BISinfotech ‘With You’ Features the Top 11 Business Women in Tech

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Leadership Decisions

Back in 2015-16, there was a huge banking sector NPA crisis, when NPAs had sharply risen from 4.62% to 7.79%, and Vaidhyanathan’s decision to foray into assessing credit risk was a direct response to that crisis. There were even reports that a few single borrowers individually accounted for NPAs to the tune of Rs 9,000 crore. Therefore, she envisioned a two-fold solution, one, to build a product in India for the Indian Market and take it global, and two, to build a product that will take a predictive and preventive approach rather than a post-mortem approach to tackling NPA. She and her team were the first in India to develop a tech-enabled early warning system (EWS) for detecting potential Non-Performing Assets (NPAs) using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. The product, rt360, is now saving hundreds of crores per bank per year. No other product can claim to be offering such value to its customers and its customer’s depositors.

Ideas and influences she brings along

• Jaya is a strong proponent of Make in India for India and the globe. She wanted to transform India as a key innovation hub with global products made in India with a global launch in mind
• She is a staunch believer in the talent in India and established the company’s largest Engineering Hub for Product development in India in line with her vision make in India, take it global
• Jaya is an advocate for bringing in collaboration between Fintech and Banks – she believes such collaboration will enable banks have access to robust technology and at the same time enable them to focus on what is core to them
• Jaya has been in international boards and she brings global experiences and best practices of corporate governance in India. She has been writing on several issues such as diversity in the board, remuneration for board members and the need for independent boards
• Jaya is a champion for inclusion and diversity and has launched several programs to support this mission globally

Leadership vision

As BCT Digital’s CEO, Ms. Vaidhyanathan takes complete ownership of all spheres of the business, including overseeing global sales, marketing, product ideation, innovation, delivery, and operations. At the core of conceptualizing and introducing such risk management products is Ms. Vaidhyanathan’s vision to look at the ‘Big Picture’. She knew that $3 trillion of banking assets were at stake, and even a minimal 1% improvement in recovery can bring $3 billion back into our economy. Her vision is to build BCT Digital as the #1 risk management firm in the world. Today, we are in the top 100 risk management firms in the globe recognized by Chartis Research. That’s not all. Ms. Vaidhyanathan has personally authored 100-plus thought leadership papers, articles, enabling BCT Digital to be the trusted voice on best practices in risk management. In the process, BCT Digital has not only accumulated the #1 share of voice in the market vis-à-vis competition, but the ‘thought-leadership’ in the banking ecosystem has also helped it knock on new doors and win new clients.

The Aspiring Story

Over the past three years, under Ms. Vaidhyanathan’s leadership, BCT Digital has diversified from the original business of assessing credit risk to managing the entire spectrum of risk, including Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC), Model Risk, and Liquidity Risk. The products harness newer technologies such as AI, Predictive Analytics, Big Data, offering more accountability and predictability to the banking system. BCT Digital’s current and way-forward strategy is to tread through the mandates and compliances proposed by global regulators in the credit monitoring space. As a strategic drive to expand across the globe, BCT Digital, led by Ms Vaidhyanathan, has already assessed the needs of various markets and is well poised to extend all its solutions to various geographies.

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Leadership vision

For a business to remain competitive it must pay due attention to the increasing gender gap in the workforce. It is clear that there is still a long way to go before all gender-based issues are resolved.

Ideas and influences she brings along

By supporting women-led start-ups and retraining and re-skilling female entrepreneurs, we can create jobs in high-growth sectors. Women outnumber men in higher education and never make any assumptions taking into account the goals, needs, and ambition levels of your female employees. The economy will benefit from greater participation of women in the workforce.’

The Aspiring Story

The proportion of women in the labour force is roughly 50% while the proportion of men in the labour force is 75%. Women should be empowered to participate in the labour force by eliminating gender inequalities in personal care and domestic work. Today, 77% of companies worldwide have gender equality or diversity and inclusion policies in place. Women make up half the world of employees and comprise half of the global workforce. The gender of women makes them more likely to miss out on gaining a job or advancement, as well as less likely to be consulted on important decisions.

