 Okay, welcome everybody to this panel and thanks for staying back. I have, I'm very happy that we have a very diverse panel today and I take the opportunity to introduce it. Before that, why are we doing this panel? I think there are a lot of questions in our heads or let me speak for myself. I think there are a lot of questions in my head when it comes to women in technology, women in startups. Are our problems really real? Are our problems perceived? Do we really, what do we feel is really legitimate or is this just something that we have to overcome? And I think these are not really easy questions to answer because it's not just about the mind, it's about mindset. And I think the idea really is to learn from the stories of three people that we have over here and to see what we have to take away from these stories. So the way the panel will be structured is I'll introduce the panelists and we'll have two rounds of questions with them following which I really encourage all of you to come out and ask questions. Don't feel shy, ask the most, I think ask a question that you think is important to you and that means it matters a lot to you. The idea is really to have this exchange and this dialogue today and not just to have like a one-way conversation over here. So I really hope you'll participate in the spirit of participation today. So on the panel with me today, we have Richa Khanna who's a software engineer at OlaCamps. She's been programming since 2006 and she's developed different products for OlaStore and OlaShare and many other features before she's moved on to back-end engineering in Ola. We have with us Neha Bagaria who's a two-times entrepreneur is currently the founder of Jobs for Her, an online portal to enable women to restart their careers after a break. I'm sure Neha will have a lot of interesting things to tell us. And then we have Leena Esen. I think there's no moment that I have felt prouder about Hasgi Conferences than to have Leena on stage here with us. I think Leena's first speaking career really began with Troitcon 2011. And I think more than anything else, I've been very grateful and appreciative of how Leena has been so contributing to the Hasgi community, whether it comes to DevOps, whether it comes to JavaScript, whether it comes to Troitcon. Leena is a regular instructor and speaker at Hasgi Conferences. Moreover, Leena is the co-founder of Multness. She's the CTO for over eight years now. And she's also very active in the Rubicon community and is the organizer of Garden City Rubicon. So with that, I'd really like you to welcome all the panelists on stage. I'd like to start with the first question. I think it'll be nice if each of the panelists are spent about five minutes each talking about, you know, your journey, what got you into doing what you're doing today. And what are the kind of challenges you faced and also what are the kind of successes that you've experienced in the process? What factors do you think have really influenced your decision to be where you are? And I think, Neha, you will have a lot to speak from the experiences that you've also encountered from other women. So maybe I should start with Richa. Hi, Janak. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share the panel with you all. What I would like to say that I got fascinated with computers, programs. When I saw my C++ program in 2006, and then I decided that I wanted to pursue my career in technology and I got my bachelor's and master's in computer science and then I landed up in Texas Instruments where I got this internship opportunity through college placements and there I decided that I'm going to pursue from here only. So in my journey, what I have seen is when I was doing internship. So at that time I've seen the women are there in the freshest roles in this D1 role, SD2 role. But as the role becomes greater and higher, the women are very less. So I've always had a question in my mind why I'm not going to give up. I'm not going to sacrifice my ambitions. Why become less ambitions? Have you seen any guys becoming less ambitious when they become father or something like that? No, so that's how after my internship I was exploring new technologies and then my friends suggested me to check out Android and then after some of the workshops I attended and started learning myself. I saw a good opportunity there and then I began my Android journey and then I landed up in a startup called Snapshopper. After that I worked on their visual search app. I developed myself and led the development for a couple of like nine, ten months. Then after that stint I joined job now and led the development of three Android apps there. I didn't find a senior woman in engineering there. Then after that I moved to Ola. When I joined Ola, I was happy that Ola girls are there. So my journey became making friends with girls. I'm not like you should hire a girl because she's a girl. No, you should hire on skills. But at least encourage girls to come forward to be in tech roles because in my college, in my college where I studied there are a lot of women and they were good in academia. So what happened after that? So that is the question we have. So when I'm in my company, I always ask my managers, you know, to check whether to go to events and see what are the different women in engineering roles coming and talk to them. So that's how you can ask other women to join in your team. Thank you. Maybe, Lina, you could continue and then Neha could take over. Thanks, I know. And asking team for inviting me. I started my speaking career with Haskeek. So I've been a regular at Haskeek