A native of Kolkata, India, Srijita Ghosh moved to Oklahoma in 2015 to attend East Central University on a tennis scholarship. But her time at ECU quickly took a challenging turn.
Despite winning a national title, the ECU tennis team was suspended after Ghosh’s first year, which caused her to lose her scholarship. Fearing her time at the university would end, Ghosh recognized that this change offered an important opportunity for her.
“As an athlete, I didn’t have time to focus on anything but sports,” said Ghosh. “Although it was difficult, no longer playing tennis allowed me explore my other passions.”
While taking a course in intro to entrepreneurship, she was faced with the task of finding a problem—and a way to solve it. One of her first ideas was to create a product to help people suffering from anxiety disorder, because she noticed some of her closest friends dealing with anxiety. Ghosh developed StoPanic, a device meant to help anxiety patients overcome panic attacks. The technology is placed behind the ear like a hearing aid, but smaller. When the device detects a certain heart rate, it begins to play therapeutic music to help the patient calm down.
StoPanic placed first runner-up in the ECU’s annual Tiger Tank competition and second in the small business division competition at Love’s Entrepreneur’s Cup, a statewide collegiate business plan competition. Ghosh plans to use her $10,000 winnings to create a prototype and pursue patent rights. It will take about a year before the product hits the local market. In the meantime, she is also working on a bath and body boutique with her mother called Elixir. The India-based company features all-natural, organic handmade soap bars.
Aside from her business ventures, Ghosh is an entrepreneurship specialist for Ada Jobs Foundation where she works to further economic prosperity in the Ada area. She often credits ECU’s business and entrepreneurship programs for helping her pursue her career goals.
“What makes ECU’s programs so special are the people, especially my former professors,” said Ghosh. “They always trusted and motivated me to compete in business competitions and excel academically, which gave me tremendous confidence.”