From Illinois Tech Magazine: Intervention on Demand

An entrepreneur and investor, Ram Ramanujam (Ph.D. ENG ’81) has spent the last 31 years of his career leading a host of technology startups in Silicon Valley. Raised in the South Indian community of Gandhigram—“sort of a utopian village modeled after some of [Mahatma Gandhi’s] teachings and rural education models,” he says—Ramanujam prized education and supporting others from an early age. These values have shone through as much as ever in recent years as Ramanujam co-founded a platform and app focused on teenage mental wellness care. He says his inspiration for the project was his own daughters, whom he and his wife adopted from India in the early 1990s.

“Since both of my children were adopted, growing up for them was very challenging,” Ramanujam says. “Being girls, being adopted, they went through a lot of emotional ups and downs. I feel very strongly as an entrepreneur who has been very successful that I need to provide tools for teens and young adults. That’s why we created the Lyftly platform; we started working on that in 2017.”

Beyond his personal experiences as a parent, Ramanujam cites the mental health statistics of young adults as a motivator for launching Lyftly.

To read more, visit the Illinois Tech Magazine website.