Shraddha Varma on Fuzia: A Cultural Community for Women to Be Unapologetically Themselves!

Shraddha Varma, the co-founder of Fuzia, is helping millions of girls all around the world spread their wings and fly high towards the azure of empowerment and happiness.

1. What was the inspiration for your podcast, “Zia- The Voice of Fuzia”?
Shraddha Varma: Podcasts today have taken the world by storm. Apart from it being a dynamic medium in ways more than one, they are, in my opinion, a daily dose of inspiration for people all around the globe.

Zia’s podcast series narrates stories that are relatable to the masses. Our company goals stand strong on communicating with the audience, and nothing is better than Zia herself talking about various cross-direction ideas that Fuzia surrounds itself with. The inspiration has always been to narrate the struggles and hurdles faced by every woman throughout her life and to put an end to always putting others before ourselves. In other words, it’s about taking care of ourselves, loving ourselves, and doing away with the stereotypes prevailing in society. In fact, besides talking just about struggles, Zia looks forward to celebrating every aspect and topic that relates to womanhood.

Zia’s idea is to find hope, happiness, and empathy in imperfections! Our objective is to let people know that every obstacle can be overcome with self-confidence. Zia is the inner voice that we want every woman out there to relate to. Her voice is portrayed as a medium to share stories and experiences that are relatable, powerful, opinionated, and inspiring to every woman. We want our audience to know that they can reach out to us through her; we are there for them, no matter how big or small the problem is.

2. Who has been your biggest inspiration in this journey towards empowering women?
Shraddha Varma: Women empowerment cannot be a reality with a single influencer or inspiration when we are surrounded by women who still find themselves being undervalued, underpaid, and most significantly, underappreciated. It’s honestly about every single woman that I’ve come across who has made me realize time and again how much we need to empower each other.

However, I would like to emphasize how much my mom has been the one I’ve admired all my life. She has always believed in gender equality and brought me up with a very strong foundation. It is from my very own family upbringing that I’ve learned the importance of empowering women as well as how important it is to not have a gendered approach to differentiate.

Apart from that, I highly look up to the great work and thoughts of people like Maya Angelou, Priyanka Chopra, and Meghan Markel. At every step of my life and career, I have come across some valuable learnings from many such great personalities and people around me who have had a deep impact in keeping me committed to my mission of empowering women everywhere.

3.  Where do you see Fuzia in the next five years?
Shraddha Varma: We aspire to establish a space for women where they are free from their own little cages and can express themselves with true liberty. This space extends its hands through our belief in the strength of young minds all around the world! We believe that a society where women are strengthened is an empowered society in reality.

We want Fuzia to globally impact as many women as possible. We want to eventually connect and reach 100 million+ girls and women someday, and be recognized as a prominent media platform where women can post and find support for any of their creative work. We also want to economically empower women by adding a revenue stream into Fuzia through FuziaTalent, where we match women with digital jobs based on the creative skillset they share on our website. We would then help them with the recruiting process for these next-generation jobs and train them for a job accordingly, all the while creating a sustainable business model for Fuzia.

We are step-by-step reaching a global audience and we look forward to continuing our efforts till the time we touch every woman whose talent has gone unnoticed.

Eventually, we envision that we will feature and promote art and creative goods produced by our Fuziaites – similar to the Etsy business model.

 4. What is the plan for the inclusion of gender identities other than females in your community?
Shraddha Varma: Fuzia as a community has always kept its focus on being a cultural organization that is gender inclusive. We strongly believe that gender inclusion is not just restricted to achieving peripheral equality, but also facilitates the breakdown of unconscious bias.

Our platform is open to every individual, be it men, women, or people identifying with other genders. Anyone who supports the cause of women empowerment, feminism, equality, and mutual support/upliftment has to be of our deciding interest. Fuzia believes that true ‘empowerment’ is incomplete without people of all genders supporting it. Therefore, we highly support and encourage gender inclusion, which, as a concept, transcends mere equality.

5. What do you have to say to women all around the world who are victims of suppression and violence?
Shraddha Varma: The inceptive idea that I would like to integrate is to call them survivors and not victims. I take this opportunity to voice out that we have all been subjected to certain levels of abuse at some point in our lives.However, we cannot do much about what has gone by. But, we can surely change the way we look at ourselves- nobody wants to be a ‘victim’. To anyone who has been or is at the suffering end, I would ask them to recognize their strength and stand up for themselves, even when no one else isn’t. No one will do it for you if you don’t do it for yourself. Most significantly, do not give up. There’s hope, and it always lies in the darkest of places- you will find it when you want to find it.

 6. What drives you to work for others?
Shraddha Varma: Helping others and empowering people is where I derive most of my strength from. It motivates me beyond definitive measures. The idea that I might be of even little help to someone in need is what motivates me every single day. I truly believe that empathizing with people is detrimental to living.

Besides, I love collaborating with people all around the world and accomplishing huge and small things, which I know make a difference to someone else. That is what I see as a win-win.

7. If there was one change you could bring to the world, what would it be?
Shraddha Varma: If I could bring one change to the world, I would want to see everyone appreciate, accept and respect each other for who they are and ultimately see the world become a better place. Honestly, that one change would make all the difference to us as a part of humanity.