Archtech India to start IT centre for women

The Artech-Dalmia Centre for Information Technology is setting up a centre for information technology at Banasthali Vidyapith, a 70-year-old institution dedicated to providing education to women in Rajasthan about 60 km from Jaipur.

The centre would offer Bachelors and Masters degree and M Tech in Information Technology (IT). According to Artech India Managing Director Ajay Poddar, the idea was to bring IT closer to the female students, and to tap students from areas that get ignored by the conventional universities and institutes.

"The Artech Centre would not only provide Bachelors and Masters degrees in the domain of Information Technology but would also support other departments of the Vidyapith," said Banasthali Vidyapith Director Aditya Shastri.

To impart better and faster education, the IT centre will be equipped with the latest technological such as internally networked specialised computer laboratories, communication lab, software engineering lab, VLSI design lab and a multimedia laboratory.

Equipped with gigabit LAN and high bandwidth internet connectivity, it will also offer video conferencing seminar room, hi-tech lecture rooms and library.

"The IT centre will help women gain expertise in an area that is important to the economy," said Artech Information Systems LLC (the parent organisation of Artech India) President Ranjini Poddar. "We are trying to address the shortage of women in software development industry through this initiative," she added.

Surveys have repeatedly exposed a lacuna in IT hiring trends - there is a visible tilt towards male developers. While a recent survey found the number of women in IT industry is less than 30 per cent, some estimates put it at less than 10 per cent.

"When compared to the percentage of women in other fields, this is woefully low," said Poddar. "We believe it is the responsibility of companies like ours to take steps to close this gap," she added.

Artech India Board Chairman MH Dalmia said, "Being a company with 60 per cent women employees, Artech is especially sensitive towards empowerment of women. The partnership between Artech and Banasthali, two women-centric organisations, will go a long way towards the achievement of these goals."

The IT centre at Banasthali will train women in all branches of IT, hardware, software and communication. It would also provide research and development facilities.

Artech Infosystems Pvt Ltd (Artech India) is part of Artech Worldwide. with its head quarters in New Jersey (USA), Artech Worldwide has shore-to-shore operations in the USA and at Dalian, China. The Artech Worldwide plans to end the current year with a total turnover exceeding Rs 520 crore, up from approximately Rs 220-crore turnover in the previous year.

Artech India is a 26-year-old, ISO 9001:2000-certified, IT company with its core competencies in the areas of software products, turnkey project management, IT consulting and staff augmentation, infrastructure management, and business process outsourcing.

In India the head quarters of the company is in Noida. The company has its solutions development centres at Noida and Bangalore and offices at Kolkata, Pune and Hyderabad.