I grew up in Ballabgarh, a small town in Haryana, India. My parents were hard-working entrepreneurs in the morning, and community champions in the evening. Right from the start, they instilled a deep belief to serve the people around us in every way possible. And so, ever since I was a child, I aspired to serve the community around me through my work. Back in the early 2000s in India, computing systems were in its early stages of adoption, and traditional industries such as manufacturing were just starting to see the effects of disruption by technology. At the same time, one of our family friends, who was a manufacturer, experienced first-hand the significant shift that technology caused. He shared with me how digital technology was single-handedly making businesses more efficient, less wasteful, less reliant on unpredictable labor supply, and more environment friendly. As I realized that technology is going to be ubiquitous and every business would eventually be a technology business, I decided to spend the next few years learning it from first principles. I took up Computer Science when it was my turn to select a major at BITS - Pilani. Coupled with that was a lifetime passion for entrepreneurship and business which led me to pursue a Master’s in Economics as well.

I was not only the first woman engineer in my family, but also the first engineer. I did not have any role models to look up to. This showed up when I went to the university. While I scored well in the entrance examination, I found out that I was severely under prepared for a Computer Science (CS) degree. Unlike my peers who had been learning CS for a few years in high school, I was introduced to it for the first time in the university itself. This set me back in the first half of my university education. And so I worked as hard as I could, teaching myself CS for a few hours everyday after my regular studies just to keep up. During the college festivals, the university would give us some days off. For me, these holidays were a time to get parity, and potentially go the extra mile in building a strong foundation of computer science and technology.

All of this came to fruition when Microsoft visited my university in the 3rd year to recruit interns for its India Development Center, their largest office outside the US. Around 400 people applied for it, and I was one of the 2 people who were selected. That summer at Microsoft was a turning point in my career - with Artificial Intelligence (AI), my code empowered millions of businesses, small and big alike, to make their technology footprint more efficient. This gave me a taste for working hard and using my skills to build products that have a global impact. And this feeling has been a guiding force for my career even today.