Everything in class was meant to be written in pencil, so it could be corrected. Twelve-year old Kaviya once saw a government officer being honoured and celebrated at her school. Though he stood just a few feet from her, the amount of respect he received made him seem almost unreachable. It had happened to Kaviya as if a dream fell into her lap. From that day until she was sixteen, she scribbled "Kaviya IAS" in the date box of every single page of her notebook. She pressed each letter so deep that even it was rubbed away, you could trace the ghost of the words. But isn’t everything written in pencil meant to be corrected?
Born in a small town of Tamil Nadu, Kaviya grew up seeing her mom and dad live with very little access to technology. In Tirupur, known for its textile mills, they operated a small textile unit of their own inside a single room space. “I saw my dad make invoices by hand. There was always a need for more paper.” By some strange luck, Kaviya was always among the top five in her class though her classmates would swear she studied only the night before exams. Good grades get you easily seen as a future doctor or engineer, and so it was with her. “I tried for a government medical seat, since we could not afford a private one, but didn’t make it.”
Whatever Kaviya came from, she’d not like to be reduced by any of it. When she was 12, she stuffed a two-day old abandoned puppy inside her bag, despite knowing that if her family got to know about it, she would have no home to go back to. But Kaviya got to do what she got to do. “I used my dad’s discarded cardboard boxes to build a small house. Everyone seemed passively upset, so I decided I’ll let the pup grow a little and then give it away.” It was first of many times where you’d rather see her as a rebel and not know any of the backstory that explains her.
Kaviya made good friends in her first year at an all-girls engineering college. Being decent at studies, she’d usually clear all her exams without trouble. This only became history when a class of 60 students seemed to have passed in engineering graphics subject except her. She was made to believe that because of her, the batch could no longer have a 100% pass rate. The news had left the school and had reached her home. Ashamed of the absolute unknown, she was told to sit for a retest to clear her paper. It so happened one day, the news that her original answer sheets had been misplaced by the staff came as a godsend. “I would forever remember how a single misplaced paper erased my entire identity.” Since then, she never raced to score well in her next semesters. “My two friends and I often skipped lectures to find ways to grow outside classrooms. I taught maths and basic manners to young girls in a nearby village. We also took part in debates and competitions across colleges. In one intra-college event, we built a blockchain project, won first prize, and gave back the ₹10,000 prize money to support the growth of our entrepreneurship cell.”
Having seen her parents stretch every rupee, it was only natural that Kaviya started working. Hired as a python developer intern, she got pulled into ERPNext pretty early on. “Since we were operating from the textile heart, the company wanted an app that tracked daily textile work progress. I worked independently on it and after 1 year the project went live.” She treated the tiniest annoyances in ERPNext as hers to fix. “It was early covid times, I got a stray telegram message asking for some help. It was a small query which I was able to fix and merge. My colleague cut a cake the next morning to celebrate my first contribution to open source ever.” Kaviya said smiling ear to ear. At some point, she realised she could use her free will to help more people like this. “As long as my mondays looked less daunting, I was down to take a bet on freelancing.“ She put down her papers and took a break of almost 12 months to see how far freelancing could take her. “It did me wonders. I’ve made 30+ code contributions. I wouldn’t have imagined myself in the place of solving so many real queries.”
By some happenstance, Kaviya had been sporty on LinkedIn too. “Frappe HR was released around December 2023. This is when I started learning the product. Since there wasn’t much documentation, I took notes while learning the product on my own. I thought I’d share these with others who might be trying to learn Frappe HR too. I started posting them on LinkedIn. There was some visible engagement, which wasn’t really the goal. I just kept putting out more posts, to which my follower base grew super fast. ” Kaviya fancies Frappe so much so that she writes everything that ranges from code to its democratic work culture on her LinkedIn account.
It progressively got better until she was reached out for a Technical lead position based on her contribution history. This was also the first time when she had a chance to move out of her home town and go to a different city, which she had never been allowed before. “I lived independently, and travelled alone. I got wiser with my own finances.” It was a startup, so she was made to wear many hats like sales, marketing, coding, even finance at times. From some distance, you’d say she got a fair chance to learn as much as she possibly could. But when you’re under a suffocating math of having to spread thin every single day for more than 2 years, there is no space left to do what you love. Weighing her choices, she put down all the hats. “I locked myself for 30 days in a room. I wrote 4 diaries which might not make any sense. People were trying to reach out to me from Frappe forum and linkedin.” The 31st day was about her returning to freelancing with a twist.
“My appa’s textile printing unit had a small abandoned dusty room above it. I’ve put some windows panes, a tube lights and a small desk and chair inside that room to create a co-working space. One of my ex-colleagues and I decided to take projects together and become full-time freelancers. Me being the CEO and him the CTO, we worked on every project with the same intent. Very soon, we ran out of capacity, but we still wanted to solve more queries and contribute to open source. Now, two years later, we’re a team of 8 people working remotely since I want to have democracy at my workplace. We use all Frappe apps in our work everyday. I want to create many micro SaaS and create more jobs. I am hiring more women in my team because the ratio is not balanced and would love to grow into a mini Frappe in some years from now.” She owes a lot of her vision and inspiration to Rushabh. “I once nervously texted him when I was just starting out. He told me ‘every day is new in the entrepreneurial journey’. I’ve held close onto that line ever since.”
Even in the middle of all this, she kept documenting her lessons from Frappe on her socials. It was now her hobby to selflessly hand down what she knew with others. “I love going to Frappeverse and see the same faces everytime. I have always visited with a lot of intent to catchup with Rushabh and team. But never in my dreams had i imagined sharing the stage and being awarded as Best Evangelist. The memory is etched in me forever.” Having found her business partner, which is now to-be her life partner, Kaviya’s life has come full-circle with Frappe being the center of everything, as she’d like to admit again and again. Kaviya being the first woman to ever graduate in her family and have a business is the start of many more stories she hopes will grow through her and beyond her.