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Leadership Decision | Strategy

Facilio began with the aim to declutter property operations, and this has been the north star of all our marketing and messaging efforts. We constantly try to identify themes and build an empathetic connection with our customers – using webinars, events, and direct interviews—to understand the priorities that drive their decisions. We knew the knowledge gap between what operations teams needed, and what they’re currently equipped with, was growing. Our marketing engages, builds trust, and actively involves customers as part of this transformation. In 2019, we launched FutureProof, a community for professionals in property operations to come together and share practical best practices and strategies, to drive innovation in our space. As one of the co-creators of the event, it has been most satisfying to engage with the insights of progressive facility managers and commercial real estate leaders and help build a consensus for the future. Since then, we’ve taken FutureProof to multiple formats including video, interviews, and webinars, as well as the recent launch of REBuild, in the wake of the pandemic. Seeing the property operations community grow, share, and learn from each other through our facilitation has been extremely rewarding for us.

Ideas and Influences She Brings Along

Our goal at Facilio is not just to create a new category of data-driven property operations, but to also help the industry evolve into a future-ready version of itself, driven by technology, data, and insights. This meant we needed to build a movement and not just a product. We were creating something that the market had not seen before, and it required us to define and evangelize it. As a team, we ingrained the discipline of removing limiting beliefs and followed the practice of experimentation, staying close to the customer, and deeply embracing a ‘figure it out’ mindset. Whether it’s through educational content, community engagement, category awareness, and product education via webinars, videos, etc., we try to help the operations industry transition towards a smarter, data-driven model of property operations. From there, we’ve grown to solve O&M gaps across 100m sq. ft at 35+ enterprises in the commercial office, healthcare, retail, banking, and government real estate categories; with marquee customers including a leading UK property owner/operator, a top bank HQ-ed in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, a leading commercial office player in Australia, a popular non-for-profit corporate in the US, and more.

Leadership Vision

Our mission since day1 has been clear—to help properties operate efficiently and sustainably. Every day is a prioritization exercise. As a member of the founding team, I’ve been lucky enough to define the priorities of the marketing function, as we regularly brainstorm with our co-founders and cross-team members. Bringing about a tech-driven disruption in a conventional industry requires commitment across all functions, and it’s this holistic approach to delivering transformational value that our customers respond to the most. At Facilio, we’re committed to leaving no stone unturned in creating an environment where every voice has a seat at the table, where we continuously learn and improve through dialogue, and where we aren’t afraid to challenge the status quo. Our objectives are aligned towards our larger goal of reimagining property operations, and we have a strong model and culture that passionately works towards this.

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Leadership Decision

I noticed that Gofrugal did not have an owner for the website and there was no digital marketing. I took ownership of the website and set up a digital marketing platform to promote our solutions. Having no experience in marketing before, I did a lot of self-learning to implement marketing-automation in our CRM. During those days, Hubspot was one of the early companies that kickstarted marketing automation. I used to keep a watch on the trends in smashing magazine, Unbounce, Neil Patel. I have executed 1000+ experiments, design variations, experiences, and process improvements. My favorite pass time was trying different products / applications in the market and studying their experiences.

One advice on leadership decisions is ‘Where-ever there is a lack of leadership, identify them early, own and drive them’. The bigger the challenge, the bigger the opportunity!

Ideas and Influences She Brings Along

It is important to promote people who are accountable, innovate, proactively identify and resolve problems. We were able to boost our renewals significantly. The book ‘Effortless Experience’ & ‘Power of Moments’ was an eye-opener for me. I kept listening to podcasts on design and customer success like Creating Customer Success, Customer Success Leader, UI Breakfast UI/UX design and product strategy.

Wearing multiple hats & being cross-skilled gave a lot more perspective. My vision is to build a customer-centric organization as the success of a company depends 50% on customer success and the rest 50% on employee engagement and their success.

