Mumbai/Jamshedpur, : Tata Steel announces the winners of the 6th season of its pioneering initiative ‘Women Of Mettle’ scholarship programme, aimed to induct bright young women engineers into the manufacturing sector. The theme for this season was ‘Technology and Sustainability’.
The Season 6 finale of ‘Women Of Mettle’, held on August 23, 2022, witnessed some of the brightest young female candidates from India’s premier engineering institutes display their ingenuity, acumen and spirited performance.
Priyanka Kumari, a Metallurgy Engineering student from IIT Patna, emerged as the winner of season 6. While Sushma Venmunuri, an Electrical & Electronics Engineering student from BE Shibpur, secured the first runner-up position, Vidhi Sachan, a Metallurgy Engineering student from NIT Rourkela, bagged the second runner-up slot.
Atrayee Sanyal, Vice President, Human Resource Management, Tata Steel, said: “Our scholarship programme ‘Women Of Mettle’ helps to position the manufacturing sector as a potential career option for women by attracting more women talent from across the country to join the sector. It is our endeavour to make Tata Steel an employer of choice for women engineers. This is also aligned with our continuous efforts towards developing women leaders to create a pool of diverse talent in the organisation at all levels. I congratulate all the winners and participants and wish them the very best for their careers ahead.”
Women Of Mettle is essentially an intellectual marathon where bright young minds embark on a journey to address diverse technical & cross-functional challenges and engineer solutions of tomorrow. Every year, this competition is conducted with much fanfare and female engineering students from premier institutes across the country look forward to participating and giving a head start to their career.
‘Women Of Mettle’, aimed at promoting gender diversity and inclusion in the manufacturing sector, was launched in 2017. Since its inception, the programme has been instrumental in identifying, grooming, and encouraging the female engineering talent in India’s manufacturing sector. The idea is to foster a collaborative environment among students, academia, and the corporate sector to provide young women in India with unique and aspiring career opportunities.
As part of the programme, participants are subjected to a rigorous selection procedure that includes a variety of technical hurdles. The candidates work on real life technical challenges and top 10 shortlists work and present their solutions to the esteemed Jury at the grand finale of the competition. Winners are selected based on the presentation, feasibility, and quality of the proposed solutions. The top 10 candidates get a scholarship of ₹2,00,000 each in addition to an opportunity to pursue a career at Tata Steel. They can join Tata Steel as a Technical Intern, and subsequently receive a Pre-Placement Offer (PPO). The candidates, ranked 11-30, are also given an opportunity for summer internship in the third year of their engineering course.
