Purba Majumder, a woman to watch

One of the best gifts to come from leaving the world of multinational banking to start a small business has been seeing the work ethic it inculcated in her daughters, says Purba Majumder, Co-Founder and President of technology and healthcare solutions company Cybervation.

The award-winning company is no longer small. Begun as a side hustle in the late 1990s, Cybervation’s fortunes have grown from earning $564,000 in revenue in 2016 to $17.5 million in 2023. Headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, it also has offices in Calcutta, India, where Purba grew up.

Purba, who gave up her nine-year position as Vice President of multinational banking giant JPMorgan Chase in 2010 to focus on Cybervation, is proudest of her two daughters. Ellora, 25, and Ishika, 22, grew up with the business. It’s a family affair – Purba’s husband, robotics engineer Indranil Majumder, serves as Chief Operating Officer.

A WPO member since 2022, Purba was included on the list of WPO Women2Watch in 2023 and made the list again this year.

The Women2Watch list features 50 WPO members whose businesses are the fastest growing worldwide, and who are experiencing significant revenue growth – with a positive impact on the global economy and the communities they work in.

“I joined WPO in January 2022 because I was looking for peer support when the business was growing so rapidly,” says Purba. “It’s been a great source of support at a time when I really needed it. I was looking for ideas and to meet with people who had experience of the kind of business growth I was experiencing.”

In 2023, Purba joined the WPO’s Platinum III Chapter, for women whose businesses gross over $10 million annually.

“Betty Hines [WPO Platinum III Chapter Chair] is one of our best cheerleaders,” she says. “She’s really invested in the success of the business owners in the group.”

Being a member of the Platinum III Chapter has been humbling, says Purba. “These women have all had such amazing business success. It’s wonderful to see what inspired them, what motivated them and what their strategies are. We can talk about our challenges and someone in the group might have experience or connections that can help.”

Along with running Cybervation, Purba established CoolTechGirls, a non-profit organization that aims to educate, empower and provide technology training to young girls.

She started the organization after discovering that teenage girls, including one of her daughters, often viewed computing and computer science as off-puttingly “nerdy” and that not having role models in the sector meant they could not envision themselves in it.

Purba is a perfect role model. She embraced computer science after graduating from The University of Toledo, Ohio, with a Master’s degree in Geography and City Planning. Casting about for a job, she noticed that there was demand for software programmers, so she signed up for a two-year qualification course while working in Columbus. She got her first programming job before graduating.

Many years later, after serving as a Vice President at JPMorgan Chase for nine years, Purba decided to put her energy into Cybervation and fulfill her dream of helping small businesses that need software developed. As the mother of two girls, she also wanted more flexibility in her life.

Purba has used many of the skills she acquired as a software developer and as a Vice President of JPMorgan Chase in running Cybervation. She says the most important of these are communication and presentation skills, and operational skills such as how to build business processes.

Because software development is often a long process, Cybervation has diversified into talent solutions in healthcare, technology and administration.

The company has also built a product it sells to the restaurant industry – BistroUX, a software solution that enables online ordering, gifting, coupons and a loyalty program to the hospitality industry. This, says Purba, was a boon during the Covid-19 pandemic, when online ordering took off.

Since 2022, when she joined WPO, Purba has found a community of successful businesswomen with whom she can share her triumphs and trials. She is also enormously grateful for the exposure she has received through the organization, from being invited to speak on podcasts to Cybervation being listed as one of WPO’s 50 fastest-growing, women-owned businesses.

“It’s wonderful,” she says.