events. So I, regarding my journey, it started pretty early. I still write code. I'm heading the engineering team, but still write code. Computers really excites me. But I was never a, I don't know how many of you know this. I was never an engineering. I never came from an engineering background. I never did VTAC or anything. I just took diploma course. Then I realized, okay, this might have to take forward. I'm basically a commerce gadget, but I stopped my commerce and the connection for commerce after once I took my path to computer. So like, like what she mentioned, I think I've hardly seen women taking up roles. Usually wherever I join, I'd be one among the two or three people at the company. It's, even though, even though we have seen a lot of skilled ladies or girls who can do a lot of things, but they stop abruptly. So I think Neha will have a lot of stories to share on that friend. But, but I don't know whether I've given enough thought about it, whether I should have given enough thought about it. That I don't, I don't know. I've always, I've always been focused on, okay, one thing that I've decided that I am not going to stop my ambitions because I have a family. It's not easy. I have two kids. Luckily, things worked out well. I'm thankful for that to my friends, my family for doing that. But, but I, the decision always came from me that, okay, I took maternity leave. I had a few months of breaks whenever I had, I had to go through my maternity. But after that, I decided, okay, I'm not going to stop. Okay, let's, let me see how far it can go. And then let's see when, when this starts going to school, maybe I have to stop, but until then I'll continue. Like that it continued. I, and even though, even the co-founder thing was very accidental. One of my friends started the company by the end. I just joined him. I didn't think about how far I can go. And he was also very open. Okay, let's see how far it can go. And then it's been nine years since we worked together. And then we are, we are happy where we are. Take it forward also. But it's been, it's been a challenging story, whether it was, it was different because I was a movement. I don't know, because it's challenging for everyone to build, if you have to build your career. And, but I've seen very few women, whether I've actively did something to change that. I don't think so. Other than the fact that whoever talks to me, I encourage them to continue their career. One more thing that I can, I think I can do only time to tell is to encourage my daughters to have a career in their, in their life. Don't, don't just stop because it's too tough. So, so that's, that's the only thing I, whether I've done anything actively, that's the only thing I did. Whether I'm interested in doing it forward. Of course, of course, yes. Because I've started noticing things more, because maybe I've just found, found something on my own thing so far. Now I have become aware of these things. Maybe I can do more. So, I'd like to let Neha continue, because she will have the motion mode of stories. Hi everyone. My name is Neha Bagaria. I'm, I think I'm the only non-techie in this room. Oh really? Okay, that's good to know. But so I'm actually a finance and marketing graduate. I graduated from the Wharton School in the University of Pennsylvania. And I did a typical internship, some internship at an investment bank. Decided that's not for me. I was much more interested in social entrepreneurship. So started an educational center in Bombay. It was called Paragon. And it was to bring the advanced placement program back to India, which was basically the American version of the IBOA levels. So I became the college board representative at the age of 21. Did that for two years. Was looking at expanding it. Then I met a Bangalore boy and I moved to Bangalore. So that was the first big change that happened in my career, which was very linked to a life stage, which was marriage. But I moved to Bangalore. It was very difficult to keep Paragon running in Bombay. So I shot that and joined my husband's family business, which was in pharmaceuticals. So I was finance grad, went into education, then went to pharmaceuticals. But luckily, if you've studied business, you can be in any industry, right? Because whether you're selling chewing gum or you're selling medicine, the same principles apply. So I did that for five years. And in fact, it was a great journey. We expanded to Sweden, to the U.S. As a finance student, it was very interesting to be on this side of M&E deals. And then I got pregnant somewhere along the way. And I thought, like, that's not a big deal. I decided to take leave for 40 days. I didn't leave at my desk. And then a baby came into my life and things changed. And that's when the second life stage happened to me. And differently from me than from Lina, for me, that was a huge showstopper. And I felt that, you know, especially again, this is where a lot of your upbringing, a lot of your community, your society, had a lot to play in it. My mother, my mother-in-law, my cousins, my friends, everybody, all the women I knew, once you become a mother, you take care of your child. Okay, according to everybody around me. And that's what hit me. I decided, you know what? Anybody can be the CEO of Kemmel, but only one person can be the mother of this child. And that's going to be me. And I took a break. So I stopped working. And before I knew it, it was three and a half years. And I had had a second baby. Luckily for me, though, when my second one came around, I was forced to shift my attention away from my first child. For the