India's top women coders are ready to battle it out

New Delhi: She came. She coded. She conquered. Hailing from a remote village in Bihar, the story of Snehlata Mishra from being an unspotted talent in the world of technology to conquering a 95-day long coding battle and becoming the Champion of TechGig Geek Goddess 2018, is nothing short of inspirational.

Giving wings to the dreams of many such talented women technologists, India's biggest online technology community, TechGig recently announced the new edition of the popular coding contest, Geek Goddess 2019. This women-only coding competition was declared open for registrations on August 19 and will be accepting code submissions till October 14 So far, the edition has garnered 37,705 registrations.

For decades, there has been a lot of talk on improving the representation of women in technology, but little improvement on the ground. Several underlying biases have worked against women in the field of technology. A TechGig survey conducted among women IT professionals revealed that as many as 74% of women in technology believe that a definite bias exists against them and, hence their suggestions are often dismissed by their male colleagues.

TechGig Geek Goddess 2019 promises to be bigger and better than all of its previous editions. The kind of enthusiastic queries that we have already received from our community makes me believe that this year's edition of Geek Goddess will do justice to the expectations and help corporate India spot the brightest and most talented women IT professionals in the country. My best wishes to all the participants", said Sanjay Goyal, Business Head, TimesJobs and TechGig.

Similar to last year, American Express, a globally integrated payments company, has joined hands with TechGig in its journey to find the best women technologists in India.

"We're delighted to once again partner with TechGig Geek Goddess on this ground-breaking competition," said Ruchika Panesar, vice president of technology at American Express.

"We believe that an inclusive and diverse workforce provides a competitive advantage in the marketplace. American Express is committed to developing a talent pool that brings together unique perspectives, backgrounds and experiences, and we're proud to stand by side with TechGig to back women in technology."

The fifth edition of this popular coding contest for women technologists will witness intense competition in themes like Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Cloudify Everything, Solution Hunters Hackathon among others.