Edtech start-up Scaler earmarks ₹ 1 crore to upskill 1,000 women in tech

Edtech startup Scaler, known for producing quality software engineers with its courses, has announced the launch of Scaler Include, a programme aimed at enhancing female participation in India’s tech workforce. The programme offers merit-based scholarships to women to enrol in Scaler programmes, coding contests in collaboration with top tech employers in India and talks by leading female business leaders.

This programme comes in the wake of a continuing trend of lower participation from women in technology. According to Zinnov-Intel India, women form only 26 per cent of India's tech workforce, a number that the programme wishes to raise to 50 per cent over the next 10 years.

As part of Scaler Include, Scaler has set aside ₹1 crore in capital spending to help create a more diverse tech workforce in 2021. The ₹ 1 crore fund would offer merit-based scholarships to 1000 women to enrol in Scaler Academy.

Scaler Academy aims to accelerate software engineers' careers via a nine-month structured, flexible and guided learning programme. The curriculum, encompassing programming constructs, data structures and algorithms, system design with a project and a choice to specialise in full-stack or back-end development, is vetted by industry CTOs and taught by lead software engineers from Facebook, Hotstar and Media.net. In addition to live, online classes, Scaler Academy provides 1:1, video-based mentorship sessions with leading software engineers in the industry which enables learners to chart their career and practise mock interviews.

"While we have seen mild growth in the proportion of female software engineers in India, we are yet to build a truly equitable tech workforce. Women are often not encouraged to be as ambitious as their male counterparts because of an added, unfair expectation to get married quickly, start a family or tend to elders. We will help women avail Scaler-sponsored and employer-sponsored scholarships,” said Abhimanyu Saxena, co-founder, Scaler. Launched in April 2019, Scaler is backed by marquee global investors like Sequoia Capital and Tiger Global. Over 3,500 learners have joined Scaler's educational programs to date, of which 20 per cent are women.

Course Pause feature

“To provide women with more flexibility, we have launched an industry-first 'Course Pause' feature, allowing women learners to pause their Scaler Academy course at no cost. As we partner with more employers to build an inclusive tech workforce in India, we are keen to build upskilling programs that cater to other under represented communities. We hope to launch similar initiatives for the LGBTQ community and people with special abilities soon" added Saxena.

To celebrate the launch of Scaler Include, CodeX-For-Her, an exclusive coding competition and networking event, to be held over two days in March 2021, has been planned for women software engineers currently working in service and product-based tech companies. The event will include keynote speeches from women leaders in business and technology, as well as participation from leading technology companies in India. Participating employers could enrol their women engineers in the contest and networking events, along with giving out merit-based scholarships to women engineers who win CodeX-For-Her, encouraging them to upskill via Scaler’s programs.