Sangeeta Mishra, a pre-final year student at IIT BHU, Varanasi, has defeated 73,000 women programmers and technologists to win the title of Geek Goddess 2021. TechGig Geek Goddess is India’s biggest coding competition for women, and was started with the growing need of highlighting the coding genius of women technologists in India.
Held annually, the 2021 edition—the competition’s seventh edition—was held virtually. The competition has an open coding round and a hackathon, with the latter letting the participants choose among any three niche tech-based competitions: UiPath RPA Hackathon, American Express AI/Machine Learning Hackathon, and Tech Aptitude Challenge. This year was remarkable for the event because it saw a whopping 73,000 women technologists participating, which is an all-time high number.
The open coding round had the highest participation, followed by the Tech Aptitude Challenge (15,965 participants), American Express AI/ML Hackathon (2,487 participants) and UiPath RPA Hackathon (2,196 participants). The number of tech students among the finalists was double the number of women professionals at the event, with 315 students compared to 156 professionals—indicating that students are more eager to participate in this competition to prove their skill proficiency, which makes them more employable.
The event was also significant this year because it was graced by 19 women technology leaders from many companies who held a two-panel discussion and three fireside chats highlighting the importance of women in STEM fields and the contribution of women technologists during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. “With Geek Goddess, we have created a complete ecosystem for women technologists to aspire, rise and shine in their careers. In 2015, Geek Goddess started as a coding competition for women technologists to participate and win accolades based on their performance,” said Sanjay Goyal, business head, TechGig, during the event. “Gradually, we added a career fair where all participants can apply for their dream jobs,” he said, adding that TechGig will continue working to promote diversity in technology.
Along with Mishra, 11 other women were crowned winners in different categories, with winners taking home prizes worth ₹5.35 lakh. Here’s the complete list of winners:
Geek Goddess 2021: Sangeeta Mishra
1st Runner Up: Arooshi Verma
2nd Runner Up: Roopam Mishra
3rd Runner Up: Sonal Kadwane
4th Runner Up: Aanshi Bansal
American Express AI/ML Hackathon
Winner: Team ML Lover – Shreya Pawaskar
Runner Up: Team Asteroids – Muskan Jain
UiPath RPA Hackathon
Category – Citizen Developer
Winner: Team Empower – Saritha Koroth, Rimjhim Agrawal
Runner Up: Team HK – Katy Leung - Sui Leung, Katy Leung
Category – Pre-Built Automation
Winner: Team Squid – Piali Adhikary
Runner Up: Team Nike – Ebru Sarikaya
*Image used for representative purpose