Girl From Pune Wins Google's Doodle Contest

Gayatri Ketharaman, a 15-year-old girl, from Pune won Doodle4Google contest for 2013 with a doodle titled 'Sky's The Limit for Indian Women'. The winning doodle will feature on Google India's homepage on November 14.

Google holds the doodle contest for school kids in India every year on a particular theme and features the winning entry on its homepage on Children's Day. For this year, the theme was 'celebrating the Indian women'. Google India managing director Rajan Anandan said the company received over 1.5 lakh entries this year.

Gayatri, currently a student of class 10 at the Bishop's Co-Ed School in Pune, has been taking part in the contest for last four years. She came close to winning in 2011 when her doodle on 'India's gift to the world' was among the shortlisted entries. But this year she finally succeeded with a doodle that celebrates the Indian woman and her life.

"It took me around a week to complete the doodle once I started working on it. But before that I spend several weeks thinking about the theme and how best I can represent the ideas I had in my mind about Indian women," Gayatri told TOI. "My doodle attempts to show different qualities of Indian women."

The doodle, which has to resemble the word Google, starts with a dancing woman who is arched to represent G. Gayatri says that the figure represents the grace and feminine side of Indian women. In place of two Os, Gayatri has used one rupee coin and a symbol for home, representing how Indian women take care of work as well as home. In place of G, there are earth and moon, showing that the Indian women are go-getters. In place of L, there is a woman holding a kid, showing caring nature of Indian women and in place of E, there is a police cap, which shows that when required Indian women can wear different hats and can be tough and brave.

This year the Doodle4Google contest had three categories. Category one was for students from class 1 to 3, category two was for students from class 4 to 6 and category three was for students from class 7 to 10. The category one was won by Madhuram Vatsal from Lucknow, category two was won by Binita Biswajeeta from Balasore and the category three was won by Akash Shetty from Mangalore. Gayatri was the overall winner.

Google said that before deciding the winners, it had selected 12 finalists. All of them have been given a Chromebook as well as a few other prizes.

"The entries this year have come from across the country which is a clear indication that we are well underway to taking the internet to the next billion," said Anandan.

Google often features doodles on its homepage to mark important moments like holiday or historical event. It also often pays homage to scientists, inventors and other notable persons on its homepage through dedicated doodles.