‘The future is yours to build,’ Neha Bagaria, Founder of HerKey, tells women
At SheSparks 2026 at IIT Delhi, Nega Bagaria urged women not to fall behind and be involved in the building of an AI-driven future.
“The AI age is not like the internet-era; it’s like the era when electricity was first generated. That’s the kind of power this technology has when it comes to disrupting our entire lives,” said Neha Bagaria, Founder and CEO of HerKey, a career engagement platform for women in India.
During her keynote speech at SheSparks, YourStory’s flagship event for celebrating women, Bagaria urged women not to fall behind and be involved in the building of the coming future where AI will play an increasingly essential part.
Women in building technology
The founder said women have always been excluded whenever any new technology was being built. And by the time some women had researched enough to raise their hands, it was too late. “We run two shifts. One at work and the other at home,” she said.
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But the one good thing about AI, Bagaria emphasised, is how easy it has made learning. One can learn about it through social media and online classes without much difficulty—a privilege she believes did not exist before.
“This kind of AI literacy is not just for techies. That’s like saying that mobile phones are for techies. AI is a great leveller between non-techies and techies. As women, we need to realise that it is affecting every role we hold. We need to be up there where the world is.”
AI’s male bias
If AI is going to decide whether someone is going to get a job, what one’s credit worthiness is, or whether a symptom is that of a heart attack, it needs to learn more about women, Bagaria pointed out, adding that, right now, AI is male-centric.
Bagaria said the data that has been fed to AI is “male, pale, and stale”.
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“What it means is that AI has no reference for what women’s needs are, how their bodies are, and how non-linear their career paths are. Reports have shown that whenever a company has left AI to shortlist candidates for a role, any resume with words like ‘women’s basketball’ or ‘women’s soccer’ were automatically rejected,” she said.
As consumers, she reiterated, women need to think whether the product that has been out for use is representative of women or not.
Women as creators in the age of AI
“It is imperative that we start thinking about how AI can be used when we (women) are creating. We need to be the founders, the designers, the product leaders and also the investors, where we are actually backing products that AI has built keeping women’s data in mind,” Bagaria said.
In 2026, the founder says, women have two choices at hand: to act or not to act. Either women repeat the same mistakes of the past or they take initiative and get involved.
“At HerKey, we have chosen to do the latter. Using our 11 years of data, we have built an AI work-life coach Simkey specifically built for women using women’s data. The information was based on our 1 lakh sessions and 2 lakh experts, and involves the career journeys of 5.5 million women,” she said.
“At the end of the day, the future is hers to build. It’s not for somebody else to build it for her,” she concluded.
Edited by Swetha Kannan