Shalet Jimmy talks to Riya Sinha and Shraddha Varma, founders of Fuzia.com
We live at an era where the women are coming out of their cocoons to express themselves. And they of course, need a platform to voice their opinions and choices where they wouldn’t be scuttled by patriarchy and many other anti-women social norms. This was made possible when an 11 year old Riya Sinha decided to bring women across the world under one platform, around six years ago. Yes, you heard it right. It has only women users and they can put forth their thoughts without any inhibitions. Fuzia was created in 2012.
Now Fuzia has over 4 million followers on social media and 1500 members.
On November 7, 2017 Riya Sinha bagged ‘The Iconic Teen Entrepreneur and Innovator’ award in the Women Economic Forum which was held in British Columbia, Canada on November 17th, 2017.
On 31st April, Fuzia Executive Core Team ( Co – founder Shraddha Varma, founding members Riya Kumar, Ria Singhal and Sakshi Shrivastava ) participated in the Women Economic Forum held at New Delhi and won the award for ‘ Young Leaders Creating a Better World For All’.
So what is Fuzia all about?
It is a unique online global platform for women/girls to encourage each other and to empower themselves through creative expression.
Let’s try to understand more about the platform.
Q) Riya, If I am not wrong, Fuzia might be the first of its kind enterprise for women to share their thoughts and creative pursuits. What paved the way for a platform called Fuzia?
A) The founding of Fuzia was very serendipitous. I was eleven years old and had written a short book about runaway twins. I presented the book in my local bookstore to a small group of children. After the presentation, a 6-year- old girl came up to me and said that I had inspired her to write a book and that she now realized her dream was possible after seeing me. I was so happy to have helped a small girl like that, and I wanted to do more. A while later, when I was discussing with my dad, he gave me the idea to create Fuzia. Initially, it was an all-girls website made for writers to share their work.
Q) What is Fuzia aiming at?
A) We aim to create a safe pedestal for girls from all around the world to come together and connect through their work. We want to create a platform to showcase every woman’s creative talent to the world. And this mission is working. Considering the fact that women are the biggest reservoir of untapped talent, we try to develop, nurture, motivate and empower them. And also letting the young women realize their own worth and value, thereby developing confidence.
Q) Fuzia was launched in 2012. Tell us about the journey so far?
A) When we launched the website in 2012, we had a few sign-ups and tried promoting it to different organizations and charities to use as a forum to share their writing. However, we soon decided to expand to make Fuzia a platform for girls to share all their creative work, from art, to poetry, to graphic design. We completely redesigned the website to make it more appealing and launched the new and improved Fuzia. We formed a team of passionate women from all around the world to help spread Fuzia’s mission: to empower girls through creativity.
Q) What are the areas you will be focusing on through Fuzia?
A) Very few people realize the fact that art and expression can do wonders in our lives. Hence, our priority will be to capture the emerging talents in the categories of photography, food blogging, travel logs, art, music, photo journalism, writing, poetry, design, fashion design, makeup and beauty artists, video creators, YouTube producers and other creative fields which are women’s passion and bring out their creative self. Besides, we aim to build a virtual place where they can not only share their thoughts and works, but also promote their works, learn, inspire and get inspired, or simply be themselves… where they are not judged!
Q) What is the story behind choosing the name Fuzia?
A) We chose the name fuzia because we wanted the name to symbolize the fusion of many cultures coming together into one platform. Fuzia is basically a shortened and fun version of the word fusion.
Q) You said you are trying to bring in women users from instagrams, snapchats, twitter, blogs etc. to Fuzia. How are you going to do that?
A) In social media, we try and find women who we feel would be a good fit for fuzia, message them directly, pitching the mission of fuzia with them. If they feel it an adequate platform to flaunt their skills, they come to the website and start to post. The whole Fuzia team reaches out to 500+ people per day on all social media sites. Additionally, we have started campaigns on Fuzia and advertise them on our social media platforms, which attracts women to the site as well.
Q) Where are your current users from? After 6 years of launching the website what is your current reach?
A) Our first few users mainly came from the Middle East, Pakistan, Nepal, United States, Tanzania, South Africa, Morocco, Egypt, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. We are focusing on developing countries where lay the huge untapped potential.
FB page: www.facebook.com/fuziaworld
Instagram: @fuziaworld
Twitter: @fuziaworld
