This is the second of our special features leading up to International Women’s Day 2022 – March 8.
March 5 2022: We salute 4 women tech achievers and leaders:
Niraali Parekh is a successful leader in design with more than 15 years of experience. She started her design studio in 2010 when there were very few women-owned design studios in India. She rebranded her studio to BokaapDesign in 2020 to reflect the personal and professional transformation that had taken place. At a personal level, she embraced the importance of a balanced, healthy, and spiritual lifestyle. A lot of things were changing; how she approached work, how she wanted to foresee the culture in her company and the kind of projects the company would like to focus on. It seemed appropriate to her that the studio’s name also transforms to reflect this evolution. 
Bokaap under Niraali has worked with clients across FMCG, FinTech, Social Enterprise, Legal, Education, B2B, amongst many others, Niraali has led Bokaap's compelling growth as a partner to startups, entrepreneurs, and multinational companies alike, delivering over 300 projects locally and internationally for brands like McDonald’s, Radio Mirchi, Jones Lang LaSalle, Brookfield Financial, ICICI Prudential, and Citibank, etc
Gowri Ramkumar  is Vice President – Sales at Kovai.co. She is responsible for the company’s global sales and partnership activities related to its software and B2B SaaS products.
Gowri has more than two decades of experience in Information Technology and has extensive experience in leading globally matrixed sales and marketing teams. Before this appointment, Gowri served as Quality Assurance Manager, during which time she planned and oversaw the planning of the systems and approval of all testing milestones for various products’ release cycle. From being one-member Sales team, the company now has over 50 customer engagement roles across multiple products and continues to grow due to her efforts.
Before joining Kovai.co, she led IT testing projects for major banks in London, U.K. including Lloyds Banking Group, and RBC. Gowri graduated from Sri Ramakrishna Engineering College in Coimbatore and holds a B.E. degree in computer science.
Kuppulakshmi, fondly known as Kuppu, heads the Zoho for Startups programme globally. She has been part of Zoho's growth story for over a decade, and bridging the gap between businesses and technology has been her core area of work. She focuses on strategic alliances between Zoho and various startup bodies such as State Governments, Incubators, Accelerators, and other stakeholders. She is a mentor to various startups and guides them on pitching, design thinking, and on using EQ while hiring new talents while setting up the vision and culture of the startup. Is a sought-after keynote speaker on topics like future skills, emotional intelligence, and human element of technology. Is a certified expert on Emotional Intelligence or EQ. Her extensive experience of being a softskills and communication trainer and a voice&accent specialist, strengthen her expertise in story telling, and she is a great fan of "explain-it-like-I am-five" concept. Kuppu believes that the best way to live life is to be useful to others, and she strives to find a balance between giving and taking. She is an active volunteer with various socially-impacting projects, and is a chief trainer and mentor for Project PUTHRI - that intends to empower 10,000 girl children from underprivileged background, every year
Kausambi Manjita, Co-Founder & CEO at Mason,  a startup that is instrumental in leveraging technology to transport the future of retail in India,  is an award-winning & venture-capital-backed entrepreneur with 12+ years of experience. 1 and a half years into the business, her startup Mason, has been able to empower 10,000+ global retailers to automate their storefronts with its no-code headless technology and has seen a whopping 300% increase in their productivity.
Focused on creating a gender-inclusive work environment, today Mason boasts of having women in its key leadership positions - their Product, Operations, and Marketing teams are led by women experts. With over 30% of their current team strength being female, the startup is bullish about making it to 50% at the earliest; with plans to hire women in leadership roles for their North America front of the business.