Edtech startup – Scaler has announced the launch of Scaler Include, a program aimed at enhancing female participation in India’s tech workforce. The program offers merit-based scholarships to women to enroll in Scaler programs, coding contests in collaboration with tech employers in India and talks by female business leaders.
As part of Scaler Include, Scaler has set aside INR 1 crore in capital spending to help create a more diverse tech workforce in 2021. The INR 1 crore fund would offer merit-based scholarships to 1000 women to enroll in Scaler Academy.
“Scaler Academy aims to accelerate software engineers’ careers via a nine-month structured, flexible and guided learning program. The curriculum, encompassing programming constructs, data structures and algorithms, system design with a project and a choice to specialize 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,” the company said in a statement.
Abhimanyu Saxena, Co-founder, Scaler said, “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. We also understand that women might need more flexibility and 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 underrepresented communities. We hope to launch similar initiatives for the LGBTQ community and people with special abilities soon.”
Arya has been a part of the Content & Research Team at Hrnxt.com. She is a keen observer of economic developments, emerging businesses, people in business and keeps a tab on latest happenings in the business environment.