10�THE ECONOMIC TIMES | MUMBAI | THURSDAY | 6 NOVEMBER 2014Companies

Harsimran.Julka@ timesgroup.com

New Delhi: Silicon Valley may be aheadof the curve in technology innovation butseveral Indian startups are showing theway when it comes to gender parity at theworkplace. At some ventures, womenmake up nearly half the workforce andthey are also making inroads into male-dominated precincts like senior manage-ment and field sales.

“We definitely keep gender diversity inmind, while ensuring that we hire the bestpeople,” said Deepinder Goyal, cofounderof restaurant listing service Zomatowhere women make up 48 % of the 800-strong workforce. Across 18 countrieswhere the Gurgaon company operates,there are more women selling Zomato’sservices marking a shift in an area long re-garded as a male bastion. “It’s not a con-scious decision. However, women are nat-urally inclined towards customerempathy. They can understand problemsof clients and relate to them,” said Upasa-na Nath, chief recruitment officer at Zo-mato, which is backed by Indian internetcompany InfoEdge and Silicon Valley’sSequoia Capital.

Others like cloud telephony providerKnowlarity and online marketplacesSnapdeal and LimeRoad also boast ahealthy female employee ratio, underlin-ing growing gender sensitivity in the In-dian startup sector. This trend contrastswith the situation in Silicon Valley,where the average ratio of female tech-nology workers is 20-23% according todata from the Anita Borg Institute forWomen and Technology.

When Stanford graduate Jyotsna Pattabi-

raman returned to India from the US in2012, she was determined to work only for anew venture. “In large organisations I’vesometimes not even been allowed to com-plete my sentence in meetings,” said theformer executive at eBay and Yahoo! “Youfeel like a potted plant, like you don’t be-long there.” said Pattabiraman who, on herreturn to India, started e-commerce portalUnamia before signing up as a senior vicepresident at Knowlarity last year.

Helps Grow BusinessFor Indian startups, hiring women isproving to be more than just a symbolicinitiative, they are convinced it helpsgrow business.

Mukesh Lohar, head of sales at Know-larity is of the view that women have anedge when it comes to selling a productonline or on the phone — which is vastlydifferent from feet-on-the-street.“Women are also more persuasive, aquality needed in selling to businesses,

where sales cycles are much longer,” Lohar added.

Gurgaon–based Knowlarity, which isbacked by US investors Sequoia and May-field, employs 40 women for every 60 men.But half of its field sales staff who sell tosmall and medium enterprises are wom-en. “About two decades ago, this numberwould have been about 3-4%. The glassceiling is definitely being broken by thesenew technology companies who don’tcome with a traditional mindset,” saidNirmala Menon, CEO of Interweave Con-sulting, a Bangalore-based consultancythat focuses on diversity management.

Gender sensitivity is clearly helping Indian startups attract top women into their ranks.

Namita Gupta, a former Facebook execu-tive who led a global function at the MenloPark-based company, chose Zomato overother large multinational jobs on her re-turn to India.

“The fact that I could see dozens of wom-

en faces around in the technology startupmade me at ease when I was making a tran-sition to India,” said Gupta. She was notoff the mark, for even within Indian tech-nology firms like HCL Tech, just one-fourth of the staff are women while at In-fosys the ratio is one-third.

Adjustments to Hire WomenNew ventures such as LimeRoad are mak-ing adjustments to ensure they can hiremore women. “For all employees, we havedone away with attendance hours or log-ins. Employees have to come only for afew hours every day to attend a meeting toset the agenda. Post that they are free todeliver from the comfort of their home orwherever they are,” said Suchi Mukher-jee, CEO of LimeRoad, which has about40 women for every 60 men.

“It is a normal constraint that womenface that they cannot work longer hours atoffice once they get married or have chil-dren, especially in India,” said Mukherjeewhose startup and other fashion portalslike Fashionara have hired a large numberof women in areas such as cataloguing,merchandising and customer service.

Making way for women in new economyventures in India is also made easier bythe fact that the country produces a largenumber of women engineers. Femalerepresentation in computer science andsoftware engineering courses has in-creased from 20% in 1999 to 31% in 2013. Inthe US, it has plummeted from 23% to 15%during the same period, according to aLinkedIn-MentorNet study. Zomato’sGoyal wants to see more of these womentechies work at his firm where he nowhas fewer than he would like.

(With inputs fromKrithika Krishnamurthy in Bengaluru)

At Startups, a Fair Deal for the Fair Sex Ventures such as Zomato, Knowlarity & Snapdeal hire more women as they are convinced it helps grow business

More Women, More BizWomen have an edge when it comes to selling a product online or on the phone, says Mukesh Lohar, head of sales at Knowlarity. Women are more persuasive, a quality needed in selling to businesses, where sales cycles are much longer

New ventures such as LimeRoad are making

adjustments to ensure they can hire more women.

