WiT-ACE (Women in Technology-Accelerated Career Experiences) has raised $1 million as part of its first seed fund led by founders of CitiusTech. The round also saw the participation of CP Gurnani, CEO of Tech Mahindra; Sumita Ambasta, Founder and Executive Director, Flowering Tree Inc.; Subodh Bhargava, Independent Director Chairman at Tata Communications and Wartsila India; Vikram Chachra, Founding Partner, 8i Ventures; Sonny Iqbal, Partner, and Co-leader, Family Business Practice at Egon Zehnder. It also got support from Dexter Capital.
The company uses this investment to scale up its tech platform as well as for its expansion and strategic partnerships.
Biotechnology, Big Data, Cloud Computing, and Analytics are all new forces that are rapidly advancing. Women make up just 34 percent of the workforce in India at the entry stage, with only 18 percent in managerial roles and less than 1 percent in the C-suite.
WiT-ACE, founded by Anuranjita Kumar in 2018, is a forum dedicated to raising women's involvement in the STEM workforce. In a short period, it has begun working with over 100 companies to engage, encourage, and employ women in decision-making through their digital platform and virtual goods.
The platform is working towards policy and education impact in the industry through its industry-governmental-academic partnerships.
“The 100+ clients engaged with over 200k women on the platform in less than 11 months in one of the toughest years for business, gives us a good grip of industry needs and the confidence to grow this organisation to the next phase of exponential growth. We are focused on the progressive and measurable impact on bridging gender gaps, through skilling and employment that will lead the transformation," says, Anuranjita Kumar, Founder & CEO, WiT-ACE.
"It is humbling to have partners who are mentors and industry torchbearers themselves and we are confident their support will be the much-required springboard towards achieving our target of impacting 20 million women by 2025,” she further added.
Anuranjita Kumar is a well-known human resource veteran with over 26 years of experience overseeing various assignments around the world, including Citibank and the RBS Group. She has a proven track record of implementing DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) initiatives in a range of organisations and geographies, and she is a well-known advocate for taking action in this field.
Jagdish Moorjani, COO, CitiusTech commented, “WiT-ACE has multiple tracks parallelly focused on developing women as front runners to lead organisations of tomorrow. Both Rizwan Koita and I believe the ‘gender gap in multiple ways holds us back as a nation to achieve our full potential and this can be achieved only through consistent efforts that deliver measurable results. We see the potential and believe industry participation could really move the needle.”
“Any effort to correct gender gap needs to be measurable and sustainable, for which we need to tackle the real issues from the root level and further nurture inclusive growth. I believe that technology has a great role to play in ensuring this, and the initiatives led by WiT-ACE in this regard are truly inspiring. I look forward to the next phase of their efforts towards enabling a gender-equal and inclusive future,” added CP Gurnani, CEO & MD Tech Mahindra.
Sumita Ambasta, Founder and Executive Director, Flowering Tree Inc., and Founder & Trustee, Plaksha, stated, “Female workforce participation in India has been declining from an already low 35 percent in 2010 to ~20 percent in 2020. At the executive level, women make up less than one percent of C-Suite executives. These facts reveal the immense work and potential ahead of an organisation like WiT-ACE. They have shown tremendous progress and impact in just a year and I look forward to partnering with them as they catalyse a workplace diversity revolution."
The company's goal is to include at least 50 percent of women in decision-making positions. To achieve this aim, the emphasis will be on strengthening the industry's current poor talent pool by focusing on skilling for women at all levels.
WIT-ACE intends to halt the decline of talented women in the workforce (currently 20 percent, down from 32 percent a decade ago) and raise the numbers across India by infusing at least one million qualified women into the workforce over the next four to five years through their concentrated efforts.