first time since he was born, I was forced to shift my attention away from him. And I realized that the skies didn't fall down. And in fact, it was actually good for him. You know, he started becoming more responsible. His relationship with other family members started growing. And second time around, motherhood was also easy. So also by then, a lot of frustration had seeped in. And I was really start questioning myself whether, you know, who am I? Like, is this the person who I am? You know, constantly nagging my husband to get home in time or wanting to have my first adult conversation of the day with him, even though he wanted to have that adult conversation with the TV. I mean, anytime somebody asks you, what do you do? It was so difficult coming up with the answer because saying mother, domestic engineer, housewife, nothing cut it, right? So one day I decided I needed to get back to work. And for me, that initial jump was still easy to find a job because I could jump back into our family business, right? I knew exactly what the need of the hour was. I had carved out a role for myself, which I knew I could perform. And still, even with that backing, it was still extremely difficult just because you go through a huge crisis and confidence. You know, you feel that, I mean, I was a finance grad from Wharton and I had worked in finance now for all these years, but I felt like I didn't know anything about finance. You know, I bought myself a laptop, which I could downgrade to Windows 97 because I was comfortable with the keyboard shortcuts from that Windows. And I was just not sure if I could manage both, right? After being a full-time mother for three and a half years, I wasn't sure if I'd be doing justice to my role of motherhood plus my role in the company. So the initial plan was very difficult, but once I started working, I realized that, oh my God, this is not rocket science. I didn't forget everything that I had worked so hard on. It was just a comma, it wasn't a full stop. And why are the women not getting back to work? So I started asking all my friends, and I'm sure many of you in this room know women who've taken a break at somewhere in their careers, and many of those women who've not gotten back to work. And I had friends who were lawyers, MBAs, architects, engineers, and they were just not getting back. So I started asking them why they're not getting back. And some of the reasons that they told me, right, was that one, they didn't want to go back to their old companies because their peers have become their seniors, and that's very difficult to digest. Two, new companies, they felt that new companies won't take them because of this gap in their resume. In fact, many of them were being told that you need to hide that gap in your resume somehow. And three, for the techies, it was just like for them, they felt there was no way they could get back in tech. Even if they weren't in tech earlier, if they were even thinking about getting back, they were looking at getting back into HR. Because they said that, hey, if you've taken a break for even longer than three months, you've become outdated. Technology has moved on rapidly and we don't know anything anymore. So a lot of what I realized is what got me to start a portal which was exclusively for women who want to get back to work because the big shock that I got was when I realized that this is not just my problem or my friend's problem or the women who we know problem. There are about one and a half million women in India who go on a break every single year. And so about 25 million women in India who are on a break and they want to get back to work and we have to find them a path back. And that's really where Jobsohar came along. So I started Jobsohar last March in 2015. Again, with my very limited technical skills, I managed to cobble together a website which is actually a WordPress theme, classified WordPress theme. I got my MVP out there to just learn and understand and validate our existence. In six months' time, we had about, I think by then, we had about 500 companies, tons of women on the portal. We had tons of matches already made and I realized that, okay, this is what I need to do and this is what we need to invest in. So today I'm happy to tell you that I have a CTO co-founder who is in fact ex-SnapDeal, Microsoft EA. He's built a strong product and tech team at Jobsohar. We have a KICAS website that we launched on June 24th and we are across India looking at scaling it up hugely. There are 1600 companies now who are on the portal despite and because sometimes, because they know that the women who are applying to their jobs are women on a career break and they are welcoming them back. Thanks. Before we open the floor for audience interaction, I have one question for all three panelists. I think the question is in bothering me is that at workplaces, we are not just women. We are managers, we are co-workers, we are colleagues, we are bosses. There are other identities and roles we play as well. Now, how is it compared to men that we negotiate these roles? What have been your experiences at the workplace? Has it really been a disadvantage to be a woman? I think that's a question that's really going on ahead especially after the election results yesterday where people have come forward and said, we should have never said Hillary Clinton was a woman. That's really what caused the election defeat. I think the question has been bothering me for a couple of days now and especially after the results yesterday is how do we really negotiate through these roles? What are our experiences? What are