ABI plans more local chapters in India to galvanize women in tech

Soma Tah

Witnessing a spurt in the number of women technologists and entrepreneurs across different cities in India, Anita Borg Institute (ABI) has recently started rolling out more local chapters in India to reach out to more women technologists across India.

ABI is a non-profit organization which connects women technologists around the world and its flagship Grace Hopper conference in India is quite successful.

To scale the initiative further, ABI now looks forward to reaching out to more women technologists across India through initiating more and more local chapters. These city chapters are called ABI.Local, which connects local communities of women technologists to get connected, find new opportunities related to career or entrepreneurship.

ABI.Local communities are already active in many parts of the world including Silicon Valley, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, London, Amsterdam and Tokyo. Now Delhi-NCR region, Pune and Hyderabad are the recent additions to this growing list of ABI.Local communites.

The idea is to connect local women technologists through meetups, and help them to expand their networks, exchange stories, get new insights on different areas of work, as well as to gain new perspective on how to navigate through challenging situations.

Nandini De, ABI.Pune Community Leader highlights the need and benefits aptly, “A successful career today, requires not just knowledge, focus and hard work but also continuous learning, mentors and the right connections. A forum like ABI.Pune will provide a great platform for women in STEM  at Pune to connect, learn from each other and grow.”

ABI also organizes codeathons and GHC/1s, a one-day technical conference that brings women technologists at all levels together, along with industry leading companies, to help them explore build a rewarding career in technology. The attendees get to know more about the recent technology trends as well as useful tips from veterans in the field.

“It is beneficial to women in tech in my region since it provides them a local platform (without the hassle of travel etc) to network and have greater influence in driving specific programs that can help them and their peer group. For example, there is a good percentage of women in Analytics (several of them are working at large banks) who may benefit from sharing technology and best practices with each other,” said Aparna Gupta ABI.Delhi-NCR Community Leader and MD, FirstRain, India.

The communities also help women to get the much-needed mentoring support from the ones who have proved their mettle in their respective domains.

“There is a lot of talent in the local community that has the potential to sustain the exchange of knowledge in the community and mentor young girls aspiring for a technology role,” said Nivedita Aggarwal - Director, Information Services at CA Technologies from ABI.Hyderabad.

Geetha Kannan, MD, The Anita Borg Institute India tells about the initiative in detail and plans to scale it up further.

What made you think of creating local chapters?

There is a growing number of women technologists across several cities in the world. ABI is keen to inspire, connect and guide these women and support them in growing their careers in technology through the presence of ABI.Local chapters across the globe. ABI.Local chapters help women in technology get connected, find new opportunities and meet their career goals.

Does ABI have any plan to take it to other cities in India? Which cities are likely to be covered in the next phase?

In the next year we are planning to launch ABI.Bangalore. We currently do have a very large community of women in technology in Bangalore that volunteers and supports end-to-end planning and implementation of the Grace Hopper Celebration India (GHCI) conference. A (dot) local in the city will help to include and engage more women. We are also looking at launching another ABI.Local chapter in some other city in the South of India.

Do you collaborate with corporates and govt. for this? If yes, how?

The ABI.Local Program is focused on connecting every important stakeholder of the technology industry, including corporates and governments. So far we have seen participation from corporates as sponsors, speakers and encouraging their women to be a part of the local chapters in Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad and Pune. We have also seen participation from the government with respect to eminent speakers coming and inspiring technical women during the launch and conferences.

What kind of response are you getting from the women in these three cities?

The response so far has been great. In Pune we had 175 women attend the launch networking reception in July and in Hyderabad there were 300 women at the launch in August. ABI.Delhi organized the GHC/1 Delhi-NCR, a one-day technical conference focusing on the career, research and entrepreneur interests of women in technology that was attended by 485 women in technology and had 20 prestigious speakers from across the industry, academia and the entrepreneur ecosystem.