New Delhi [India] Jan 23 (ANI/BusinessWire India): TalentSprint has announced the expansion of its Women Engineers (WE) Program, with enhanced support from Google.

Building on the strong industry acceptance of the first cohort, the second cohort will select, train, and enable 120 talented women engineering students to become world-class software engineers. The program is open to first-year women engineering students across India.

While women were pioneers in the early decades of programming, the participation of women in the global technology sector today stands at 26 per cent (per the US Bureau of Labour Statistics).

The WE program, offered by TalentSprint with support from Google, addresses this gender imbalance by grooming talented young women engineering students to advance and contribute to the field.

Prioritising inclusion, the program places a special focus on mentoring gifted women engineers from underprivileged and disadvantaged backgrounds.

The first cohort of 100 WE students, shortlisted and selected from a pool of 7200 plus applicants, began their intensive training and mentoring sessions in June 2019, and have received a very encouraging response from the tech industry.

Well before the completion of the program, WE students received 104 internships and full time offers from 54 companies, at compensation levels 86 per cent above the market average as per Glassdoor. Details of the first cohort's success are on its official website.

Encouraged by the success of the first cohort, TalentSprint, supported by Google, is announcing the second WE cohort of 120 students to begin their training and mentoring program in March 2020.

Aimed at a similar cohort of women students currently completing their first year of engineering studies, this year's WE format has been expanded to include coding boot camps, online classes, full scholarships, stipends, mentoring by Google engineers, hackathons, and projects over the next two years.

"The inclusion of women at every stage of the process to create universally relevant technology products is critical and we are committed to facilitating gender and socioeconomic diversity among software engineers worldwide. We feel encouraged by the enthusiastic acceptance of the first cohort of talent mentored under this program and the opportunity to drive more gender equality within the tech ecosystem. We are excited to support TalentSprint in this initiative, who have done exceptional work in the area", said Anand Rangarajan, Engineering Director at Google India on the launch of the new second cohort.

"The success of the first WE cohort bears testimony to the fact that given the right guidance, environment, and support, young women from non-elite colleges can compete head-to-head with the best software engineers in the world. With enhanced support from Google and an expanded program format, we are fully committed to producing a large pool of gifted women engineers who will shape the next wave of global technology development", said Dr Santanu Paul, Co-founder, and CEO, TalentSprint.

Applications are invited from eligible students and the selection will be done through a multi-stage nationwide assessment process. For information on how to apply, please visit the official website.

This story is provided by BusinessWire India. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of this article. (ANI/BusinessWire India)