Aspiring Story

Behind great experience is a streamlined process. It is the responsibility of the CX teams to improve experience thus building/re-building trust with the customers. I may not have reached the destination, but I am making progress every single day. The journey so far has been rollicking!

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Women in STEM comprise only 14% of the entire STEM community. Sneha Priya recognized the gap at the age of 19 and started her STEM journey, not just by becoming an engineer but by carving a path for herself. She partnered with her study partner, Pranavan, an avid roboteer & tech enthusiast to understand a pave path to work towards bridging the gap.

While participating in various Robotics & Coding competitions in college, Sneha realized, that there were hardly or sometimes no women in such events. She then decided, not only to make a difference in that but also to start young. SP Robotics works on the concept that the true impact of any learning starts young, and that is the idea that Sneha decided to take forward, establishing herself as a true leader committed to bringing about a good change.

Application of Tech or the way science happens needs to start at an early age to really make an impression on the mind. Hence, Sneha & Pranavan aim to bring about this learning to the younger minds through SP Robotic Works. They want children, not just young girls, to know that science, technology, math are not necessarily difficult but it can be easy to learn, understand and a lot of fun.

Sneha was one of the top 100 entrepreneurs in all of India, selected by YourStory. She is not only doing what she loves but has created a chain of impact through the way of learning adopted by SP Robotic Works. She continuously strives towards understanding problems in the education sector, finding out why quality teaching is not happening. This also led to the AI teaching that SP Robotics is using to eliminate the quality issue. This also helps to create a love for the subject irrespective of the teacher.

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I feel, sometimes, being a woman leader in engineering domain is challenging as female engineers are comparatively fewer than men. Also, many women find it difficult to re-enter the workforce after a period of absence. Despite such issues, I have been able to push myself and come out of my comfort zone to get back to the field after a break. I feel, one can do anything with self-belief and an I – M – POSSIBLE attitude.
Having led a pilot team for a product for more than eight months which was first of its kind, I have had my fair share of learnings on this journey. I learnt that trust in self and empowering your team helps attain uncommon results which can eventually become a product offering to customers. I firmly believe, “alone we do so little but together we can do so much”, and I strive to create an inclusive and open culture at the workplace for my team members by recognizing their technical expertise, supporting them and reinforcing a sense of belonging.

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Any One Leadership Decision | Strategy

Shail Digital is an early stage, full-service, digital marketing agency. It is very difficult for a start-up marketing agency to win the project in its initial years as there is no past work or portfolio to show to the prospects. In such a situation, endorsement and certifications becomes very important. It speaks about your talent and skills, even if you have not much work to show. As a business development strategy we got our Mailchimp & HubSpot Partnership and certification in the first year itself. This helped us to demonstrate what we “can do” as we did not have much to show in “have done”. Many clients look for agencies with technical know-how of the platforms, they look for the agencies who are certified. This strategy helped us in our initial business development.

Ideas and Influences She Brings Along

Five thoughts which I believe and live up to:

• When you believe in yourself you don’t have to convince others
• You need to take the chance and push yourself beyond your comfort zone, something beautiful will surely happen
• Be strong enough to stand alone, smart enough to know when you need help and brave enough to ask for help
• Make sure you water the plants you wish to grow.
• Give your body 1 hour and it will give 23 awesome hours to you

Leadership Vision

To lead by an example for my team and my peers with constant learning and continuously improving myself in thoughts and actions. I wish to establish a strong emotional connect with my team, clients and industry stalwarts by effective communication and positive attitude, following the philosophy “together we grow”.

The Aspiring Story

Darwin’s theory survival of fittest is based on the mechanism of natural selection. It also says, adaption – the inherited characteristics increases chance of survival. This is not just applicable in evolution of man, but also in evolution career. You choose and change from your education years to your retirement years based on what comes your way, what’s the need of the hour and what gives you satisfaction.
I did my Masters in Electronics engineer taking education loan. Like any other international student, I worked in beauty salon and Indian kitchen, and took up other stint. I learned a lot about cooking techniques, damage control on spice imbalance, short cuts for cooking in large quantities. When I got full-time Research Assistantship, I worked on weekends, not because I wanted money but because I loved cooking and serving Suri uncle and his family. Today, cooking for me is only on special occasions! 

