India’s Largest Coding Arena for Women, TechGig Geek Goddess Launches its Fourth Edition with American Express

India’s biggest coding arena for women, TechGig Geek Goddess, launched its fourth edition in association with American Express, a globally integrated payments company. Goldman Sachs, a leading global investment bank and active investor in India, is the title sponsor for the event. Geek Goddess is managed by the team TechGig, which holds Guinness World Record for hosting the world’s largest online programming contest, Code Gladiators. The grand finale of Geek Goddess will be held on November 23 followed by Women Disruptors Conference on November 24 in Bengaluru.

For IT employers, diversity is a big concern. The number of women professionals typically dwindles from bottom to top of the workforce at most organisations, leaving the sector with just a handful of women leaders and mentors.

It is here that women-oriented technology initiatives like TechGig Geek Goddess emerge as a possible solution to tackle the gender diversity challenge. TechGig Geek Goddess has been instrumental in bringing women technologists to the forefront and presenting a latent talent pool to IT employers. This women-only code competition invites women coders to share their ideas and product solutions in different programming languages and ropes in IT industry leaders to mentor these coders.

Announcing the new season, Ramathreya Krishnamurthi, Business Head, TimesJobs & TechGig said, “The brilliance of women technologists remains unsung in many companies. TechGig Geek Goddess is a unique opportunity for women technologists where they can showcase their genius without facing any bias. I invite women coders from all walks of life to join in as we put up this mega show to celebrate talented women technologists with our presenting partner American Express”.

Commenting on the association with TechGig Geek Goddess Ruchika Panesar, Vice President, Global Services Group and Head of Technology, American Express India, said, “In the age of continuous disruption in the payments ecosystem, technology is the key differentiator. We, at American Express, have been on a journey of building technology and engineering capabilities across the globe and great technology talent is critical to our business.

As we continue to grow our team in India, we aspire to be the ‘Best place to work for engineers’ in the country. As a Woman in technology, I am personally excited by the platform TechGig Geek Goddess provides us to take this vision further and bring talented “Women who code” and “Women Technologist” to the organisation.”

Gunjan Samtani, Co-head of the Goldman Sachs in Bengaluru, said, “To achieve and maintain our country’s engineering excellence, we must have the most talented workforce.  At Goldman Sachs, where technology is a key component driving our firm’s growth, we believe a talented workforce comes from a deliberate and committed focus on diversity that allows us to bring the best ideas and services to our clients. Our firm is proud to be associated with this significant initiative that encourages women to embrace engineering and further strengthens the national talent pool.” 

The latest edition of TechGig Geek Goddess also has CGI as the platinum partner, Expedia group as the diamond partner, ABB as the Internet of Things theme partner and Mphasis as the base partner.

The last edition of TechGig Geek Goddess had seen a massive participation of 49,000 coders. New themes like UI, Data Science & IoT were intentionally introduced in last season to let the programmers experiment vigorously in technology environments. With this legacy, the fourth edition of TechGig Geek Goddess 2018 is poised to be bigger, bolder and better.