CView Founder Chavi Agarwal on Gender Parity and Women in Tech

“How long are you going to do this for?“

“You don’t ask a man how long you’re going to run your company for. I will run it for my entire life if I have to and I will.“

Young, dynamic and Vivacious, Founder & CEO of CView, Chavi Agarwal, often gets plundered by a very biased and intriguing question from the Investors that unearths a deep rooted gender bias in the professional sphere. A young woman who knows what she wants in life is often subjected to prejudice, questions and disbelief, hence, Chavi’s entrepreneurial journey is no different. Yet her unrelenting spirit to rise and build her empire is commendable.

“The seed of CView stemmed not from a necessity but a purpose to combine the biggest human brain which are students and youth across the world with an intangible service.”

Chavi found her niche in the booming industry of Artificial Intelligence (AI). In the process to gauge the one element of the application process that has not been nailed down yet, she invested and capitalized on making the first impression of your CV, the best anyone could imagine with CView. Expounding upon the vision of her company, she shares that it combines AI with human expertise to help students get their dream jobs as well as ease the job application process for recruiters, by building an Applicant Tracking System (ATS).

“Working in a startup is very different from working in a big company, you have to definitely do more than what you are hired for.”

Being a young entrepreneur has its own learning curves and Chavi shares one such learning experience for her was dealing with a very young team. She candidly professes that “I would not say that I have nailed it until now, however what I have understood is that there are the ones who want to learn and they will learn and stick by you.”

30% of the proceeds that are reaped from CView are donated to the cause of women’s education in India. 

Chavi states, donating 30% of CView’s proceeds to women’s education in India is not something that comes just from the heart but it is also a strategic decision. She expresses “I feel if we empower women, I’ll be helping one of the most intelligent communities in the world which are really suppressed.”

“If they are the people who can get the job done, then they are the right people for the job.”

People who get the job done should get the job, however, gender discrimination plays a pivotal role in hampering this. Sharing an intriguing anecdote from her experience as an Intern at an MSME, Chavi expresses the appalling nature of gender bias she witnessed.

“I was working at a legacy firm and they were in the process of hiring a few Chartered Accountants. I really liked these 10 applicants. 3 of them were women. I took them to the manager. He looked at the applications and took the 3 women applicants aside, so I thought maybe those were the ones he was choosing. However, those were the ones he was eliminating, so I asked him very politely, as to why he was eliminating them. To this he said ‘bahot problem hoti hai, it is unnecessarily too much of an issue.’ That’s the first time it hit me that women are seen as problem makers in organizations.” 

“If I know my job well, I can come and speak about it. My gender should not matter.” 

The world laced with gender bias doesn’t see driven ambitious women who build their empire as Entrepreneurs, they are deemed Female Entrepreneurs. Battling this bias, Chavi says the glass ceilings that she personally encounters are “Patriarchy, perception and stigma of women doing women-oriented jobs or work (stereotyping).”

The prejudice a woman faces in the professional workforce is very different to what a man experiences. People don’t question their intention, motive or ambition. Whereas a woman has to prove her mettle every step of the way. Being a #BossWoman on a journey to smash stereotypes, Chavi says “Break the glass ceiling, rather than squeezing into that glass slipper.”