our challenges? I don't know. I'm in the office. I don't think my gender has to play a role when I'm coding or anything or when I'm working my sprint. So all we are engineers and there, only the skills matter. So when my managers give me some task or I have to complete my task, it just matters. I'm able to complete it within time. The quality matters. So most of the time you have heard there are biases in companies, there are pay scales differences but according to me, what I have seen in Ola and what I've seen in my other previous startups, the involvement is really pretty cool. It must be like some girls have created that thing in their heads or maybe it has their experiences but in my experience or in my colleague's experience we haven't seen those kind of biases. We have roles to play and in that, I have several product managers who are women who are like mothers also but they get the shit done when it comes to it and they get it done very good in a better way. So I just want to say that when you are in office and lots of depends on the culture and lots of things depends on the manager and the office environment. So at that time if you want to play a woman victim card, in Ola several times it happens we have sprints which has to go till night it's 12 o'clock in the midnight but still I'm at office because I want to release that item. I feel satisfied when my things get in the prod and when I was developing app and I developed Ola share so when people were using that share and when my friends introduced me to other friends they see the girl who did Ola share I become so happy and I don't count the days when I have worked for nights at night because that is the satisfying and happiest thing for me. So if you want to get an equal pay scale and you want to get the responsibility you have to play the responsibility equally also. That is the thing I want to tell. Thank you. Okay so I can give you a contrarian view a little bit of contrarian view. So there are I mean and again because I work in this the kind of research I do in this and the discussions we have around this I would say so there are a lot of internal and external barriers both that are holding women back when it comes to really like shattering the glass ceiling right like Hillary Clinton and I mean some internal barriers of course have to do with what Sheryl Sandberg talks about right that you need to lean in you need to sit at the table instead of holding yourself back when like you said staying back and working on that sprint getting it out the door raising your hand if there is a very challenging project that is being offered and not saying that oh but I don't think I know 100% of what is required so there are tons of internal barriers that women face and that kind of I mean one could have to do with nature and nurture right I mean by nature women are known to be more perfectionist than men and by nurture you're always you're called bossy you're called aggressive if you are very outspoken versus a man being called a leader so those are all the internal barriers that we go through even as a company though in corporate work places there are several barriers that hold women back right I mean if you one of the very important things when it comes to career advancement is networking opportunities now when networking opportunities mostly will be in the evening or night in bars, smoking clubs they end up excluding women and especially if there are women with families, children to go back to it's very difficult to make the time and the bandwidth to attend those networking opportunities and if you're not networking and I'm sure this is true of all worlds technical and non-technical at the end of the day you need to get to the right people in the companies to keep advancing in your careers second is of course finding mentors and sponsors in companies most of the time if you look up they're all men and it's very difficult then look up in your org structure in the company org structure they'll be all men and it's very difficult then for women to reach out to male mentors sponsors even though it shouldn't be men end up being more comfortable mentoring and sponsoring other men and without getting the right mentorship and sponsorship it's very difficult to advance in your careers another thing that I also see very often is flexibility especially in the technical world there's a lot of flexibility that can be provided but women are always almost judged or evaluated negatively for asking for flexibility so if there was that sprint that made you work on it till midnight it would be great if your boss said that hey you need to get back home to make dinner for your kids and put them to sleep why don't you finish doing that and then finish that work today but as long as you get the shit done I don't care whether you're doing it from here right now or you will do it at some point during the day and we are a long way away from flexibility in India even though we have technology supporting it it's a mindset that needs to support it in fact in many companies also they have run experiments where they have provided flexible job roles to men and women and they were shocked to realize that the men were opting for it much more than the women and the reason for that was because women were just worried about being judged negatively for opting for flexibility and the men were like oh yes please give that flexibility to me I would love that so yeah there's still a lot of internal external barriers that we need to get across if we really want those women to reach the precedent of the United States level yeah so I think I