PIONEERS | SEEMA
“Learning to Code Builds Other Life Skills” MOM AND ENTREPRENEUR ASHNI DWARKADAS ON HEADING HACKBERRY, THE INDIAN CODING AND DIGITAL LITERACY PLATFORM
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oding has become literal child’s play with the inception and roll out of Hackberry, India’s digital solution to the coding education. Often deemed as the new robotics, coding is globally packaged and presented to millennial parents as an essential 21st century skill. There’s also been a surge in online coding classes globally during the surfeit of virtual time provided by pandemic quarantines. When Ashni Dwarkadas learned that India lacked such classes, she put her entrepreneurial prowess to work. “Learning how to code is like learning how to read and write in computer language,” she says. “Coding is the language of creativity that empowers children to create for the future.” SEEMA had the privilege of engaging
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MELANIE FOURIE with this prolific mom and business woman in an exclusive interview. WAS A CAREER IN STEM ALWAYS SOMETHING THAT YOU GRAVITATED TOWARD, OR DID YOU HAVE OTHER ASPIRATIONS? I did my undergraduate degree and my MBA from Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School of Business. While there, I met a lot of interesting and very intelligent people, and saw some amazing work in tech, but I was always more inclined towards finance. After my MBA, I worked for several years in investment banking at a financial firm in Mumbai, India. I discovered that it wasn’t for me, and so quit that to work on an entrepreneurial idea. WHERE DID YOU GROW UP AND WHAT WAS IT LIKE THERE?
I grew up in Mumbai, India. My father ran a small business, and my mum ran a preschool. Education was very important in my family, and my parents always urged me to dream big and work hard. Prior to Hackberry, you also started Koffeeplace, an inspiring and collaborative online platform for women seeking career guidance. How did that come about? I decided to break from work when my daughter, Dia, was born in 2011. Three years and one more baby later, I connected with an old school friend. The conversation led to future plans. Anisha, my friend, was looking for inspiration, guidance, and direction for the next step in her career. I shared how difficult it was to stay in touch with my career when I was on a break, and how challenging it was to even begin the journey back to work. That’s
