Tata Steel on Friday concluded the third edition of its QUEERious initiative, a case study competition organised exclusively for students from the LGBTQIA+ community.

The three-round competition that kicked off in the last week of July this year, culminated in the grand finale held in Jamshedpur on Friday.

Team participation was introduced in this third edition of QUEERious, and the teams were given the option to choose case studies from three tracks — business, technical, and general domains.

The top 11 teams, selected after rigorous evaluation, presented their ideas in the final round. The top three teams received cash prizes of ₹50,000, ₹30,000, and ₹20,000 and were offered paid internships and pre-placement offers depending on eligibility.

Tata Steel designed and rolled out QUEERious in 2022 to reach out to graduate and post-graduate students from the LGBTQIA+ community.

The LGBTQIA+ acronym stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual, and the + holds space for the expanding and new understanding of different parts of the very diverse gender and sexual identities.

“This competition offers opportunities to young minds from the LGBTQIA+ community to add value and bring their best talent to the corporate world. QUEERious 3.0 received more than 2,300 registrations, recording a 44 per cent jump over the previous edition,” said a Tata Steel spokesperson.

“The growing number of student registrations and their enthusiastic participation in QUEERious is a testament to the success of this unique programme we have created for students from the LGBTQIA+ community. This also keeps all of us in Tata Steel motivated to do more and work harder to build a workplace that thrives on diversity, equity and inclusion,” said Tata Steel vice-president human resource management,
Atrayee Sanyal.

In 2024, Tata Steel became the first company in India to integrate transgender employees in mines.