agree with the internal barrier that's causing more than the external maybe I don't know my experience has been positive like what Richard was mentioning I have not seen a case because I have never thought whether I can say this or I can demand this that kind of a question luckily never occurred to me later most of it like okay I want this okay I don't care what others think you can see what happens maybe it was lucky to maybe brought up in that way or I don't know and then it's always like that then it started realizing okay these internal barriers exist for many other people and then I realized that okay I don't have to be caring about what others think okay if you want it you demand it and then see okay what happens and then work it doesn't work it works if it is for you because I think it has a huge play in this societal pressures like how you go for work how do you manage I mean I started ignoring it I mean there is no you can't control others behaviors like I mentioned I don't think this is much true with the gender diversity every place that societal pressure exists I would say that I had created that habit of ignoring I don't think it is relevant to me that might have been one thing maybe when I look back that would have been one thing that helped me to reach at least I don't know whether it is a huge ladder or something but wherever I am I am happy with my career so but that how do you encourage people to do that like speak up right I think that's what Sanjeev also mentioned in the book I mean you demand things you go and ask what you want see what happens right how do you encourage that I think when Sainab approached me for this particular talk what I am saying was one thing that I don't why I the question I had was is this the right forum to bring it up I think the problem is at homes at colleges at schools right where they don't encourage people to talk right I mean when you stand up and ask a question it was misstretched and then that itself is like a huge discouragement when you are at 8 year old 10 year old 20 year old and then by the time you are 22 or 23 when you start your career mindset is fixed for this kind of things so so the problem is much much before that I think Paul Graham has written an article related to this I believe someone else was telling me this I am not read that fully but that is I think is the problem right it has to start at the very end age I mean there is nothing wrong if you are asking for I mean you are not as long as you are not doing any harm to otherwise other one others you should ask things how do you encourage that maybe as women as parents we should encourage that to our kids and then that might be a change it can change maybe few years down the line but that is where it has to start because starting at the age of 22 or 23 might be too late that is why I think thinking on this at this point if there are any questions we should really or any doubts in your mind any questions any comments please feel free to share them we are down to the last few minutes of the panel so it would be good to kind of hear from the audience hi my questions to you Neha you said you have these portal jobs for women do you like you mentioned the gap and to cover the gap in technology is really hard so is there some arrangement that these companies that come to you or you yourself as an organization provide to train these women to get back on get back to speed thank you that's a great question so there are lots of different initiatives we are doing to bridge that gap one thing is of course that we constantly on our portal have tons of workshops webinars that we constantly offer to help women and re-skill second thing that we do is we get companies to offer returning programs so what returning programs is that the way college students have a three month, six month internship program we are getting companies to offer internships for women who want to get back and over they pay the women a stipend for that period of time and over a three month or six month period they help in upskilling that women on the job and that has been a very successful way in getting back the third thing that we are doing is in fact we just launched an initiative called bring her back specifically for women in tech what we did is we got an IT giant to open up 30 job openings in 7 cities we got talent bridge to provide assessment tests for each of those job openings and then we got simply learn to provide retraining for those women so that they can then get hired by that IT company so as far as women tech is concerned if there is a gap in her career I think the training plus job have to go hand in hand thanks this is my question is like here I can app between the two mindsets like the first and the middle lady so can you can you give it on how can this mindset gap can be reduced like you internal barriers the women create themselves they think for this job they are not sufficient they are not 100 their skills are not 100% so what I have seen in guys you know when they don't know the new tech what they do they don't go to google learn it and say to imagine yes I can do that job but what I've seen in girls no they go back no no I'm scared of doing that tech I don't know come on so it's dependent on person to person it does not have to play a role like a man and a woman it just have that you have to push harder so when you start pushing harder you you do that job and then things get done so the differences between me and her opinion is because what are my experiences in the way I have worked in the way I have asked sometimes my managers were like I have given the