Farm Labourer to CEO of a Billion Dollar Firm: Jyothi Reddy’s Incredible Journey

Jyothi Reddy’s story is one that exemplifies what fighting spirit and a hunger to succeed can get you. Sent to an orphanage in hopes of a better life and married off at 16, she didn’t let any adversity come in the way of her will to prosper and educate herself.

One among five children of a daily wage labourer, her father sent Jyothi and her sister to an orphanage when she was 10. She spent five years in the orphanage, after which she was married to a farmer even before she could complete class 10.

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By the time she was 18, she had started working as a farm labourer and become a mother to two daughters. 

“I would dream of having more than enough food to feed my children. I did not want to give them the life I was leading,” she told YourStory.

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Always looking for an opportunity to provide a better life for her daughters, she obtained a BA degree from an open university and started teaching other farmers, soon becoming a government teacher. 

Wanting to give a much better life to her kids, she decided to move to the US with the help of a cousin. To that end, she worked extra jobs and enrolled in a computer program and completed her MA.

When she moved to the US, she worked as a babysitter, sales girl, gas station attendant and in motels before eventually working as a software recruiter.

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She saved enough for her own venture and started Key Software Solutions in 2021, which is a billion dollar company today.

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Edited by Padmashree Pande.