India’s Women In Technology- My Learnings of 2017

Lakshya Sivaramakrishnan
7 min readJan 3, 2018

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Women Techmakers is very close to my heart especially because it was through their public speaking workshop that I got my personal story captured on a video which later got uploaded to the Google Developers channel. I had also personally benefited from the various meetups and International Women’s Day Summits which were instant doses of inspiration for anyone who attended it. But, I had my doubts about taking up the Women Techmakers program coordinator role primarily because it looked like leaving a 100% tech role to move into program management role having only about 30% tech. But, as they say — everyone has their calling, and this was mine. I was excited to make an impact by touching lives of Indian women in technology through this role.

I received the thrilling news of my selection amongst various diverse potential candidates. But the little devil above my shoulder still had doubts about letting go a purely technical role that inspired me. But as they say, ‘You cannot eat the cake and see it too’. I decided to take up this role and the challenges associated with it head-on. I made a promise to myself that I would stay updated and keep experimenting with the tech of my choice even though that wouldn’t be my core role. And I knew I had my partner to twist my ear if I did not keep up that promise.

I was given two short assignments to interact with my team prior to my joining and it was all fun and a great learning! The joining date finally came and I was all excited to get started. The first week was full of information overload where I learnt about the processes, teams, people and the overall functioning of the team. It seemed easy in the beginning with a lot of time to learn, research on data points about women in technology in India and above all figure out strategies and implementation roadmap for the program.

As weeks went by, there were great learnings. A few were about how to get tasks done with little or no preparation time, how to interact with people from the ecosystem who could be of potential help in the future for the program, how to not only learn a technology but also teach it to more people with conviction with a possibility of queries being thrown at you and most importantly, being on the ground to see the state of women in technology in various regions of the country and suggest suitable steps to make the situation better for Indian women technologists through the program.

I was learning something new with each passing week. My stay at the organisation seemed much more than the months I had spent. My typical week would consist of learning a technology, sometimes preparing for a talk scheduled in that week or the following one and working closely with the team in carrying out a research to understand the state of women in technology in India.

In about a month or two after joining, I was given the opportunity to go on a short trip to the US to meet the global team working on the same program as me, talk to leaders, talk to folks who are working in the space of women in technology and meet women developers and connects from whom I can learn on building and scaling the program. An eye opener for me was how India was in a far better situation that rest of the world in terms of the landscape of women in technology. A few data points were difficult to digest.

At least, we did not have a pipeline problem of not having enough women taking up STEM fields in college. We were limited to the problem of not having enough women stay after getting into the industry.

I had a collection of cities added to my travel diaries but what was the most interesting was that each city showed me a different view on the state of women in technology and taught me the variety in the needs of different sets of women in technology. I learnt to appreciate the diversity in our culture going from south to west to east to north. I learnt to acknowledge that there are often situations when women in the industry would need exceptions not reservations. One thing was clear. ‘One size did not fit all’. Here are my learnings on traveling across many Indian cities meeting developers and entrepreneurs.

A few cities saw many women in technology who come forward to be there at events and learn. There was rich cross collaboration and connects with other women in technology communities and the ecosystem was vibrant and flourishing.

In some, there are a lot of college girls and early career women who are passionate about technology and are building great solutions and products in their projects or organisations but they lack the exposure that we get to see in our side of the country. It was heartening to see the government aiding co-working spaces and startups to solve local problems with the help of technology.

In a few places, there are very few women in technology who are interested in coming forward and solving problems. It could be possible that we failed to reach out to more women who are genuinely passionate.

Some cities were little disappointing in terms of number of women turning up at events, may be because our expectations were set high in those places or even further may be we messed up our guesstimate.

One thing that stood out in cities across India were limited volumes in the number of women technologists turning up at events. In most events, we could count them on our fingers. Either they were not aware of the event happening, or they felt inferior in coming to the event or they were just not able to make time to be there at the event. Whatever it was, it needed solid work.

With these learnings and from the support of the ecosystem, I started connecting with like minded individuals who are doing the same thing as us in their own way, who are trying to make a difference in getting more Indian women into the technology industry and ensuring that they stay. I started reaching out to local champions who would be able to drive the messaging in their local communities to ensure that the buzz and the enthusiasm remains for more women to stay connected to technology. I created channels through which the local champions could share their learnings and successes with the others and me to ensure we move the needle in the space of women in technology in India. We travelled to places to deliver tech talks and advocate the importance of having women in technology forums. We did multiple pilots to encourage women to speak and attend events and reach out to new audiences who could benefit from the program.

Putting together events focussed on mentorship for women entrepreneurs and their startups, networking events for women from the industry to interact with other women technologist, conducting workshops on technical topics which would arouse some curiosity for women to modify it to solve local problems, celebrating the passions of women and giving them more visibility were a few tasks that I did this year. Each effort and each learning helped us in reaching out to more women technologists in India and creating more memberships for the program since women saw other women getting benefitted from the program.

The biggest task for the team was to put together an event with 2000+ developers in Bangalore with product experts coming to talk about their technology, great networking opportunities and a plethora of learning sessions for all the attendees. We did not want India women technologists to miss out on this event experience.

We tapped into all our sources of other women in technology communities, our members, our local champions, corporate connects, ensured that stay and transportation were affordable for all attendees only to pull off an event with about 33.1% women participation. It was a shocker and a record to see such an exponential rise from the regular 12–15% to a whopping 33.1%. The most satisfying day of my year was that where we could get all the identified local champions from the country in one place under one roof to network, learn and recharge. It was that time of the year to thank them for their work in 2017 and help them set greater goals for 2018.

My biggest lesson in putting together the mega event and working in this space for the last seven months was it’s not that we do not have women in technology in India. It’s just that we need to reach out to them, arouse that missing fire for technology in passionate women who certainly can make a difference, make exceptions for a few passionate folks in this culturally strong country and promise to deliver an experience of learning and fun which will ensure they get more friends with them next year and be instrumental in making a change to make things better for the landscape of Indian women technologists.

You could get to know more about the program here and more about it’s membership program here. Or, you could simply write to me (lakshyasi@google.com) and I can help you to the best of my ability!

P.S — The views here are my own and do not represent the views of my organisation or my program.

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Lakshya Sivaramakrishnan
Lakshya Sivaramakrishnan

Written by Lakshya Sivaramakrishnan

Learner || Listener || Leader || Engineer by Profession, Program Coordinator @Google for Women Techmakers, Connector by Passion

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