Tech startups accelerate hiring of women

According to Nasscom data, women make up 35% of India’s tech workforce, a number that companies are working towards increasing

New-age companies have been on the move to becoming more inclusive and diverse. The focus of this shift is not just on hiring more women in tech and product roles, but also on working towards building a more equitable and inclusive culture to ensure retention of female talent.

According to Nasscom’s Diversity and Inclusion Summit data, (Nasscom D&I data) women make up 35 per cent of the total industry workforce. Moreover, there are 10 per cent female co-founders in Indian tech startups and FY2020 has observed a growing share of women in net new hires (44 per cent).

Tech industry companies like Wakefit. Urban Company, EnKash, Mpower Financing and Simplilearn have come up with initiatives to boost diversity numbers.

Urban company, in May, set up a task force in order to address representation, sensitisation and community building. “Our business represents a diverse marketplace and hence, we are able to attract diverse talent. Our focus is more on the retention part – through driving success stories of women leaders in tech and product roles, giving access to role models, and building structured career development plans for female talent,” Urban Company’s Senior VP of people success, Neha Mathur told ET.

At Bengaluru-based Wakefit, a quarter of the tech team are women and the company is looking to increase that number to a half. Company director Chaitanya Ramalingegowda told the publication that company leaders have been focusing on a 50-50 ratio while sourcing candidates. This is an effort to hire more women technologists.

Simplilearn CEO Krishna Kumar, talking about flexibility and access to leadership, said that the company has allowed employees to work remotely, a move that has greatly helped the female employees. “We are also thinking of reworking our promotions policy to ensure that deserving women employees are fast-tracked to leadership levels,” the report quoted Kumar as saying.

EnKash, a Mumbai-based startup, in May introduced a programme which aimed at bringing women technologists on career breaks back into the workforce with roles like quality assurance, UX/UI testing, among others. These women will then be hired full-time in tech and product roles with flexible timings, Naveen Bindal, the startup's co-founder, told the publication.