compelled us to step up and create a courseware-based Learning Management System (LMS) for individuals while humanity grappled with hopelessness, fear, and loneliness. It was important for us to teach the science of cure to people to build and sustain optimal immunity and solve other emotional, mental health, or disease-related issues. This is how we began to further the vision of our founder and reach out to humanity through scalable LMS. While the teaching faculty – put together the workflows of the courseware, dashboard, feeds, etc., the business team brought forth the requirements for seamless integration of marketing and website visitor journey, and the quality control team built their requirements to ensure that delivery of static, as well as dynamic interventions, is not compromised. The spontaneous need to develop the LMS-based website as curedemy.com meant that every season (month) of a new program starting would entail enhancements, bug fixtures, feature revision, and additions. This called for research and some solid, out-of-the-box thinking. It was possible only because of the faith I hold in the spirit of determination, hard work for a purpose more extensive than a personal cause, and the coming together of a solid team to enable this delivery. Curedemy, in the last two years, has been technically delivered, upgraded, and maintained by me, without any other technical resource.
The challenge as a CTO is, more often than not, about keeping an eye out for the roadmap for the next ten years; now, it is about evolving this platform with AI and ML integrated LMS. The research and a constant upgrade are the backbones of an early-stage start-up such as ours. It has been necessary, and will always be so, that I stayed nimble and on edge while ensuring zero compromises on the website’s security.
As a successful business leader, what would your advice be to young women aspiring to become business leaders in the future?
A woman is defined, in all her roles, with her core feminine essence. The aspects of nurturing, endurance, aesthetics, and patience are core to her existence. So long as we, as women, embrace our feminine self and do not try to compete with or be a man, there is no way we shall not outdo our conceivable potential. I believe that the problem occurs when we try to diminish ourselves to be as good as another. So, recognizing your innate strength and power is what shall enable the breaking of the glass ceiling- remember – that the glass ceiling is a constraint in your mind.
Responses
Bravo. Both as a Chetna participant who has gone through the UX of the courseware and a HR professional who has worked with various LMSs in my career this is stupendous effort and very user friendly LMS created by Yukti single handedly in such a short time. Now I realise which one woman’s vision Naveen ji spoke about in the introductory video. Salute to her spirit, determination and love that flows through in Curedemy. May you inspire thousands of women.
Thank you so much for your words of encouragement! It means a lot to me!