At BrilliantRead Media, we always strive to bring meaningful and powerful stories from India and around the world to empower and motivate our growing community. As part of this endeavour, we invited Suchitha Champak for an exclusive interview with us. Suchitha is a Seasoned Entrepreneur, Leader, Speaker, Geneticist, Cancer Biologist, Mentor, Consultant and Change Enabler. She is the Founder of SciRio Let’s learn more about her incredible journey, her background, and her advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Suchitha:
We are aware of your contribution to the ecosystem, talk us through your background and your journey as a women entrepreneur, please;
I am a trained Geneticist and also a Cancer Biologist by practice. My fascination for Genetics was kindled in school when I was introduced to how we inherit traits from our ancestors. I wanted to be that star scientist who made remarkable discoveries and be renowned for my work.
Life had other plans for me, though. After a few years in research, I wanted to venture outside the lab and talk about what scientists did, to the rest of the world. I carried my camera around the city of Bangalore and started documenting stories of doctors, scientists, genetic counsellors who were helping patients with rare genetic disorders.
While all this was a passionate effort, I wanted to build a business around my passion and so pivoted multiple times to set up SciRio as a company that helps scientists and other professionals in science talk about their work to people in interesting ways.”
As you read this, you must have realised how uncommon it is to find someone in this space. To change that, we are also building an ecosystem for keen science enthusiasts to develop skills in science communication.
This endeavour is bootstrapped so far and I have had the generous support from my family and friends to work on SciRio. When I started, I didn’t realise that was I not only learning the ropes of science communication but also of entrepreneurship. I suddenly found myself repositioning myself as a businesswoman and no more a scientist.
Unlearning and relearning, exploring fresh and sometimes contrasting perspectives of how the economy and businesses work has become my new normal.”
Building SciRio has given me the opportunity to understand the limitations of my vision and skills and has always pushed me to grow beyond my comfort zone.
What attracts you towards entrepreneurship instead of a corporate career?
As a researcher in academic institutes, I have never experienced a corporate setup. Nevertheless, academia is no less hierarchical or administrative. I was fed up with the limited scope of exploration and the constant push to fit myself into the ideal career part of a researcher from getting a PhD degree, and doing multiple postdoctoral studies until you land a tenure-tracked position that is probably going to become a permanent position sometime in the future.
Moreover, the number of opportunities kept decreasing as you progressed and hence too much competition made me wonder, “What happens to all those folks who don’t get a PhD, quit a PhD, or most importantly, who don’t want to do a PhD but want to stay in the field of science”.
That’s when I found myself exploring the space of communicating science. I then wanted to create a path of my own, create the opportunities I wanted to work on and what better way to manifest it than become an entrepreneur.
‘SciRio’ is such a unique name; talk us through more about it, please. Our audience would also love to know what kind of problem you are solving?
Honestly, it does not have a well-though out story like Amazon or Nike! It began when I wanted to establish a Science Radio channel where we can “broadcast knowledge” to everyone. Hence the name, SciRio – Science Radio, SciRio.
Like all startups, we pivoted multiple times after but the concept of broadcasting knowledge never changed. So we decided to keep the name as a metaphor for continuous knowledge sharing.
What does your company specialise in?
SciRio specializes in telling science stories to any group of audience. This concept transcends traditional blog writing or science education for school children. We have expertise in simplifying any concept in science (especially Biology/Life sciences/Health and Medical Sciences) and conveying it in any format you intend to.
From writing lay summaries of research to devising visual methods of communicating urgent issues like the pandemic, and from writing impact reports to developing content for your podcasts and videos, we are a fully-functional communications company specialising in science communications.”
On the flip side, we are also fostering a community of science communication experts with various technical expertise like writing, art, graphic artists and video editors where they learn, network and also find opportunities to put their skills to use.
How do you manage to keep going despite the challenges? What drives you?
The idea of making science more accessible drives me to experiment with new ways of solving the problems of communicating science. Problem-solving has always been a great driver for anything I do.
Challenges, of course, stall or divert your focus but sitting back and thinking about the problem I set out to solve brings me back on track.
When I am faced with a challenge, I first go back to why I am doing what I am doing, remind myself that I can do it, reminisce why it is important for me to achieve my goals and vision, inspire myself, and then start deconstructing the challenge to solve it one step at a time.”
Who do you believe has been the biggest source of motivation in your daily life?
The vision of building a self-sustainable business while developing an ecosystem that fosters the growth of the best science communicators in India motivates me every day to keep going.
Every piece of feedback and testimonials I receive about our work also pushes me to deliver the best.
What are some of the strategies that you believe have helped you grow as a person?
Being open to criticism, learning to work as a team, and not being afraid to experiment have helped me get out of my comfort zone and grow.
Networking across different circles of expertise has definitely helped me learn more than I could have if I had done it by myself.
Embracing failure and accepting that it is okay to pivot if things don’t work has made me more humble and respectful which is a remarkable sign of growth as an entrepreneur.
In your opinion what are the keys to success?
My only qualitative measure for success is the number of lives I have made a difference in. It could be our community of researchers, our clients or their target audience.
Apart from that, quantitative measures of achieving our business KPIs do measure the rate of success. I do believe that the definition of success does keep changing as we progress in our lives and all that matters is that the shift in goalposts is significantly positive from the previous one.
What advice would you give students and young professionals who want to have a successful career?
It takes more than just knowing your science to become successful in the industry, becoming an entrepreneur or moving up the ranks in your company or lab.
Adopt new habits and skills complementary to your traditional training; interact and learn from people outside your professional networks or domain expertise. The quality of leadership and teamwork is paramount irrespective of the position you are in.
Last but not least, what are the three most important lessons you have learned in your life?
1. No. Passion does not put food on your plate unless you have a plan and your passion makes you money. Having a plan and vision gives you direction to achieve your goals. If you don’t have the steps broken down into daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly goals, you are wandering.
2. It takes more effort as a woman to make it personally, professionally, and strike a good balance between the two. You always can choose every day where on the scale you want to be.
3. Enriching yourself with diverse knowledge opens up a plethora of opportunities to learn and become a better version of yourself.
BrilliantRead is committed to bringing stories from the startup ecosystem, stories that reshape our perspective, add value to our community and be a constant source of motivation not just for our community but also for the whole ecosystem of entrepreneurs and aspiring individuals.
Note: If you have a similar story to share with our audience and would like to be featured on our online magazine, then please write to us at [email protected], we will review your story and extend an invitation to feature if it is worth publishing.
