HYDERABAD: Forty all-female teams wracked brains to produce best possible AI solutions to two of the most pressing problems confronting Indian woman at the first ever HerTech Hackathon that concluded in Hyderabad on Sunday.
The two-day event witnessed woman-only teams engaging in intense 24-hour coding and validating ideas to generate innovative solutions on two problems:
- How can AI help healthcare agencies locate maternal healthcare facilities and deploy ANM teams more efficiently in rural areas?
- How can we use Social Media Chatter to find educational content on menstruation and create outreach campaigns on awareness of menstruation for girls?
After a demo of Prototypes by the competing teams, an expert panel of VCs, entrepreneurs and sponsors selected three winners.
The winners are:
- Team Inhaloo – Led by Lakshmi Jayashree that provided a solution for asthmatic mothers in rural areas using AI.
- Team VaidyaSakhi– Led by Sriranjani, the solutions provides pregnant women and adolescents of rural areas a service-oriented platform powered by AI to avail quality antenatal services with dignity at their own doorsteps.
- Team WeGo– Led by Srivani, the solution specifies health camp locations using Weighted Clustering and dynamic prediction for the next health camp.
The winners get access to ThoughtWorks Vapasi Initiative and mentorship opportunities with Facebook SheLeadsTech Community, Incubation program by WSquare and Free Courses in AI & ML by One Fourth Labs, an IIT-M based Learning Lab, said Vandhana Ramanathan, CEO of Wsquare.
“As India’s leading co-working and incubation centre dedicated to women, Wsquare has undertaken the initiative to host India’s first, women led AI Hackathon and the response in Hyderabad was encouraging with over 140 registrations. Enthused by the success here, we move ahead to Gurgaon and Pune for the next editions of the hackathon,” Vandhana added.
According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap report, only 22% of professionals who work in AI across the globe are female. “Given the business’s growing interest and investment in AI, it’s important for us to ensure that any and all AI solutions should be created by as diverse a group as, the one that will benefit from it. Partnering with WSquare is in line with our consistent efforts to foster equal representation in the technology space,” said Tina Vinod, Head of Diversity and Inclusion, and Savita Hortikar, Head of Talent Acquisition for ThoughtWorks in India as part of ThoughtWorks’ #TalkTechToHer campaign.
As a strong advocate for Women in Tech and Return to Work for Women, Wsquare in Partnership with Facebook presents HerTech Hackathon powered by ThoughtWorks as a belief to encourage women in pursuing a career in AI & Emerging Technology and to increase Women Tech Leaders in our Country” said Jinal Patel, COO Wsquare.
