The team has five student-members, four of them at Jodhpur and the fifth one at Bangalore- at a distance of 2000 km. All the work of the website was divided between all the members.
Priya and Asmita took charge of library research. Asmita had some scriptures in Hindi and Priya helped her in translating it. Sayani and Sumaiya did an intense research on Internet and sieved all the content they could gather. Aakansha worked with Mr. Ashok Sengupta on the technical aspect of the website. Ms. Ratna Pathak helped in editing all the content.
The work on this website began way back in August 2008. Ayurveda is an Ancient Indian System of Medicine, which was almost dead for centuries. Now, efforts are being made to retrieve it. It was not so easy to collect content for this project, as most of the work was available in Sanskrit. Many people do not know Sanskrit these days. So, translating the text was a big challenge. Many times, we were not sure of our translation. We had to take help of some people who knew the language.
The team had an interview with a doctor from Ayurveda University, Jodhpur. This interview threw light on many principles of Ayurveda and the team got a direction to work.
Almost all the collaborated work was shared through emails. Instant messaging, phone calls, and voice chat also helped in sharing the ideas. File transfers were mainly done through emails.
Team Ayurveda is a diverse team in a true sense. The first diversity is the diversity of location. The team members were 2000 kilometers apart. Two members are from the Southern part of India- Bangalore, and five members are from the Northwestern part of India- Jodhpur. Both the places have diverse geographical conditions. Bangalore is the city of gardens, whereas Jodhpur is situated on the edge of Thar- the Great Indian Desert.
The climatic condition at Bangalore is favorable for fauna. Thus, a variety of plants grow there. Jodhpur, being in the desert zone, is populated with xerophytes. The team researched on the medicinal plants found in both climatic conditions.
Second diversity of the team is technological know-how. The members at Jodhpur are not much technologically sound, whereas Bangalore, being a hi-tech city, provided technically sound members. The members at Jodhpur are good in research and the members at Bangalore complimented them with technical support.
The third diversity is availability of resources. Jodhpur has an Ayurveda University. So, much resources are available here. Bangalore is comparatively modern city; more sound in technology than in ancient knowledge.