In 2008, I came back to India for good and got married. I started looking for jobs – for some I was over-qualified to be a technical support, and for others I was under-experienced. So I changed my path and got into technology journalism. During that time, I was based in Delhi and was extremely fascinated by the clothes and market. Once, during my hometown visit, I decided to buy 40-50 salwar suits from Lajpat Nagar. I called my mother and told her that we are putting up an exhibition – “Delhi suits and Dress Materials” so please invite all aunties. That was one heck of an experience!

I left media job and took a full time job in corporate. All was going well, but in the corporate race of acquisition and mergers, I wasn’t clear of what’s in store for me. Without any offer in hand I left the job and went on a vacation. After coming back, I decided to start my own company and that’s how Shail Digital was formed. Apart from serving B2B technology clients, I serve as marketing consultant to several organisations and also teach digital marketing at one of the top institution.

I am also learning Sitar and preparing for my Sangeet Visharat – Hindustani vocals that was left incomplete many year back.

Life is all about experience, gain as many as possible to make it more beautiful, more meaningful!

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Leadership Decision | Strategy

I understand how to balance emotion with reason and make decisions that positively impact myself, my employees, my customers, stakeholders, and the organizations. I think the decision which I take are all important for our organization, every decision that is taken is for the betterment of the company

Ideas and Influences She Brings Along

There haven’t been any major make-or-break moments in my career but I have faced the situation as it comes, tackled it with patience, and progressed in my career goals. I believe innovation of new things happens when you give freedom to your team to think creatively, innovate new things and learn from their mistakes and I as a leader stand by the team and guide them to achieve their goals and objectives.

Leadership Vision

I believe in giving opportunities to freshers to mold them to be better managers in the future and supporting them to explore new technologies which will help them and the company to grow. One should have faith in themselves and their capabilities, you can achieve more than you can think, just go for it.

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Leadership Decision | Strategy

Accelerating the way our customers experience our solution, during their decision-making process in choosing an automation platform, has supercharged our business expansion in the hyper-automation space. Sales engineering competency has been the backbone of this speed, combining the right mix of consulting, product leadership and technical architecture knowledge has aided our leapfrog strategy.

Ideas and Influences She Brings Along

Curiosity, credibility and commitment are my levers to retain a culture of excellence in my team. I also look at how we can positively impact our customer’s business by solving problems that exist at the base of the iceberg. I always encourage my team to get to the root of the problem and craft solutions that are void of assumptions, deliver faster RoI and are easy to implement. Conversations with customers on problems the platform can currently solve is something that I look forward to. We also discuss our investments towards building a robust roadmap and how we non-invasively complement the existing technology stack around cloud, analytics, and ERP.

Automation pitches that are crisp, can solve real problems, and are simultaneously connected to market trends. This also helps resonate better with the customers. I believe in incentivizing and encouraging certain behaviors like research, competition analysis, and product reviews of existing technology stacks among my team.

Leadership Vision

Automation as a subject has elevated human potential and I feel extremely fortunate to be part of this purpose-driven technology. I aspire to give our customers the best experience during their first brush with the UiPath platform and establish faster proof of value, creating a long-lasting recall of what the UiPath Platform could solve.

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“This year’s theme Break the Bias is important and timely because it’s time to speak up. Really speak up. It’s about finding opportunities to use your voice to affect change. We can all do this. You may not get it right every time, but you will learn every time you speak up. And then, when you start to see things changing because of what you’ve said, embrace it and own what you’ve asked for.International Women’s Day is a reminder to celebrate the role women play in industry and to support and learn from each other. There are markets I work in that I can be myself and then there are some where I have faced criticism based on my approach. Often these are criticisms that a man wouldn’t face in the same situation. And so, as a woman you must have strength to stand your ground. There is a quote that I love, which is, ‘don’t try to be a man, it’s a waste of a good woman’. We were chosen for a reason, to bring that diversity of thought and our unique strengths to the table.Overall, I don’t think we have enough women in the IT industry. There is no distinct education path to many of the jobs in this industry, and there is a long way to go in promoting the different types of roles that exist and encouraging more women to explore IT as a career.

