NASSCOM Centre of Excellence – IoT & AI
organized the webinar ‘Looking at the Pandemic through a Gender lens – How to
create a community and drive inclusion’ that saw women entrepreneurs and
leaders talked about the challenges in managing work-life balance, and how
those have got aggravated post COVID. A community-building initiative of
NASSCOM CoE and moderated by Namrata Kohli (senior journalist, author, and
commentator), the webinar witnessed women panelists discuss how women can
encourage each other, how it is important for the AI-ML developers to work on
technologies or apps that can eliminate gender disparities, among other topics.
Women participation in the IT workforce is 34% in India which is highest
among all non-agricultural sectors in the country after e-commerce (67.7%) and
retail (52%), according to NASSCOM 2018; Raghuram et al 2017. The irony is that
over 51% of entry-level recruits are women, over 25% of women are in managerial
positions but less than 1% are in top-level/C-Suite. More women are in software
testing jobs (34:66 as men-women ratio) which are less sought after than
hardcore programming roles (men-women ration as 75:25). Talking on the theme
and challenges being faced during Covid, Kanchan Bhonde, Product
Strategy Head, Makers Lab, Tech Mahindra, said, “The frustration is
the ever-increasing commitments in both office and home work; creating a
professional environment in the ambience of home; keeping kids engaged; no
domestic help, etc. Looking forward one can say that pandemic is here to stay,
so the need is to build alternative ecosystems; work and life beyond work need
to be balanced. The value created for the organization is more important than
time spent, so add value and articulate it.”
Sq Ldr Prerana Chaturvedi, CEO, Evolet, delved on
the challenges being faced by the women and the questions being raised on their
effectiveness. She said, “Business does not know who is running it or money
does not know who is using it; and the guy who is using that money to empower
you to do the business does not look at a man or women, he looks at the
capabilities to deliver and the capabilities to be able to run that through.
They are looking at pure skill sets and when it comes to skill sets, women have
an inherent advantage as they connect easily, they have a sixth sense to take right
decisions that are backed by education and experience.”
On how women are coping with changes brought in by the COVID on the
personal front and gender bias on the tech front, Lubna Yusuf, Author,
Founder La Legal, CEO FishEyeBox, Mentor
of Change AIM Niti Aayog, said, “The first programmer was a woman 205
years ago, we are always the creator. By birth, we have this responsibility to
keep everything together and especially in times as challenging as a pandemic.
In the current Covid situation, women are learning, unlearning, and relearning
a lot of things. There are issues and it can be interpreted positively; every
struggle defines us. When we talk of gender bias then we have to understand why
this bias is created. Women are objectified in the virtual world. The
responsibility is with the AI developers to understand that it should be used
for social development and not to misuse it.”
Talking on the technologies that are going to help India post
COVID, Dr Anupama Mallik, CEO/MD of Vizara Technologies Pvt Ltd that
created detailed 3D digital models of Indian heritage sites, said, “Today
nobody is going to these heritage places and our solutions are making apps to
go on web and experience it. We recently completed digitizing five Indian sites
— Taj Mahal in Agra, Kashi Vishwanath temple, Konark Sun Temple in Odisha, Rani
Ki Vav (stepwell) in Gujarat and the ruins of Hampi in Karnataka. These models
can be produced in the size as required. You miss energy coming from different
people in the physical office.”
On the current Chinese ban on apps and how it is going to help Indian
companies, Aarti Dhiman, Chief Tech Junkie & Evangelist, Gesture
Research International Ltd, said, “Tech with a purpose can sell. In
the current crisis we are about social distancing and to help the cause we have
touchless technology. We have solutions for healthcare in Gesture Controlled
Medical Imaging System. A doctor on an operation table cannot touch the
patient, in the current scenario, all medical imaging are hanging in the
operation theatre. We are providing all medical imagings on screen and a doctor
can look at the images through hand gesture by standing far from the screen.”
On which vertical will see an increase in adoption of IoT and AI in
post-Covid Indian market, Ruchi Tushir, Director – Data, Artificial
Intelligence (AI) & IoT Business Group, Microsoft, said, “There
are opportunities that have come out. The spread of automation happened across
sectors from CEO boardrooms to kitchens, from gyms to the Public Sector.
Banking and insurance saw a complete halt and automation helped them to service
their customers where virtual agents took over human agents to interact with
the customers. In Healthcare we were understanding cases that are relevant in
the Covid scenario, and leveraging data sets to predict what is going to
happen, etc. The way automation came to this country is commendable.”
Throwing light on the role
of AI-ML and privacy issues of the citizens, Bhonde said, “Government has been
trying to come up with ways of digitizing, a lot of data is generated in India;
now we have to make it available to make AI models work properly. Instead of
looking at data availability as a barrier we have to look at ways to generate
the data for India
and make it available. As far as privacy is concerned, we have to make sure
that data and privacy laws persist; it is important across the world and
everyone is coming up with tools to make it happen. The technology must learn
the right things and it has certain limits put in by the people developing it.”