In an article written by Oddup Co-founder and COO, Jackie Lam in Dec 2017, “Where Are The Women In The Blockchain Network?” she asked a pertinent question and answered it in the same breath; a disruptive technology is around the corner and the gender diversity is all over the place.
It has been said that there are only 5% to 10% of women cryptocurrency users which anyway makes this a male-dominated industry. In some other statistics, there are supposedly only 2000 women pursuing core work in Blockchain, which includes those in non-tech capacities. This number would be less than 200 if we just count the techie women.
If we understand the emergence of blockchain or cryptocurrency, there were some social changes aligned to them, on an ideological level. While we all know that this technology was trying to remove the ills of mainstream finance, we have also witnessed greater transparency, removal of entry barriers to intermediary-less-finance and businesses and increased democratization of society.
This should have brought in greater equality too.
Having said that, if we for a moment put aside the gender inequality — which could be due to various reasons — we see an increased acceptance and participation of women in this arena. We are witnessing a multitude of women who have started creating valuable companies, businesses, and practices in the Blockchain industry.
These path-breaking ladies are the driving force of the new era and inspiring many other women, as well as men, to walk the path less traveled. So be it techies, coders, project and product specialists, business specialists, lawyers, chartered accountants, traders — we are seeing an increasing presence of women — which is an encouraging trend.
In our interactions with the Indian Blockchain industry, we have noticed the same pattern; a great many men, but a few amazing and charged-up women, who are creating a niche for themselves in this area.
Hard Fork — India’s 1st TV talk show dedicated to Crypto and Blockchain — is bringing some of these path-breaking women from India on the show in a special series dedicated to them.
In this special series on Hard Fork, we will discuss the work, challenges, and opportunities in this space for women and will also aim to encourage more women to ply this industry route.
Aanchal is the Managing partner of DayOrg Consulting Group, providing strategic, financial and legal consulting to organizations in disruptive technologies. A Chartered Accountant by profession, she is also a qualified Information Systems Auditor from ICAI.
Additionally, she is also an Agile Coach and project manager, with experience of working as Scrum Master for clients having managed projects and led teams both at client locations and offshore. Aanchal has extensive experience as a Functional Consultant in the Banking domain, making her a well-rounded Fintech professional.
As a certified Blockchain consultant, she is working as an ambassador for a couple of international Blockchain projects for the Indian market and also mentoring a startup in mental health space. Aanchal speaks and contributes regularly on various forums on Blockchain technology, use cases and the regulatory environment around the same.
Debajani is the bestselling author of four Amazon bestsellers “Blockchain from Concept to Execution”, “Ethereum for Architects and Developers”, “R3 Corda for Architects and Developers” and now “Ripple and Stablecoins: Building Banks of Tomorrow”.
She is a Solution Architect with close to two decades of experience in the industry. Her books in Blockchain have been translated to German and Chinese also. Debajani has also been a keynote speaker at Philadelphia PACT, NASSCOM, IIM, Delhi University, WomenWhoCode, Unicom, Amity, India International Centre, Cafit Reboot and many similar national and international tech events.
Pioneer Blockchain solutions designed and developed by Debajani are highly appreciated in India as well as abroad. She is also an Honorary Faculty with Amity University, an independent consultant, advisor & mentor to numerous reputed organizations in India and overseas.
Smriti is the CEO of Invacia Labs, Gurgaon. A BTech graduate from National Institute of Technology, Bhopal, she gained experience in data analytics while working for Citibank Banamex, one of the largest commercial banks in Latin America.
She is also a blockchain developer and certified expert by IBM and The Hong Kong University and has worked on Ethereum and R3 Corda to develop various applications. Smriti holds proclivity for project development and management at large.
In the team, she takes responsibility for R&D, product engineering and operations along with regulatory and compliance activities. She has also authored a patent on a system for a secure exchange of traded securities and methods thereof.
Being an avid investor since her teens, she believes in value investing. Before this venture, she got 23 Korean investors to India partnering with Kotak Securities. This led to the genesis of InvestoAsia, which is working towards revolutionizing personal finance.
Tarusha is an award-winning entrepreneur and has been working in the field of technology for over a decade. She has co-founded multiple tech ventures — some of which have become self-sustaining machines — including Cloudrino — which is a cloud management and infra platform.
She is currently on the founding team of Ethx.co, a decentralized cloud, and a blockchain suite. A self-taught techie, she takes care of Operations and Design. She is also working as a podcast host for @livingonblockchain.com
Tarusha has been a part of several accelerator programs all over the world and has won the STEP 360 award for Technology, as well as a DST grant award from the Government of India and IIT-Delhi. She is one of the finalists for the Anita Borg’s WEQ’s cohort for the year, 2019. She has been felicitated by the Indian Government, under the Dept. of Science and Technology.
She mentors women entrepreneurs, in starting and scaling their business without compromising their mental health.
founderINDIA is a new-age business media startup platform for Startups & Young Businesses, from the house of Green Cheese Media. The brand has launched India’s first TALK TV Channel that hosts a bouquet of talk shows covering several issues, genres, beats, sectors, and industries.
They discuss the potential, share the news and help entrepreneurs achieve the success they deserve. It is a digital business news platform that broadcasts talk shows, chats, conversations, interviews with leading figures from the world of business, politics sports, entertainment, social sector, and others.
From reviewing the business of politics and world affairs to discussing the emerging trends in technology, FMCG, hospitality, travel, publishing, and many others, they intend to deep-dive into all that is relevant to the young and ambitious India.
The Hard Fork talk show has been conceptualized as an ongoing series of episodes with a plan for multiple seasons. Each season will have a theme around which the discussions with industry and thought leaders will be aligned. Each episode per season will have a quality guest with expertise and experience of business in the same subject and with whom our host will have a candid discussion with.
Hard Fork Specials is a shorter version of our talk show which we will undertake from time to time. These short and special series of episodes will highlight either a burning or important topic, a new technology, special set of people or something special to showcase the Crypto and Blockchain scene in India as well as overseas.
Currently, we are focused on some important themes, “Women in Blockchain” being the first one of them.
The special series will comprise of 4 episodes and will be broadcast on Amazon Fire TV on the founderINDIA channel. It will also be broadcast simultaneously on the founderINDIA channels on YouTube and Facebook.
The ‘Women in Blockchain’ show schedule has been fixed and we will be doing the broadcast as follows:
We are extremely happy and excited to be hosting this show and the series. Please leave a comment, like, subscribe to the channel and share it with like-minded people and beyond. We would love to hear genuine feedback from our viewers about each episode on Hard Fork by founderINDIA.
Write to us at [email protected] and [email protected].
