Times Techies conducted its first ever case competition in the lead up to the Times Techies Empower event. The competition was open only to women students of IIT Madras (Indian Institute of Technology Madras) on the problem statement: Technology solutions to make Indian workplaces more diverse.
This problem statement stems from the real-world issue of low female labour force participation rate in India, which is just over 30%, compared to more than 50% globally.
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With prizes worth Rs 75,000 at stake, the competition drew an enormous response from the students, with over 60 teams registering. The students of IIT Madras, armed with their own perspectives on the challenges that women face at various stages of their education and career, came up with amazing solutions to address the issue.
The teams had to submit a one-page document outlining their ideas, which were evaluated by the Times Techies team. The top 10 teams from the competition were rewarded on stage, and the top 5 teams got to present their ideas to the jury panel of Uma Ratnam Krishnan, Ashwini Asokan and Nandita DasGupta.
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The winning team, SheLeads, which included Indukuri Anoushka and Yashita Jain, actively engaged the audience in their presentation. They proposed one techbased solution each to address three important issues: equal education opportunities for all girls, equal work opportunities for all women, and fair and transparent promotions of women. When jury members asked how their ideas could be funded, the team explained that the education aspect could be crowd-funded, while the other two ideas could be for-profit business ventures and therefore, potential startup ideas.
The runners-up, team MetamorpHERs, which included Keerthana C and Krithika Padmanabhan, presented interesting ideas on creating a blockchain-based solution to incentivise multiple stakeholders in the career journey of a woman, and topped it off with very powerful quotes like “Your girl is not a roti maker but a bread winner”.
One of the ideas from third-placed team Skaterz was to create a smartphone app and the required ecosystem to help working mothers find child and home care support at affordable prices.
The event concluded with the jury members presenting awards to the top 10 teams. Source: TOI
