KOCHI: The technology domain is no longer a male-dominated space, and women with vision and grit have every chance of taking leadership roles and building successful companies. This was the message to budding women entrepreneurs given by experts at the three-day ‘SHE-2017’ tech meet hosted by ‘Maker Village.’ Organised in association with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and Women in Engineering (WIE) Congress-Kochi Hub at the Federal Institute of Science and Technology (FISAT), Angamaly, the meet showcased the possibilities in the world of technology for young women entrepreneurs and offered them guidance and mentorship from professionals.
‘Maker Village’ extended support to SHE-2017 as part of its ambitious vision to develop a meaningful community for women in technology and positively change the landscape of the Indian economy. ‘Maker Village, ’ a project funded by the Union Ministry of Electronics and IT and the Government of Kerala, has facilities in Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram to incubate and support start-up companies in electronics such as in IoT, robotics and wearables.
Inaugurating the event, Sujata Madhav Chandran, global head, Asset Leveraged Solutions Analytics and Insight Unit, TCS Ltd, said that there was no gender specification for any career in the corporate world today; nor was there male domination like before-- which meant anyone passionate about being an entrepreneur had a chance of becoming one.
“If you learn to unearth problems that can have business solutions, then there are tremendous opportunities waiting for you. The projects ideally should have a social impact. IT is now applicable to all fields of engineering,” she said. ‘Maker Village’ representatives Kiran Krishna and Sreejith Venugopal addressed the students and elaborated on the vast possibilities at their electronics incubator. Paul Mundadan, chairman, FISAT, presided over the function. Four workshops were conducted on the second day with participation of around 300 students.
The workshop on Big Thinking in IoT gave the students insights into this exciting new field, and its vast and seamless applications in various fields of study. Project Development using microcontrollers elaborated on how to develop various tasks and projects with the help of small, low-cost computers. Firing up the Clouds with AWS (Amazon Web Services) discussed cloud computing in detail and a managerial workshop was held to help the students improve their management skills.
