Google Engineer Trades Code for High Heels in Miss Universe India

Umanga Kumawat, a 28-year-old cloud engineer at Google, recently participated in Miss Universe India. She took 35-40 days of leave to prepare for and compete in the pageant.

Kumawat's journey began when she landed a job at Google through campus placement in 2022. Despite having no background in pageantry, she trained hard, spending hours after her 9-to-5 job to practice walking.

'I remember going down to the basement of my society to practise my walk after work every night! It was painful, and doing it every single day wasn’t easy,' Kumawat said. 'But I really wanted to give this my hundred per cent, so I kept showing up.'