The co has done away with log-ins and employees

are mostly free to work from their homes

Upasana Nath, chief recruitment offi cer at

Zomato says women are more naturally

inclined towards customer empathy. They can also understand problems of clients and relate to them

Madhav.Chanchani@timesgroup.com

California: Shubham Banerjee, a 13-year-old eighth grader, has probably be-come one of the youngest entrepre-neurs to get venture capital funding. In-dian origin Banerjee, based out of SanJose in California, has got funding fromIntel Capital to develop a low-cost print-er for the blind. It was a flyer asking fordonations for the blind that triggeredBanerjee’s interest in Braille in Decem-ber last year. “When I asked my parentsabout how the blind read, they told meto Google it,” quips Banerjee.

Marrying his love for building carsand planes using Lego blocks, Banerjeecame up with a prototype for the Brailleprinter for his school science fair. Thisproduct was further developed based onthe feedback that Banerjee got.

It was at Intel Developer Forum in SanFrancisco two months ago that Baner-jee was told he will get funding for hisstartup Braigo Labs from Intel. “I wasjust trying to help people and did notknow it will go so far,” said Banerjee,who was born in Belgium.

Banerjee’s parents have also been sup-porting him morally and financially onhis startup quest. “He has smart peoplearound him. We understand that toturn a project into a company takesmore talent,” said Rob Reuckert, ma-naging director at Intel Capital, whowill be advising Braigo going ahead.

His mother Malini is president ofBraigo since Shubham is still a minor.His father Neil works for Kno, an educa-tion startup that Intel bought last year.Both were born in India and Banerjee’s

extended family still lives in the coun-try where he makes summer trips.

Now Braigo Labs will use the undis-closed amount of funding from the ven-ture capital arm of world’s largest chip-maker Intel to roll out a better prototypeand develop more products for the vi-sually impaired. Braigo Labs’ Brailleprinter is expected to cost $350-500(.̀ 21,000-30,000), as compared to the usu-al price of $2,000.

The printer is expected to find a lot oftraction in developing markets due toits low cost and be used for education,teaching and home purposes.

But with funding, Banerjee does nothave any plans to drop out of school. “Iam going to finish high school and thengo to college,” he said.

(The writer was in California at theinvitation of Intel Capital.)

Indian-origin Boy Gets IntelFunding for Braille Printer

Shubham Banerjee with his Brailleprinter that may cost just $350-500compared with the usual $2,000

Neha.Alawadhi@timesgroup.com

New Delhi: Charity organisa-tions and other not-for-profitscan soon get an exclusive do-main extension to registertheir Web identity. Public Inter-est Registry (PIR), the organi-sation that manages the .org do-main, will roll out the .ngosuffix this January, giving non-governmental organisationsthe option to add it to the rightof the dot in their website address. “With .ngo, weare offering more than a do-main name. We will offer vali-dation of the website address,to certify that they (the organi-sation) are an NGO,” said BrianCute, chief executive of PIR.

The validation process forthe .ngo domain would go along way in establishing trustin the NGO community, andhelp donors who contribute tothese causes, as they can besure of where their money isgoing, Cute said.

After launching the .ngo do-main in January, PIR will offer a“sunrise period” for trademarkholders to preregister them-

selves to pre-vent cyber-squatting. Itwill be madeavailable to thegeneral publicfrom March.The .ngo top level do-main (TLD)will be con-trolled by PIR.

The InternetCorporationfor AssignedNames and

Numbers (ICANN), the body re-sponsible for organising inter-net, had in June 2011 launchedthe generic TLD (gTLD) pro-gramme to expand the domainname system (DNS) from 22gTLDs to more than 1,300 to en-hance competition, innovationand consumer choice.

According to ICANN, the glob-al DNS industry is worth about$3 billion a year, with about 730businesses that employ close to7,000 people. Its annual growthrate over the 2008-2013 periodwas about 2.9%.

With new gTLDs in the mar-ket, this industry is expected toflourish further. Currently,.com is the most widely useddomain name in the world, fol-lowed by .net, .org and country-specific names such as .uk and.in. To drive adoption of the.ngo domain, PIR has engagedwith the NGO community andheld workshops and outreachprogrammes in markets suchas Latin America, South Africaand India. “The response fromIndia has been very positive.The focus of the outreach here,however, will have to be grass-root level and we will make ef-forts to educate the non-com-mercial community and bringthem online,” said Cute.

In India, PIR has worked withorganisations such as the Digi-tal Empowerment Foundationto reach out to the community.

NGOs to GetExclusiveDomainSuffix ‘.ngo’from Jan

Domain manager

PIR to also certify

sites, which will help

build donors’ trust

PublicInternetRegistry willoffer a“sunriseperiod” fortrademarkholders topre-registerthemselvesto preventcybersquatting