[100 Emerging Women Leaders] How Tarusha Mittal stormed into the blockchain club

The entrepreneur bug bit Tarusha Mittal very early. She co-founded several technology businesses such as Cloudrino, a cloud management and infrastructure platform, and Soul Machine Innovations, an artificial intelligence-powered customer and brand management software.

For a young woman who had absolutely no background in technology, she has come a long way. Tarusha, who has been in the technology space for the past decade, is today one of the smartest minds in blockchain.

The technology entrepreneur’s curiosity in blockchain and crypto was piqued during her stint as a co-founder of the previous ventures, with data center and cloud business on the back.

“In 2013, we were already putting together crypto mining rigs, and since we had stopped scaling Cloudrino, we launched an Ethereum exchange called ethx.co. It was one of the first Ethereum exchanges in India and we also tried to go global, she says.

However, in 2018 the Reserve Bank of India, in an almost overnight move, banned Indian banks from supporting crypto transactions, effectively signaling the start of the bearish ‘cryptointernet’ where blockchain and crypto startups found it difficult to move forward.

The setback gave Tarusha two choices – either move operations abroad or shut down. The former was challenging as the start-up did not have enough funds to scale up. But when the founders began to shut down ethx.co, they quickly turned to another opportunity to build a fintech app that recorded transactions on the blockchain.

This led to the conceptualization of Oropocket, a startup that allows users to diversify their portfolios beyond traditional assets by investing in multiple digital assets such as digital gold and silver. It also generates revenue from two other products, OpenDefi and UniFarm, which come under the larger OroPocket umbrella.

“I am a self-taught technician. I have learned everything on the fly and I give myself a lot of credit for this. Many people used to ask me if this was my husband’s or my father’s business. I brush off all such biases and let my actions speak for itself,” says Tarusha, who has been part of several accelerator programs worldwide and has been felicitated by the Indian government under the Department of Science and Technology.

Born and raised in Lucknow, Tarusha has always had a passion for building something of her own. Before the technology business, she started a lifestyle magazine MishMash back in 2009.

Today, the award-winning technician guides women entrepreneurs in starting and scaling their businesses without compromising their mental health.

What is Tarusha’s advice to women in leadership? “Don’t spend your energy on small things; be a gangster! You can choose two types of regret – regret for failing or regret for not doing anything at all and the “what if” aspect of it. Choose wisely.”