‘Looking back, I can remember my struggle to convince my parents for my higher
education, that too an engineer” said Surisetty Bhanu, now a software engineer in Zen
Technologies. She also added that “making a significant change in education and the
family tradition is also very remarkable and finally making parents proud is also very
satisfactory.”

Breaking the Stereotype –
Surisetty belongs to a very small village near Vishakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh. She is
the youngest among her 4 siblings. Following the typical tradition of the village and
family propaganda her father’s major focus was on getting Surisetty married like his
other daughters. But Surisetty wanted to pursue higher studies and make a difference.
When she failed to convince her father for higher education after completing class 12.
she took help from her married sisters. Her sisters visited the village for a function and all
3 of them reached out to her father and gave examples of the married sisters and they
convinced her father about Surisetty’ interest in higher education. Her father finally
agreed but with a condition. The condition was in case Surisetty cannot make her career
in the next 5 years then she will have to get married.

The choice to make –
The major challenge after convincing her father was to find the right track which will
have a good career ahead and give her earning opportunities for her. Coming from rural
background and completing schooling from Govt school she did not have enough
exposure in the world of technology. Her teacher in the school suggested to perusing an
Engineering degree. Normally engineering is considered as a very expensive and
difficult course with competition for placement. Thus, she started searching for good
colleges with minimal fees considering that her father might not help her financially.
After lot of brainstorming, she enrolled herself in the RGUKT Srikakulam to pursue her
dream.

Walking into the dream –
Entering the gate of college was like walking into her dream however Surisetty was very
much conscious about the efforts she had to endure to reach this place. So, when her
other friends were more into enjoying the initial days in college, busy making new
friends, Surisetty kept her focus on making the right choices which could lead her to
success, Being, from a small village and having less exposure was also a struggle she
had to overcome. She never forgot the limited time she had and the consequences if
she fails to make her career. she started searching for opportunities that could boost her
career and help to get placed after engineering.

Perusing Success –
While exploring various opportunities she came to know about the TechSaksham
Program that specially focused on skilling and enabling young women learners on the
concept of IR4.0 technologies through training them on technologies including artifificial
intelligence, Cloud computing and Full Stack Web Development. The most interesting
fact was that all the benefits of the program did not incur any cost as it was an initiative
between Microsoft and SAP. Surisetty wanted to boost her career with some additional
courses however the expensive courses were not affordable. Thus, TechSaksham
becomes a perfect choice for her as it was free of cost, and she could pursue the course
along with her regular engineering classes. Finally, she enrolled in Full stack web
development course at TechSakham. During the program, she discovered that there
were unlimited opportunities for her and all she needed was to make the right move in
the right direction. She got a deep understanding of the technical concepts through
hands-on including knowledge of Bootstrap for Frontend, JAVA Programming, MySQL,
ReactJS, and Spring-Based Architecture. The session on interpersonal skills and
interview preparation helped her gaining clarity and confidence about the process of
interview.

Testing the success –
Finally, the day arrived when Surisetty appeared for the interview. She was nervous and
anxious but the strong technical knowledge she gained from the TechSaksham course
helped her to be positive. After initial shyness, she started to express her thoughts and
knowledge of core technical aspects. Her technical knowledge helped her to grab the
job opportunity at Zen Technologies as a software engineer.
Her family members did not believe that she got a job, so she had to visit her village with
the offer letter in her hand. Finally, her father was also very impressed and allow her to
move to another city for the job.
Now the success of Surisetty becomes an example of many more young women
learners in her village.