Mani is a Lead Data Analyst at Blinkit (formerly Grofers). She takes care of all things data within the store ops team. This week we talked to her about her journey as a woman in technology.

Introduce yourself.

My name is Mani Sharma, and I belong to a small town in Rajasthan called Padampur, situated on the India-Pakistan border, predominantly filled with agriculture and associated businesses. People around me lived an effortless life during my early years, but I always wanted a different life, one with the hustle and new challenges. This hustle started with a very small change–when I stepped out of my comfort zone (my home) to be in boarding school at the age of 12 because there weren’t many options in my town. I have been living independently, away from home, till today but have nurtured multiple families along this journey. Today I am working on creating the 10 min magic e-commerce that excites me to solve different problems to serve the community in a better way.

Tell us about your team and your role.

I work as a Lead Data Analyst at BlinkIt. I love my job because I have a habit of questioning whatever is happening around me, why it is happening and how it’s happening–that’s exactly what I do at work. Working within an enthusiastic team, we tend to figure out different user problems, link threads, build hypotheses and evaluate them to develop solutions. We then experiment with those ideas–some fail while others pass, but in the end, we learn something out of everything we do.

Along with the general exploratory analysis, we create powerful tools and alerting systems using data insights to help answer everybody’s “why’s” in the organization.

So to summarise, our day starts with diving into an ocean of numbers and swimming back ashore with the treasure of insights. Furthermore, I strongly feel every story is blank if not explained with facts and numbers. Hence, I consistently strive to make data the soul of our organization.

Share your journey as a Woman in Tech.

While for many women, their journeys are tough, for me, it’s nothing short of exciting. When I graduated in 2014, data analysis was the lesser-known, newly-found field. Belonging to a computer science background, I always loved working on complex problems, but my other extrovert side also wanted to work with business problems!

So my first step in tech was an interview with Ms. Kavita Yadav for an engineering role, where she inquired about what I want to do in my life and helped me understand my passion. I was very fortunate that she not only hired me for a data analyst profile but guided me through my whole journey. This helped me build a strong foundation for my future career ahead.

Talk about the most important learnings from this journey.

• Always plan your day
• Take ownership
• Ask relevant questions
• Thrive for interesting problems
• Never underestimate yourself

Three things that helped you grow in tech.

1. Speaking up and discussing your problems with relevant people always helps out. Never think that your problem is silly. Fix it instead and never call it silly again.
2. Self Evaluation is the best tool that helps you grow exponentially: accept your mistakes, learn from them and move on to the next step. This one does involve multiple takes as we always find ourselves perfect, but over the long run, it’s mathematically insignificant.
3. Always keep yourself updated with what’s new in your area of expertise, connect with people, aim to learn something new every quarter (It could be as simple as one new library in python).

Talk to us about the constraints you face as a Woman in Tech.

There were moments when people assumed that I couldn’t work late to meet a deadline as I am a woman, but I am glad that I never chose to leave and hand over my whole day’s stuff to somebody. Instead, I decided to work on my mistakes, complete the task, and learn about handling high-pressure situations.

If we try to find shortcuts, we will always see them, but if we try to build a foundation, it will always stay. Own what you have.

Give us a book/movie recco on gender parity.

I recently watched the series ‘The Crown.’ It is about the royal family of Britain. One thing that struck a chord with me is that despite being the queen of Britain, she had to overcome gender inequalities in her initial days.

Even the first woman prime minister of Britain, Margaret Thatcher, faced complications from her party members while ironically living in a nation once ruled by a queen. Despite this, she turned out to be the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20th century. I learned a lot from many other female personalities like Princess Diana and Princess Margaret in the series, who overcame their struggles and held their heads high despite various hardships.

Talk about your inspiration/role models.

Dr. Sucheta Jasrai (ex-education specialist with UNICEF) has dedicated her life to uplifting education in kids. She has been my biggest source of inspiration and confidence. She is my first aunt. Throughout my childhood, I always waited for the holiday season to listen to hear inspiring stories, all events she was participated in. I recall a funny moment when I saw her on TV while she was organizing a charity event. That is when I realized that I needed to step out and follow in her footsteps, stabilize myself, and then build a better society.

One message to all women in tech.

Believe in yourself; once you start believing in yourself, the world will have to believe in you.

Create your own path; every individual has their own identity, figure out what you want to achieve and always speak up for yourself.