[Women’s Day] OYO rolls out ‘#WomenInCtrl’, its first women-only hackathon in India

On International Women’s Day, Oyo has rolled out ‘#WomenInCtrl’ — the global hospitality tech platform’s first women-only hackathon in India. 

With this initiative, OYO is inviting women developers from across the country to create real-world, tech-first hospitality products for the Gurugram-headquartered company. 

The hackathon aims to promote diversity in tech, with a key focus on software development roles. OYO will then evaluate high-potential participants for roles in its technology team.

The virtual hackathon will run between March 8-20, and coders can register on the HackerEarth website to join the challenge. The challenge will test a candidate’s skill sets and knowledge around data structures, algorithms, APIs, and system design, among others. 

Under the competition, participants will get five hours to attempt and submit their innovative solutions to 10 Multiple Choice Questions and two live programming challenges. 

HackerEarth will evaluate the submissions and shortlist candidates for potential tech roles at the company and mentorship by OYO’s technology team, expected to begin within 24 to 48 hours of the hackathon.

OYO expects over 2,000 women developers to participate in the event. 

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In a conversation with HerStory, Ankit Mathuria, Chief Technology Officer, OYO Rooms, sheds more light on the upcoming hackathon:

Edited excerpts from the interview:

HerStory (HS): What is the key purpose of this hackathon? How does it aim to solve the larger issue of hiring women in tech roles?

Ankit Mathuria (AM): Today, while we are seeing more women enter the tech workforce, compared to a decade ago, engineering teams still have a long way to go. 

At OYO, over 10 percent of our tech team members are women, and we are working to improve diversity in our teams. We strongly believe customer-focused innovations happen when engineers from diverse backgrounds come together and solve problems. 

On International Women’s Day, we thought it would be great to give control of our tech development to women coders across India. We are confident to come across some fresh and impactful ideas. And thus, we have named the initiative, ‘Women In Ctrl’. This also gives us a chance to discover and work with the best minds in tech across the country. 

HS: What makes it tougher to hire women in tech? What can be done to solve this issue?  

AM: Today, we can all agree that technology is changing the world. Having a diverse team ensures creating easy-to-use, accessible, and inclusive products. To build such universal products, having people with different backgrounds and mindsets is helpful. 

To solve for diversity, leaders across the industry should drive momentum to encourage and facilitate children to take up technology as a career right from school and college levels. The education system should avoid biases that denote STEM studies as a male profession. 

The curriculum should include more stories on women technology pioneers and programmes to encourage more women in engineering and tech courses. Such women role models will inspire young girls to take up technology as their career option. 

When it comes to solving at the company level, HRs could prioritise hiring women from colleges. It is also important to promote flexibility for all employees. 

Moreover, having an equal or a majority of women applicants right at the first stage of the recruitment process can drive diversity within the tech industry. 

At OYO, we strive that 50 percent of applicants are women candidates, which enables us to ensure a healthy mix of diversity going into the process. Some companies have chosen to specifically assign some roles only to women candidates. 

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HS: What roles are you looking to offer? 

AM: We are looking to onboard software development engineers. It can be full-stack engineers, machine learning, data science, or cybersecurity experts — with at least two years of experience in the industry. 

At this juncture, the travel tech industry is innovating at a fast pace to meet the requirements of evolving travellers. Since OYO operates across diverse geographies, including India, South East Asia, Europe, the US, and the UK, among others, this is an exciting opportunity for young tech talent to build products in India for the world. 

The challenges will mainly focus on technical problem-solving. We will, therefore, test a candidate’s skill sets and knowledge around data structures, algorithms, APIs, and system design, among others. We are hoping to receive participation from over 2,000 women developers across India. 

HS: Will OYO conduct similar hackathons in the future? 

AM: Yes, absolutely! We will continue organising similar initiatives. Such initiatives allow us to learn and improve our overall talent engagement practices while welcoming diversity to OYO.