project to that so no I also want that same amount of work I like challenging things so you have to go to your manager and ask them demand that like Lina also said when you want something you demand it you grab it because opportunity will always not coming to you you also have to go and take it so that's the only thing is the difference between guys and girls I have seen guys go even when they are not ready girls just when they think when they are 100% ready only then they will speak that should not be the idea in fact the two of us have a lot in common because I am really hoping that other women will also start thinking like this so I think we should really give her a round of applause that she is already there okay hi so this question is about looking this mic has a problem I think so this is my question would be to Neha and Zaina both because your people see people coming in your company so we are doing so much around women in tech but are you seeing is this fight bringing in any change we have just pick up we have really just pick up in fact when I thought about starting jobs for her one of the biggest things that I wanted to validate which is why when the complete MVP route only in Bangalore was that will companies really take them back and that was something that I wasn't even sure about and that was in March 2015 it was one and a half years ago right because one I wasn't sure that is this just social speak or do they really mean it right are they willing to put their money where their mouth is even today we see a huge spectrum of companies we see from companies ranging from companies who don't want to hire women who don't want to hire mothers who don't want to hire women on a career break two companies who are looking at diversity as a check box okay two companies who really do care and the reason why the companies which really do care is also and we have to remember that companies are for profit okay I'm not talking I mean one of the companies once asked me to speak to the CSR department and I wasn't really sure what I would say to the CSR department but companies the companies which are falling into the third category are the companies who are realizing that hey if we want to be competitive and if we want to really progress we need to invest in our talent pipeline and we can't ignore this talent pool and I'm talking about and ignore the talent pool of women right how care they don't want to build companies which are just full of men I'm really sorry I don't need to offend the men but I'm sure even the men would like to have female colleagues diversity is really important to get diverse perspectives and diverse capabilities it would be such a boring world if there was only one sex in it I think I don't have a straight forward answer to that question I think that's a question that's been bothering me as well when I look back at our conferences sometimes you have dismal records of the fact that there's not a single woman speaker in the audience but does that mean that there are no women practice that particular technology I don't think that that's really the case I guess one of the issues that we've obviously faced is that we need to we need to be more out there and reaching out to more and more people to participate in what we do I'm sure there are women out there and I think what we do recognize is the fact that one oftentimes we ask women to come up on stage and speak like am I really qualified to do this I think that's where the perfectionist issue comes up and I think there are many times that I've had this struggle and I would tell somebody like I was inviting somebody in this panel and the person refused and I said that's our problem we're just not willing to come up and speak because we somehow just feel like you know it's you know we're just not qualified to speak and that's not really about qualification it's really about the confidence at the same time this is so cultural and so ingrained in us that you know if we don't know something end to end then we're not going to come out and speak the other is there are not many women who actually talk about the work that they do and that makes it harder to go and seek them out and I think part of the reason that Richa is here today is because we've just been interacting and you know I reached out and she reached out and I got a response and I said okay you know what I think you're somebody that people have to listen to because clearly you know somebody who's actually you know trying to get a voice out there and I think that that is really important I think both for our careers as well as for our personal and political lives that if we have to be out there we really have to kind of make ourselves visible and that is a question how do we make ourselves visible we have to start getting shameless about the fact that you know we're actually doing good work and we have to put it out there so I mean as much as you know I always think in transactional terms I'm working full time in the company I have a two and a half year old daughter and I keep thinking do I want to spend my time on Twitter because maybe sometimes I should really talk about what I do almost ten and a half back I think when you started it so I really like the concept of that and at that point of time I was on a career break so but what I felt was whatever opportunities were there in the company everyone asked for at least you know a two three year experience okay but what I've seen from my personal friend circle is that either they are girls who actually have a three year experience and then go on a career break due to marriage or whatever