As a young girl, I always noticed how women around me were treated a little differently. While it wasn’t always blatant, I always took in the subtle differences and wondered why it had to be that way. I was lucky enough that my family was supportive of me and my voice, encouraging me to pursue whatever I wanted. As a child, I loved to read and write creative stories.
When I was 11 years old, I wrote a book called Runaway Twins, about twins who run away from their evil babysitter in order to find a family treasure. I loved the creative process of writing and editing the book, and I was able to self-publish it on Amazon. While it may have been full of small grammar mistakes and it was only 60 pages long, I was so proud of the product because it was fully mine. I was giving copies of this book away to my local bookstore, Books Inc. when a young girl approached me and told me that now she had seen me write a book, she now wanted to as well. While I didn’t know this girl at all, she left a huge impact on my life. She made me realize that I could help other people just by following my passions and sharing my story. I really wanted to help other girls realize their dreams and follow their creative talents in the same way.
Shraddha Varma, who was one of my close relatives, had also always had a passion for the arts and business marketing. She brought this unique insight, and along with the help of my family, we spent the next few years developing the concept of Fuzia, an online platform where women post their creative work and get promoted on social media. Women also meet other like-minded individuals and feel empowered when their creative skills are not just appreciated but also celebrated with much zeal. However, when we first launched Fuzia, it was only a website for creative writing empowerment. And we soon realized that this was too narrow of an audience to cater to. I realized that we needed to empathize with the customers and realize their needs, instead of making a product that we thought would work or that we liked. I’m glad we learned this lesson early, as I think it is very important in any business to know how to empathize and communicate with the audience about what they want. We then re-created Fuzia as a website for creative empowerment of all kinds, and we saw tremendous growth on social media and website usage. Through it all, we as a team have learned countless lessons on what it takes to run an ethical and successful business in this day and age.
One struggle we faced was spending countless hours trying to find self-driven and dedicated team members that could help us share the message of Fuzia. We wanted team members who believed in the cause as much as did. Since Shraddha was based in Mumbai (India), and I was based in California (USA), we had to find a team that was comfortable working online and holding themselves accountable. Even though we faced some challenges finding the right fit, we eventually found several great team members and interns to work on Fuzia. In addition, we are lucky to have strong senior women advisors who give their career expertise and helped us expand globally. These advisors include powerful women such as Emily Avila, Founder and Principal of Calypso Communications LLC and Shellye Archambeau, Former CEO- Metric Stream, who bring their PR and leadership skills to help us better ours.
The most important aspect of choosing the right team is being open to change and empowering every single person to lead. With the right team, we then had to focus on differentiating ourselves in the crowded space of social media. We wanted to make it clear that we were a social platform with a deeper purpose than other social media platforms. We wanted to create deep communities and meaningful conversations that would empower women worldwide. For us, the most important thing was making sure our messaging was strong and relatable across all the social media platforms. Over the past years, we have worked hard to foster this community and help women realize their dreams. We have seen some tremendous payoff, as many women come to us with genuine testimonials that Fuzia is their home, and that they have been exposed to new professional and personal opportunities due to Fuzia.
Last year in June, Sumbul Hyder, a girl from a small town in India, was pictured on a large billboard in her hometown for winning one of Fuzia’s creative contests. She was grateful to get the exposure and recognition for her work, and we are all honored to see the impact Fuzia had on her life. It’s been over 2.5 years that we see consistent involvement in the community from Sumbul and she attributes her growth to Fuzia.
Not just Sumbul, but there are many more people coming from countries like Bangladesh, Morocco & Pakistan who shared their experiences and impact that Fuzia have had in their lives in making them more confident, skilled and financially independent as well.
We now have over 50,000 active users on the website and more than 4 million followers on social media. Through it all, we as a team have learned countless lessons on what it takes to run an ethical and successful business in this day and age. We all truly believe that empowered people empower women and we live by this and all our initiatives are in this direction, which is why we created separate entities like Fuzia Fests and Fuzia Talent to further strengthen our objectives of community building and facilitating the growth of individuals.
I wish together with the team and our pool of knowledge partners, I can impact many more lives in my lifetime.
Reach out to the team Fuzia:
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