BANGALORE, July 18, 2014—A group of 60 middle school and high school girls will have the unique opportunity to present and pitch their own tech-savvy ideas for innovative mobile applications at the first ever WeTech Pitch Event, which is being held at the Ritz Carlton in Bangalore on July 19.

Women Enhancing Technology (WeTech) is a program helping more women and girls enter into and succeed in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) education and careers. Launched last fall at the 2013 Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Annual Meeting, this program is led by the Institute of International Education (IIE) and carried out with a consortium that includes Goldman Sachs, Google and Qualcomm Incorporated as lead collaborators.

For the past three months, 24 senior leaders from Goldman Sachs and Qualcomm have mentored female students to develop mobile apps and comprehensive business plans that will fuel economic and technological growth in India, utilizing curriculum by our partner, Technovation, which engages girls in 45 countries worldwide. With the support of their WeTech mentors, the students have invented a wide-range of creative apps that address community problems ranging from assistance with career planning and finding study buddies to organizing patient medical histories and creating doctor profiles. The students also participate in field trips and gain exposure to ICT role models and resources to lay the groundwork for the next generation of female ICT leaders.

Highlights of the WeTech event include:

  • Mr. Srivatsa Krishna, the IT Secretary of Karnataka, will deliver a luncheon keynote address discussing the Karnataka government’s emphasis on the steadily growing technology sector, and the importance of women in its development.
  • Corporate mentors will participate in a panel discussion about women and girls in ICT.
  • The top five teams of tech-savvy girls will pitch the apps that they have developed and their business plans to a panel of judges that includes Kumud Srinivasan, President of Intel India, Kavitha Santhana Lakshmi, Program Director of SAP, and Pradnya Karbhari, Software Engineer at Google.
  • An awards ceremony to announce the winners of the WeTech competition, along with a closing reception.

A large number of ICT professionals, as well as parents and teachers, will be in attendance.

“As a biology student who has never coded before, this was scary at first,” said Shreya Jain of the NPS Koramangala School, and part of the Voyagers Team with Goldman Sachs. “But then I realized this is probably going to be one of the greatest experiences of my life.”

“Goldman Sachs believes in gender diversity and takes pride in promoting and mentoring women in the field of technology,” said Krishna Sudarshan, a managing director and head of Technology at Goldman Sachs in Bangalore.

The WeTech mentoring system works to create a channel for women to support, connect and inspire each other within and across generations, borders and cultures.

“With the accelerating growth of ICT jobs globally, engaging more women is critical to both bridging the growing talent gap and providing companies with the diverse skills and perspectives necessary to thrive,” said Shawn A. Covell, vice president of government affairs, Qualcomm. “WeTech provides a positive platform for young women with a passion for engineering, and program leaders such as Dhana Kodithi, senior engineer for Qualcomm India, are excellent mentors who help these young women as they realize their full potential.”

“There is a massive gender inclusion movement going on in the technology industry all over the globe and while the numbers in India are relatively higher, NASSCOM sees a huge opportunity in preparing women techies for co-founder roles in startups of tomorrow,” Rajat Tandon, Senior Director of the NASSCOM 10,000 Start-ups Program, a WeTech Pitch Event sponsor shared. “Under the aegis of Google’s #40 Forward campaign, we are looking at impacting/enabling 1,000 techies from India by the end of this year. It’s a pleasure to see technology corporations from a broad spectrum collaborating to mentor and support these teams and we are very impressed with the quality of the products that have been created.”

WeTech is working with corporate partners to expand the opportunities for women and girls. NASSCOM has just joined WeTech, co-sponsoring the WeTech Pitch Event and supporting upcoming skills workshops and networking events for WeTech participants across India. WeTech partner Juniper Networks will offer scholarships and internships for women in India and the United States who are interested in careers in ICT. Mozilla has recently joined as a WeTech partner and is developing plans to provide workshops on open source software for college-age women in India, as well as for the teams who participated in the Technovation program. Wetech has also come on board to Mozilla’s annual campaign Maker Party, which is a global campaign to celebrate making and learning, and to promote web literacy, connected learning and digital skills.