reason it is or there are girls who's just passed out of their college and then just got married okay it might be a personal choice or it may not be a personal choice and then it wasn't even that you know they had some restrictions because of which they could not work but somehow life turned out in such a way that they did not go back into a company to work or start their career as such so how do you how can you in your portal bring that up you know so people who are interested in getting back and starting their career but do not have relevant experience especially in technology can do that that's a really super question and that's something that we've been really struggling with and I'll tell you the reason why we're struggling because companies who have fresher roles don't want a 30 year old woman in it and I mean we just released a video in fact and you since you're following jobs and thank you for that and I can't believe you knew about a one and a half years ago when we were at MVP stage but we just released a video which was 10 career myths of restarters or women restarters and the first thing we put out there was that people say that older women cannot report to younger bosses and we put Cheryl Sandberg who reports 32 year old Mark Lakerberg right and of course pretty much everybody in the tech startup world because look at the age of the entrepreneurs but that's a huge problem that the fresher roles they're looking for and we're trying they're getting there we're trying to convince them that hey don't just think about that that person has to join in a role according to her age it can be just according to her experience so thank you for that feedback that was really good I wanted to ask about this extremely overused phrase about women who have it all so for the record I'm with Nui who thinks that you know women can't you compromise on one thing and that's the only way you can be really good at something else so I wanted to know what your individual opinions are very quickly because I have a feeling that you might disagree with each other can you repeat it can women have it all right so there's a lot that has been spoken about this topic and my current take on it is that yes we can have it all just not at the same time so if I'm here then I'm not with my kids and I'm not in my office if I there's a month when there's a huge drive going on at work and I need to just focus on that then that's my all if my kids are sick and I need to take care of them then maybe that needs to be focused on and that's my all so if you look at the overall picture then yes of course you can have it all I mean it's almost like telling men that hey if you're working you can't be a sport so you can have it all just don't expect everything to be perfect you don't have to be perfect at work and perfect mother and perfect wife and perfect colleague and know that you're juggling different balls and at some times you have to keep some balls up in the air and that's okay figure out at what point you need which balls to be in your hand and which ones you can keep I don't think I have anything more than I explained it really well look at all what I do is keep only one problem if your kids are not well focus on that if there is a major bug of office then focus on that if you have some other things at the personal life focus on that so I think the problem is like we try to become very perfect and I have to balance everything in a very perfect manner I have given up on that maybe the moment I there was my first baby then very well it is a compromise and then keeping the right expectation with others that I think is a major thing keeping the right expectation with others that including your kids when they are growing up this is my time spend quality time everywhere so don't try to be a perfectionist jump in wherever you think that requires more amount of so whoever is crying take it the right attention so in my view this time I agree with Neha and Leena that yes you don't want to have to become perfectionist but yes I this thing I will say that yes you can have it all and the way you want it if you want to get through our senior role and you want to play a major role in your company or you want to become a CTO or CEO yes definitely you can do that have you seen a guy who who get his ambitions less just because he is becoming father no he never does that so if you want to have a kid and you want to run a company yes you can do it but just manage to get a good partner if the good partner is there then I think we have two questions from twitter before that I wanted to ask kind of the really small question how do you have a go to resource or go to answer to deal with microaggression on everyday basis for example if you are going to an interview and the interviewer asks you are you married well it's none of your business or if someone says you know you've lost weight and they think it's a compliment whereas you know you don't really want to hear that so when men do that kind of thing to you at your workplace you deal with it I can give you an example when I went through the microaggression did you say microaggression so I was once asked what our revenue model was and when I explained that that person was not very convinced and then he asked that okay okay tell me a little bit about your background and I told him and then he said oh the Kemwell group is behind this Kemwell group is your husband and I was mad right he was waiting to figure out who my husband was or who my father was or who the man behind jobs for her is to be able to figure it out in his head that okay this organization