Flipkart Girls Wanna Code Case Study | An online coding challenge to reach and mentor women engineers

5 mins read

Headquartered in Bangalore, the e-commerce giant, Flipkart, launched as an online book store in the year 2007, before it opened its doors for other product categories like consumer electronics, home essentials, fashion, lifestyle products, and groceries. Started by two IIT Delhi graduates and consequently ex-Amazon employees, Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal, the company made a number of acquisitions in the year 2010 including Myntra, Letsbuy, Jabong, eBay India, to name a few, and finally got acquired in a whopping $16 Bn deal by Walmart. 

The Flipkart Girls Wanna Code (GWC) Story

The Flipkart story of Girls Wanna Code (GWC) began in 2018, when the first season of a unique, one-of-its-kind hackathon was launched, designed exclusively for girl students across select women engineering colleges. Curated to give women candidates the exposure that they otherwise were oblivious to, the competition witnessed registrations from 283 teams, 9 out of which made it to the grand finale held in Bangalore, where they got an opportunity to showcase their coding skills to the brightest minds in the Indian e-commerce landscape. 

Soon, Flipkart realized that this model was merely serving the purpose of spreading awareness amongst a small segment of young girls. The company wanted to reach out to a wider spectrum of women where they could not only be encouraged to participate in online coding challenges but could also be coached by Flipkart leaders through a comprehensive learning program. 

Unstop (formerly Dare2Compete) is Drawn Into the Loop

The idea was simple but the execution needed a thorough analysis of the problem statement. This is where Unstop came into the picture. Team Unstop devised a strategy that amplified the scale of the competition and changed the Flipkart GWC model to that of learning and development instead of a mere hackathon. 

With this began a Flipkart legacy like none other. What started as a month-long hackathon, soon evolved into a 4-month long journey of learning and development to help girl students experience the best-in-class technology. This was the beginning of something exciting.

Broadening the horizon in the second season, Flipkart GWC 2.0 called for registrations from 9 women engineering colleges and received 5,000+ registrations where 189 of these women engineers took the immersive 4-month journey and got coached by mentors at Flipkart. 

The continuous success of this hackathon series motivated Flipkart to go ahead with the third season of Girls Wanna Code - an online coding challenge cum learning experience. This edition of the competition was open to all women engineering students across all branches in select engineering colleges. With an aim to target talented women outside premier technology institutes, selected students were trained in industry-relevant technology skill-sets with a curriculum that was especially been developed by technologists from Flipkart!

The third edition of the competition diversified to include the following rounds: 

• Online Coding Challenge: After the initial registration, participants went through an online coding challenge where they were tested on grounds of their basic coding skills.
• Girls Wanna Code Learning Cohorts: Selected students from round 1 were divided into cohorts who then became a part of an immersive learning program facilitated by experts from Flipkart. Split into 4 modules, the learning program trained selected students on essential skills required to nail interviews of top technology and product companies. Students were required to sit for online tests at the end of each module for the purpose of evaluation. 
• Final Evaluation: Based on the curriculum taught during the program, students who cleared this test got a chance to sit for Flipkart’s interview process for the roles of internship and full-time software development engineer.

The Outcome

A few factors have come to light with respect to the past few editions. 

• With the help of Unstop's promotion and execution team, the competition reached out to countless students with as many as 1,14,432 impressions.
• The registration count increased from a mere few thousand to 5,500+ in its third edition.
• The engagement helped spread awareness amongst women candidates about the importance of coding skills and benefitted numerous students who had both - the will and caliber to learn more.
• The leaders at Flipkart realized that this exercise played a crucial role in shaping the lives of women engineering students. They witnessed a steep learning curve amongst many girls tutored by their leader and saw them get placed at renowned organizations. 

It is evident that Flipkart GWC has, come a long way since its inception. It has diversified from being a mere hackathon to a full-grown learning platform for students. And the journey got much simpler and smoother with the efforts of Unstop’s execution team. We hope that this is just the beginning of a long collaborative journey with Team Flipkart, and hope to have them on board with us for years and years to come!