Do Not Hesitate To Work Hard And To Work When You Are Needed: Jaya Hangal

Jaya Hangal is the CTO of Amuse Labs, a private start-up based in Bangalore. Jaya along with her husband, Sudheendra Hangal, and friend, John Temple, started Amuse Labs in 2014. I wonder about the source of this spirit of entrepreneurship and ask her to tell me about those who have influenced and supported her the most to become the person she is today.

Jaya’s mother was a principal in a girls high school in Dharwad and wanted her two children to do well. She had a Master's degree, which was no ordinary feat at that time. Her father was a professor of library sciences at Karnatak University. He was well-read, held liberal views and had travelled abroad. He has been an inspiration for Jaya. She recalls when she was the only technical person at Amuse Labs and had very long working days. “My father told me not to hesitate to work hard and to work when I needed to.”

Before Amuse Labs, Jaya and her family spent over a decade in the Bay Area. After completing her Master's from Santa Clara University, she worked at Sun Microsystems from 2001 to 2010. She was part of the team that developed the core Java platform.

Jaya says she was very lucky to get that job. She was the youngest member of the team, which had very high-performing engineers. Her manager - Maxine - was very supportive. An American woman who often wore Indian dresses with matching earrings. Maxine was on top of her game and was a role model. While she was supportive, she was also shrewd and did an excellent job managing senior people. Jaya recalls how Maxine was in the office till 6pm the day before she delivered her baby. This was truly impressive!

Suggested Reading:

Design Of A Place Sparks Conversations: Vandita Purohit, Design Entrepreneur

Jaya left Sun in 2010 to learn more about web technologies. Around the same time, Jaya tells me her father fell sick. The family moved back to Dharwad to look after him. What stayed with Jaya through this emotional period was the value of memories. Looking at pictures of his children and grandchildren cheered him up and seeing him in good spirits was precious. That’s when Jaya came up with the idea of developing an app that would automatically go through pictures and generate a collage of memories which could be shared with loved ones. This led her to The Founder Institute, a startup incubator in Palo Alto, where she worked on FamilyAlly - an app designed to savour memories with loved ones.

Jaya spent a year and half working on her idea. She talks about one of her mentors -  Prashant - who helped her along her journey. He gave her a workspace in his office in Santa Clara and would spend a few minutes everyday talking to her. He would challenge her to think deeply about her ideas and she remains grateful for his time.

While working on apps was exciting, Jaya also tells me it wasn’t easy. By the end of 2012, she realized that it’s difficult to build a consumer product as it requires expertise in marketing. It was around this time, she started to build a crossword app with her husband, Sudheendra, who was doing his PhD at Stanford.

Jaya and Sudheendra built a crossword app using emails where the answers to the clues would be names of entities buried within emails. This was a fun experience, she tells me as it helped her learn a lot about building mobile apps. This was the inception of Amuse Labs. Jaya also adds that after leaving Sun in 2010, she received her first paycheck when Amuse Labs was incorporated as a company in India in 2014!

I ask Jaya what advice she would give early career women. She quickly tells me “Make use of your time before the kids come!” So for example, if you want to study more, do it soon. She also tells me, for working women, who must also take care of home and children, it is very important to have a supportive husband. She recalls Maxine - her manager at Sun - had a very supportive husband. A supportive husband is “like your backbone” she tells me.

This automatically brings me to ask her about the support she has received from her husband. Without any hesitation, she says “without his support nothing would be possible”. He has constantly reminded her that the growth has to be for the family and not just for the husband or wife. As a rule, he said it’s about the family’s growth. However she quickly cautions me and tells me something which I wasn’t quite ready for but very well understood where she was coming from. Jaya tells me “You know, you can’t always rely on support. You should learn how to manage things on your own.”

As narrated to Priyamvada Trivedi.