might work so one thing I realized now that I am older and wiser is that you know what there's no point there's really no point of even like indulging in those conversations with those people it's like that movie Madagascar I don't know how many of you have watched Madagascar what do they say in the end just smile and wave just smile and wave yeah don't fight with stupid so ignore it because you can't change others what you can do is control yourself but it takes a while to get to that level of it may not have to be from what I've seen is from the society so that's a nice thing to do I haven't experienced that kind of question still now like is there a man behind you success yes no I haven't experienced that and if I do I will what will be my reaction I will just go mad over that person you know start cat fighting because this is my success that belongs to me and me only I had a question for mayha actually so I don't know whether that's around so it's a very good initiative that you're doing jobs for her but are you just concentrating on the tech side you missed out the part or are you also looking at the mindset shift because the change right are you concentrating on that too on the women do you have so I mean we're looking at solving the problem from lots of different angles okay the first and the core which needs to be solved is first bringing out enough opportunities for women first we need to make sure that those jobs are there those companies are there who are welcoming them back because we can do enough of these we can talk about it we can mentor them we can train them but at the end of the day the job is not there then where does that lead us right so we are focusing on the job but it is extremely important and for I mean all of you over here who have been successful in your careers we need to be able to inspire and help others who are struggling right so help in mentoring them help in providing the stories of how you deal with situations help in re-skilling in whatever way possible and in opening up opportunities and we are doing tech non-tech HR finance admin data entry from CTO to data entry we are looking at all sorts of jobs all sorts of levels and definitely trying for fresher jobs too so we have a couple of questions from twitter the first one is what do each of you do towards changing the landscape for women yeah actually I don't think I can claim I have done anything on that other than other than getting when the conversation comes up getting others no kid is what I am thinking so I don't think I have much answer for that maybe Zainab or which I can can I please tell you by being a woman CTO she is doing a lot in changing the landscape for women in tech yeah but being a role model itself is fantastic so at least every woman in your company and women who know you know that it is possible to be a female CTO even while having a family so I think that is a picture yes so Neha and Lina I look forward to you because you are playing amazing roles being a mother and being a CTO and running your founding your company so me being an engineer here I think you can do it do it what you want so what I feel is like I always whenever I meet women so I create awareness like you know you have to join pursue your career and for that I am a part of women take makers program and I am part of which is part of BLR droid so I have been speaking and giving sessions for like last two years in the meetups and I want to tell you that in those meetups when so many girls come from different colleges of Bangalore I see the happiness in their eyes when a woman speaker is up on the stage so when they see that they get inspired so by taking these initiatives and having more sessions where a woman is speaking you can inspire other girls and men can also play a role they can mentor girls in their team to come forward and speak here the last question is what is on your wish list what are some changes that you would like to see to make life for women in tech more fulfilling and fair one of them which is what Neha pointed out is flexibility being able to just enable whether it's men, women, chance whoever to be able to like you know have the flexibility to work from anywhere and have better systems of accountability I think that flexibility is extremely important and important also to break your mindset that the showing up at work is not equal to productivity I think one of the biggest things in my wish list is for companies to stop judging the bagel by the whole right so for them to stop looking at the gap on women's resumes and to judge them on the basis of their aptitude and their attitude because at the end of the day technology is going to change again so you might as well hire someone who has who knows how to learn right who can adapt, who can relearn, who can reskill herself and take that risk and take that chance because I'm pretty sure that they will be happy for it I think my opinion you have to go to yourself and start thinking that okay there is no limit everything is okay either it succeeds or it fails sky is not going to fall down if you fail so that internal barriers, internal fixes is what I think we have to attack more that how maybe initiatives like Jofoher will help them to do that creating more awareness that's one place I have a limit, max I can do that kind of thing is what we have to change, you can see more and more people doing that we are making some dent okay thank you very much for this and for sitting through I'm sorry you have exceeded time but I really hope this was worth your while thanks a lot to the panelists I think this was really inspiring