It’s important to highlight the importance of a support network at both home and work. I am a firm believer that those in more senior positions have a supportive partner or extra support in home life to enable them to focus on their career.”

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Any One Leadership Decision | Strategy

Identifying right opportunities, capitalizing personal assets, value human element, deliver in a best possible way, are my professional mantras.

Ideas and Influences She Brings Along

My network is made of people with whom I have worked with, learned from, and admired over the years. Access to technology is available to anyone who has the drive or passion to learn more. Despite initial doubts over how a non-tech person successfully clinch deals in Telecom sector, I was instrumental in revenue generation through productising, product marketing, channel enablement, content planning etc.

Leadership Vision

Pandemic has changed the captive ways of running business. The new digital era has paved a way for Hybrid IT infrastructure and adoption of service providers to house data. Indian data center market is on a growth trajectory, attracting the global players.

The Aspiring Story

In February ’21, Web Werks, a local data center operator, entered in to a Joint Venture with Iron Mountain Data Centers, a global service provider. Last one year was extremely crucial in terms of creating an effective ‘Go to Market’ strategy to ensure this partnership fuels Indian expansion into all hot markets to deliver colocation and cloud to both hyperscalers and enterprise customers. Two brands coming together establishes credibility because each company is able to highlight and reflect each other’s assets and thus strengthen their position in a given market. Challenge was orchestrating high-value co-branded marketing campaigns for effective pull from the target customers. Strategic planning, Evangelising initiatives, Digital, Social, Innovation, Brand awareness, were some of the key actionable to achieve desired results. Web Werks – Iron Mountain JV has established itself as fastest growing data center operator in India with existing and planned facilities in all major Financial and IT hubs.

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“Ideas and Influences She Brings Along”

Indian women have broken the proverbial glass ceiling a while back with Mrs Indira Gandhi as a Lady Prime Minister on the global platform and continue to showcase #BreakTheBias, by taking leadership roles and breaking records.
Conceptualising an idea is one thing but gifting ‘shape and life’ to it is completely a different thing altogether! The unwavering objective of making a difference to the lives of Breast Cancer patients has been the driving force for Dr Manjiri in founding OncoStem and developing CanAssist Breast (CAB), a prognostic test for breast cancer. CAB is the only prognostic test in the world which is developed and validated on the Indian breast cancer patients and is a proud ‘Make in India’ product.

CanAssist Breast is a perfect fusion of science and technology. CAB is performed on tumor sample removed during surgery of early-stage hormone receptor positive HER2 negative (a major subtype of breast cancer) breast cancer patients. It uses AI/ML technology. CAB helps clinicians to understand in which patient the cancer is likely to recur ie-‘high-risk for recurrence’ (~30%) versus not ie ‘low-risk’ typically ~ 70% of eligible patients. CAB helps these 70% of patients with ‘low-risk’ for cancer recurrence to avoid chemotherapy its dreaded physiological and financial toxicities. CAB has been used on more than 2000 patients for last 5 years in India and other countries.

Dr Manjiri’s entrepreneurship and leadership made this ‘idea into reality’ by bringing all stakeholders like investors, clinicians, scientists, statisticians, hospitals, lawyers and sales and marketing team together to achieve this breakthrough innovation. She thought of the idea and ensured that it is delivered in a cost-effective yet in high quality driven manner. To be effective in any organization, one must be creative, think out of the box and be able to influence people. Dr Manjiri is a great illustration of this coupled with her multifaceted personality, keen attention to details, and perseverance to inspire the entire team are the reasons for success.
Dr Manjiri has several additional new concepts in the pipeline which will have a substantial influence on the health-care industry.