Pride, passion & perseverance

"Pride, passion and perseverance are indispensable to make one's dream come true," says Vijaya Verma, Founder and CEO of Yos Technologies.

From the days of pursuing her engineering till she founded her own healthcare company Yos Technologies in September 2006, Ms Verma always choose the road less trodden, took up challenging roles and never looked back.

She earned a Masters Degree in Computer Communications from IIT Bombay and a Bachelors Degree in Electronics and Communications from MS University, Baroda. She was one among four girls among 300 boys to study engineering in IIT Bombay in 1980. She started her work career in ISRO, Bangalore. In the quest to take up more challenging roles, she quit ISRO and joined Wipro in 1987.  The turning point was in 1998 when she was promoted to the post of General Manager — Global Products.

Road less trodden

She played a crucial role in developing the earliest web-based network management product. However, the product developed by her team was not taken to the market as Wipro was traditionally a services-oriented company and it did not fit into its roadmap. Having spent a good three years on the development of the product, and by then having been bitten by the entrepreneur bug, she did not want to give it up.  "In 1999, I quit Wipro. It was a very tough call at that time. My health was deteriorating. I was diagnosed with Autoimmune Arthritis. Even my parents were bit skeptical about how I would manage it. I did not want that product to die. I also wanted to prove that a product company can be started in India. I have to give credit to my mentor Sridhar Mitta for this," Verma reminisces.

She took the IP from Wipro and started her own product company — Alopa Networks in October 1999 focussing on OSS product development for Cable and DSL markets.

"We were fortunate to have an angel investor. Until I quit Wipro and moved out of my comfort zone he refused to invest. That's how Alupa (which means flawless) Network started," she adds.

Alopa had offices in India and the US, serving the US customers.  Alopa was acquired by C-COR in June 2004.  She was heading the Indian division of C-COR for two years, before quitting in 2006 with the intention of doing something for the Indian market. "I always wanted to do something for India. I wanted to do something in education or healthcare. We took up healthcare as it lacked IT perspective and that's when Yos Technologies was started."

"Further, I have had more than 20 hospitalizations in the past few years. Possibly, one of the reasons why I really wanted to something in the Healthcare industry. People who have health problems should not be deterred to follow their dreams."