Pure Storage-Zinnov Report on Gender Diversity in the DeepTech Sector Highlights Need for Greater focus on University Enrolment and Workplace Retention
The report explores gender diversity in India’s DeepTech sector and the obstacles hindering women's career advancement
Bangalore, India – April 30, 2024 — Pure Storage® (NYSE: PSTG), the IT pioneer that delivers the world’s most advanced data storage technologies and services, in association with Zinnov, a global management consulting firm, today released a report that examines women’s representation in Global Capability Centers (GCCs), particularly in the DeepTech sector, and their correlation with the top engineering universities in India. The report titled, ‘Towards a Gender Equitable World: Unveiling Diversity in DeepTech,’ highlights the need for greater focus on university enrolment in STEM courses and workplace retention to address the low representation of women in the DeepTech sector.
Report Highlights
The report is an analysis of women engineering graduates between 2004 and 2023 from 42 top engineering universities leveraged by GCCs for recruitment, with particular emphasis on 23 top institutions deemed to be preferred by DeepTech companies. The report, which also includes both quantitative and qualitative findings based on insights from women in the DeepTech sector, highlights that the ongoing gender disparity is largely due to two main factors: a shortage of women’s enrolment in these institutions; and a significant rate of mid to senior level dropouts within the industry.
Some of the other key takeaways from the report include:
- GCCs are leading the charge for a diverse workforce with 28% women in their workforce, yet they face unique challenges in achieving gender parity in DeepTech organisations, where the gender diversity stands at 23%.
- The median representation of women graduates from top engineering universities stands at 25% between 2020 and 2023, which directly affects the inflow of women candidates in GCCs, especially in the DeepTech sector. Despite this disparity in women’s representation, women graduates consistently outperformed in securing placements compared to the overall average in top-tier universities.
- With a mere 6.7% of women in the Executive level1 in GCCs and 5.1% in DeepTech organisations, there is a considerable decrease in the available talent pool of women as they move up their careers. Family and caregiving responsibilities, limited access to career advancement and leadership opportunities, poor work-life balance are some of the key factors influencing women’s attrition.
- Bengaluru leads in diversity representation among tier-1 cities in India, with 31.4% in GCCs and 14% in DeepTech.
Industry Significance
Recognizing the unique hurdles women face in their technology careers, organisations are implementing strategic initiatives such as targeted leadership development, returnship programs, pay equity measures, caregiving support, and flexible work arrangements to address women’s attrition and enhance gender diversity across levels. While reducing women's attrition from the workforce is crucial, equal attention is being placed on strategies to encourage more women to pursue STEM courses.
Executive Insights
“While India proudly leads in the number of women STEM graduates globally, their underrepresentation in the deep tech workforce stems from systemic barriers hindering their education and career advancement. To unlock the full potential of our talent pool, we need to take a comprehensive approach, including strategic actions to increase the enrollment of women in leading technological institutions and retaining them in the workforce.”
Ajeya Motaganahalli
VP Engineering & Managing Director, India R&D, Pure Storage
“Advancement in any industry is stagnant without equity. While DeepTech has pushed the boundaries of possibility, the sobering truth is that the sector has only 5.1% women at the Executive level. Interventions to solve the talent pipeline issue and create work environments enabling women to thrive have become an urgent necessity. Initiatives like leadership development programs, returnship opportunities, and flexible work arrangements introduced by Global Capability Centers (GCCs) are a positive start, but true progress demands unwavering commitment and consistency from the entire ecosystem.” – Karthik Padmanabhan, Managing Partner, Zinnov
The full report can be found here: Towards A Gender Equitable World
1 Executive level: women with 16+ years of experience, doesn’t necessarily mean leadership positions
About Pure Storage
Pure Storage (NYSE: PSTG) delivers the industry’s best platform to store, manage, and protect the world’s data. With a cloud experience across a unified storage operating environment, Pure empowers every organisation with the agility to meet evolving data requirements at speed and scale, while reducing total cost of ownership. Pure believes it can make a meaningful impact in reducing data centre emissions worldwide by providing a storage platform that enables customers to significantly reduce their carbon and energy footprint. Pure is proud to be a customer-first organisation, as evidenced by the highest Net Promoter Score in the industry. For more information, visit www.purestorage.com.
Pure Storage, the “P” Logo and the marks on the Pure Storage Trademark List are trademarks or registered trademarks of Pure Storage Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. The Trademark List can be found at purestorage.com/trademarks. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.
About Zinnov
Founded in 2002, Zinnov is a global management and strategy consulting firm in New York, Santa Clara, Houston, Seattle, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Gurgaon, Pune, and Paris. Over the past 22 years, Zinnov has successfully consulted with over 250+ Fortune 500 enterprises to develop actionable insights to help them accelerate their technology journeys to create value – across dimensions of revenue, transformation, and optimisation. With core expertise in Digital Engineering Talent, Digital Transformation, Innovation, and Outsourcing Advisory, Zinnov assists clients by:
- Structuring and implementing Digital Transformation levers enabled by technologies like AI/ML, Intelligent Automation, Cloud, IOT, etc.;
- Helping global companies outline and drive their open innovation programs, design and operate accelerator programs, and enable collaboration with start-ups across specific use cases and predefined outcomes;
- Growing revenue for companies’ products and services in newer markets through account intelligence, market entry, and market expansion advisory;
- Enabling global companies to develop and optimise a global engineering talent footprint through centre setups and accelerators - in an as-a-service model, as well as optimizing their global portfolios, to achieve higher R&D efficiencies, innovation, and productivity;
- Advising global PE firms in asset shortlisting and target evaluation, commercial due diligence, and value creation.
With their team of experienced consultants, subject matter experts, and research professionals, Zinnov serves clients from across multiple industry verticals including Enterprise Software, BFSI, Healthcare, Automotive, Retail, and Telecom in the US, Europe, Japan, and India.
For more information, visit https://zinnov.com.
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