How These Women Entrepreneurs are Fighting Prejudice in Tech Sector Possible reasons behind the lack of diversity can be company culture, gaps in the pay packages and poor visibility in crucial meetings
By Nidhi Singh
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Much has been talked about the lack of diversity in the tech sector. The fact that the industry is still dominated by men is a big barrier to the success for women.
The possible reasons can be company culture, gaps in the pay packages and less visibility in crucial meetings and lack of women's appreciation for ideation.
This scenario is not encouraging for aspiring women entrepreneurs, who are looking to build a career in the tech sector.
But the tech industry has a few powerful role models who are working hard to change the grim reality. These women entrepreneurs are shattering the stereotype to end the fears that keep women away from the tech industry.
Upasana Taku
MobiKwik's Co-founder and Director Upasana Taku's mission was to simplify payment processes for Indian merchants/retailers in the fintech space. Her focus was on taking the MobiKwik Wallet to millions of retailers, bank partnerships, and talent acquisitions. She comes with a strong payments background as a senior product manager with PayPal (an eBay company) in Silicon Valley and prior to that she was with HSBC at San Diego. She holds a Bachelors degree in Engineering from NIT Jalandhar and is a Masters in Management Science from Stanford University.
Neeru Sharma
Neeru Sharma joined Infibeam Incorporation Limited as its Co- founder and director in July 2009. Ahmedabad-based e-commerce marketplace Infibeam was founded in 2007 by Vishal Mehta along with Sachin Dalal, Neeru Sharma, Ajay Chandra and Vijay Subramanian. Neeru is a bachelors in Computer Science from MDU (Maharshi Dayanand University) and has an MBA degree from Carnegie Mellon University. Before Infibeam, she has worked in with technology giants like TCS, Alcatel and Amazon for six years.
Rohini Chakravarthy
Rohini Chakravarthy is the Co-founder and CEO of Inksedge, a modern event communication company focused on the India market that she incubated in 2014 while at New Enterprise Associates (NEA).
As a partner at NEA, a leading venture capital firm, she focused on software, systems and technology investments, sat on 13 boards and helped several companies grow till she exited from all.
Prior to NEA, she also led a team of professionals within Cisco Corporate BD to make strategy, identify prospects and execute investment, acquisition and partnership transactions in the wireless area. Rohini studied electrical engineering at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras and post that did her MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management in Cambridge.
Divya Jain
Divya Jain is a software engineer and entrepreneur. She was the Co-founder and Chief Architect of dloop Inc., a company that is focused on providing advanced predictive analytics for Big Data in the cloud. Loop was acquired by Box in 2013.
Headquartered in California, Box helps businesses of all sizes in every industry securely access and manage their critical information. At Box, she worked on Machine Learning technology, Data Classification, and Content Analysis. Divya holds a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Aligarh University and a Master's degree in Computer Sciences from San Jose State University. Prior to dLoop, she worked for Sun Microsystems in 2003 and a start-up called Kazeon Systems in 2005.
