Meet India’s Most Powerful Businesswomen

Meet India’s Most Powerful Businesswomen:
In a male-dominated world of business, some women have broken all barriers to get to the top.

Cracking through the glass ceiling in a man dominated world is difficult, presents many challenges, requiring many sacrifices to made, and family and society related pressures to be absorbed. Forget a developing country like India, more progressive countries in the West also face the same issue. According to the Glass Ceiling Commission in the United States, about 95 to 97 per cent of the senior managerial posts in country’s largest corporations are held by men. We salute these women who have beaten all the odds and have emerged cream of the crop in their organizations. Take a bow ladies!

Chanda Kochhar is the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of ICICI Bank Limited. She began her career with ICICI as a Management Trainee in 1984 and has thereon successfully risen through the ranks by handling multidimensional assignments and heading all the major functions in the Bank at various points in time.

Vinita Bali, Managing Director, Britannia Industries, has always made unconventional decisions. Rising prices of wheat, sugar and dairy products affect her as much as they do every housewife.

Kalpana Morparia former Joint Managing Director of ICICI Bank, and currently CEO of JPMorgan gives complete credit for her transformation from a corporate lawyer to a corporate leader to K.V. Kamath.

Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chairman and Managing Director of Biocon, is India’s bio-tech queen. She says in a an interview to Forbes India that she learnt the importance of self-reliance and personal re-invention at an early age. From starting of with Rs 10,000 in a garage her company Biocon is today worth Rs. 1,511 crore.

Mallika Srinivasan, the Chairman and CEO of TAFE, believes in a no-frills working style. She has risen to become India’s tractor woman making an indelible impression in a heavily male-dominated industry. TAFE’s turnover, a mere Rs86 crore in 1985 – the year she joined – had risen to Rs5,800 crore by 2010/11

Long before the expression ‘dealmaker’ became commonplace in India, Naina Lal Kidwai, 54, currently country head of HSBC, was one of the biggest dealmakers in the country. It goes without saying that she was also one of the first women to enter the formerly male bastion of investment banking and rise spectacularly.

Ekta Kapoor has created a niche for herself as the queen of the silver screen soaps. As the Joint Managing Director and Creative Director of Balaji Telefilms, her production company, she rules almost every television network