National : Who would have known Hathras a while ago? Today, this sleepy city from west Uttar Pradesh, is the proud home of India’s top woman coder. Yes, Hathras-based, IIIT-Una student Muskan Agrawal beat 69Thousand women coders to claim the title of ‘Top woman coder’ and Rs 1.5 Lakh prize at TechGig Geek Goddess 2022. Her coding expertise helped her win India’s biggest coding competition and make her mark in the coding history.
Geek Goddess is an annual coding competition for women, instituted by India’s biggest technology community – TechGig. It brings talented women engineers and technology companies together to celebrate their coding genius and innovations at a national level.
The 8th edition kicked off on August 23 this year and invited women programmers to share unique coding submissions in 54 coding languages for problems statements. Top five programming languages for submitting codes were Python3, CPP14, Java8, Java and C. Similar to the last year, most participants belonged to Hyderabad, Pune and Bengaluru.
TechGig Geek Goddess celebrated its 8th edition this year with 69Thousand registrations and 7 corporate partners. This year’s edition was presented by American Express India, for the fifth successive year. Other corporate partners included Synchrony, Goldman Sachs, EY GDS, Persistent, Wipro and Logitech.
From all the code submissions, the complete and valid ones underwent a crucial scrutiny. The top 500+ participants made it to the final round. This round was held virtually on November 19 where finalists coded non-stop for 4 hours to submit their winning programming solutions. Simultaneously, Geek Goddess participants attended a virtual career fair where participating companies American Express India, Synchrony, Wipro, Persistent and Goldman Sachs recruited for open tech positions.
Geek Goddess 2022 concluded with its flagship TechGig’s Women Disruptors’ Virtual Conference on November 23. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Union Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology and Union Minister of State for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, presided over the event as its chief guest and delivered the special address. Speaking here, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, lauded the efforts of all 69Thousand participants. “Technology can be a great enabler and a great change agent for our society,” he said. Reiterating the vision of Digital India launched in 2015, Rajeev Chandrasekhar added that technology can help bring transformational changes in jobs, skill and entrepreneurship among other aspects. “As envisioned in Digital India, technology can empower young people to build platforms, devices and products that could be consumed globally. This invested interest in technology helped India brave the COVID-19 crisis better than any other country. This focus on technical superiority will lead India to become the master of upcoming decade, indeed it will be India’s techade”
This year’s conference was attended by women business and technology leaders from Deloitte, Cognizant, Intel, Wipro, Synchrony, Goldman Sachs, EY GDS, HCL Technologies, Thoughtworks and American Express India. The event hosted a series of panel discussions and fireside chats where these leaders decoded the nuances of tech careers for women software engineers. Overall, the event garnered more than 35 Million impressions on the internet with about 5 Thousand+ mentions for its hashtag #SheTheInnovator.
Congratulating the winners of Geek Goddess 2022, Sanjay Goyal Business Head, TechGig said, “Geek Goddess is our flagship event to promote the participation of women engineers at tech workplaces. It is an annual celebration of diversity at tech workplaces and also a prominent reminder of how we need to be on the course to make technology a 50:50 playing field for all engineers. Over these eight editions, it has helped 3.3 Lakh women engineers polish their tech skills, realize their coding potential and connect with over 50+ progressive technology companies.”
“Whether coding with advanced programming languages, or applying the latest tech to solve real-world problems, women technologists are continuously making their mark,” said Ruchika Panesar, VP and head of technology for American Express in India and APAC. “American Express proudly backs women in tech and we congratulate all the Geek Goddess competitors for raising the bar once again.”
