Rarely we get truly get the opportunity to truly learn about how women leaders today are changing the narrative for Women In Tech by sharing their own journey to success. Richa Joshi, a Software Engineer with over 14 years of experience describes her journey of exploring multiple interests before finally entering the world of crypto. A Software Engineer by profession, Richa decided to take a career break from her corporate job as a consultant at Deloitte and went into an interning mode and in that phase she also ended up working in a top-notch luxury dining restaurant in South Bombay before building the world’s first decentralized notification protocol called Ethereum Push Notification Service (EPNS). As a founding partner for EPNS today she has a passion for disruptive technology and wears multiple hats while focusing on leading the Marketing and product development division for her company.

A big believer in turning every experience into a learning opportunity, Richa has lived by her own terms, chasing her dreams and realizing that there no shortcuts to success. She relied on her ability to push herself to learn new things that inspired her to grow her skill set and simply followed her passion. Her determination and intention to create value from any given situation has helped her grow as a professional and lead her to become an entrepreneur.

When did Richa first hear about Crypto?

“I first heard about Bitcoin when someone I knew bought a Bitcoin and the exchange had sent the investor a golden coin which looked like a real replica of an actual gold Bitcoin. It fascinated me and I started researching and learning about the crypto space back in the year 2017. I realized the potential of cryptos and the importance of building my own product in the blockchain space which will future help evolve the crypto space and also help contribute towards making India a global tech powerhouse.”

So what changed her perspective to startup on her own?

She realised that while the corporate world comes with its own charm and challenges the joy of building her own startup in the crypto space excited her more. She and her husband, Harsh built a blockchain-based startup called EPNS (Ethereum Push Notification Services) that is designed to empower the true potential of decentralized push notifications in Web3. Today this one-of-a-kind blockchain-based startup has created a breakthrough in the decentralised DeFi space. The product they built sends all notification protocol (smart contract), which any dApps or services can use to send notifications to the wallet addresses of Ethereum. This wasn’t possible before as this crypto space is still at its evolution stage. Their notification protocol is essentially a Missing Piece of Web3 infra which any project can integrate to make their user experience better. 

She states “I think till my corporate job lasted, I thoroughly enjoyed doing my work. But I think after a point of time it got a little monotonous. I think most of us end up feeling this way after spending a decade working in an MNC environment.” During that break, Richa took up hobbies that included cooking, travelling, blogging, learning about new technologies among other things. The explorer in her drove her to learn new things every day that kept her curious, self-motivated and hungry to reconnect with herself to redefine her life forever. “ I started my blog page and then ended up interning at one of Mumbai’s top restaurants in South Bombay, only to realise that it looks very glamorous on television. But I learned a lot doing these random things and I enjoyed every bit of my journey as an explorer.” Ever since Richa moved away from the norms of a corporate job to pursue her passion for open source software, life changed into a liberating exploration of building the next web. 

So what made Richa and her partner start EPNS?

Today, there are many tremendously innovative blockchain & Web3.0 applications are deployed, especially those laying the foundation for decentralized finance (DeFi). However, they all face the issue of not being able to communicate with their users directly. This always created a huge barrier for mainstream adoption, and customer retention and engagement rates. To solve this issue Richa and her husband launched their Ethereum Push Notification Service in the year 2020 to better serve the blockchain and crypto community. Push notifications play a major part in today’s customer retention strategy and increasing engagement rates.

EPNS has already raised $1.41 Million in seed funding from Web3 angels and earned funds from BalajiS, Binance Labs, True Ventures and other investors. With the launch of their protocol native token $PUSH and collaboration with top DeFi projects including Uniswap, Aave, Polygon, Alpha Homora, Frontier, Gitcoin and more, they are looking to announce their next protocol on Mainnet by Q3 2021. 

Richa on the exciting career opportunities in crypto?

“So, as far as career opportunities in crypto go, I think anything and everything which you see in this space, whether it is developing a protocol, building a product, managing or building communities in crypto space, everything can be built. There are many growth opportunities in the crypto space for self-starters. The two important pillars are building the tech itself and the other is your skill to engage with the crypto and non-crypto community because all of these factors are driving your project. It’s a great time for the Indian tech community to understand and adapt to the new job roles that the crypto world has to offer as we transition into increasingly skilled-based creative roles. There are too many career opportunities in the crypto space and people can easily work in this space from anywhere with just their laptop and internet connection.”She believes that the crypto community is for passionate intrapreneurs who are essentially creative problem solvers.

Her insight to create a product like EPNS was based on an insight that most smartphone applications send push notifications to users whenever an action or response is required from them, Dapps in the DeFi space didn’t offer that feature. She solved this gap for the Ethereum network with her product, EPNS. She and her partner Harsh and have been researching ways in which they can scale EPNS to potentially solve several communication points for various blockchain networks and between user to user. 

Like Richa, several individuals have been exposed to the crypto space at an early phase and have successfully built their product to further develop this rapidly evolving crypto space. These examples showcase how the youth in India are changing the way we go about building a sense of community, conduct business and work towards improving our lives with resilience and grace.

Richa’s journey as an entrepreneur reflects on her ability to pay attention to detail and focus on improving the user experience in the blockchain space. She believes that the possibilities are endless for push notifications in Web3.0. Blockchain services, DApps and developers can effectively communicate with their users and the community as a whole. In some ways, we have reason to believe that Richa’s success showcases the perseverance fueled by her growth mindset that stimulated her passion for learning.

She was inspired to build her own tech solution on the Ethereum network that could seamlessly cater to an ever- increasing crypto community.

Like her, crypto has become an indispensable part of the everyday lives of several individuals. What is your crypto success story? Tag us on Twitter and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Be sure to include the hashtag #HumansOfCrypto.