How this Army wife is providing work from home opportunities in AI and ML to more than 800 women
Meeta Verma, the Founder and CEO, Worksera is helping more and more women work online from their home even in sectors like AI and ML.
As an Army wife, Meeta Verma spent 12 years moving to a new city or town every two years across India. An engineer by choice, she realised that these constant moves meant that she could not have a stable career.
Meeta Verma, Worksera
Meeta started exploring work opportunities online, started freelancing and was able to make a name for herself. “ I was among the top five percent freelancers on Elance in my category.”
This experience taught her freelancing was the solution that could help millions of women work from home and have a steady stream of income. It also gave her an insight into the challenges faced by women freelancers. This prompted her to start Worksera, a platform that helps bridge the demand and supply gap for women freelancers.
“None of the international platforms are easy to navigate and many Indian women find it very hard to start on them. In India, only 18 percent of the freelancers are estimated to be women, whereas almost 2/3rd freelancer in the US are women! Additionally, there have been large number of cases where the women freelancer was not paid even after completion of the work. These were some of the problems I wanted to address with Worksera.”
Spoorthi Kinhal, Meeta Verma and Merlin Mathew
Work from home - artificial intelligence to machine learning
Worksera is free for women to sign up, and provides them work from home opportunities and helps clients find the right freelancer to deliver it. One of its key focus points is semi-skilled computer literate women who can help in data preparation for artificial intelligence and machine learning startups and other companies. They have more than 800 women on the platform.
Though Meeta started Worksera on her own, she now has three partners - Spoorthy Kinhal, Merlin Mathew and Radhika. They also received a grant from the Government of Karnataka at the Elevate 2018 Startup programme.
Meeta and her team are now focused on leveraging technology to make the Worksera experience safer and better for women freelancers, as well as clients.
“Worksera has already touched the lives of hundreds of women and we are poised to help the next million,” says Meeta who is on a mission to ensure more and more women don't lose out on financial opportunities just because they stay at home.
