Pride and Accomplishment: Honouring BT’s The Most Powerful Women in Business

On the evening of March 12, the lawns of the Taj Lands End hotel in Mumbai, set beside the majestic Arabian Sea, became as spectacular as the sea itself, as it was graced by a bevy of powerful, influential women with insights and knowledge as deep as the ocean they sat next to. The occasion: the felicitation ceremony of Business Today’s The Most Powerful Women in Business awards. It was an evening to celebrate, but it was also an evening to introspect, to debate, to find deeper meaning, to the ever-evolving cause of gender diversity and finding more and more women champions in corporate India. 

Business Today’s Editor Sourav Majumdar initiated proceedings with his welcome address. Pointing out how India now has a woman as finance minister (Nirmala Sitharaman) as also the chief of the Securities and Exchange Board of India or Sebi (Madhabi Puri Buch), Majumdar extolled the virtues of the winners of this year’s awards. He also said that we need to do much more, as the number of women chairpersons and even CEOs is still very low. “And that’s why the MPW list, which celebrates the power of women achievers, is even more important,” said Majumdar.

His address was followed by the first panel discussion of the evening, on New-Age Women Leaders, which was joined by Dipali Goenka, CEO & Joint Managing Director, Welspun India; Jyoti Deshpande, CEO, Viacom18; Anjali Bansal, Founder, Avaana Capital; and Priti Rathi Gupta, Founder, LXME. The panel was moderated by Aabha Bakaya, Senior Editor & Presenter, Business Today TV. The panel said that women counted themselves out for certain jobs, which is one of the main reasons why there aren’t enough of them in middle management and leadership positions, despite educational institutions having a stronger representation of women. For this to change, the families—and, in particular, the men of the family—have to come on board. 

After the first panel discussion, the audience were treated to an insightful video message from one of the world’s most iconic female business leaders, Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Meta (Facebook). Addressing the winners at the event, Sandberg said they were an inspiration to millions of girls in India and in the world that they too can dream big. She felt that inspiration is needed now more than ever because women are more likely to have lost their jobs or got a pay cut because of the pandemic. Globally, women-run businesses saw more closures than those run by men, simply because women had to take on extra caring responsibilities. 

Sandberg’s address was then followed by a fireside chat with K.V. Kamath, Chairperson, National Bank for Financing Infrastructure and Development, and former honcho of ICICI Bank, where he was one of the flag bearers of gender diversity, bringing to the fore a strong senior leader ship of women leaders in the C-suite. In a chat with Majumdar, Kamath expressed the need for corporate leaders to actively work to get the biases out to build the funnel of women leaders in business. Acknowledging the role of N. Vagul, his predecessor and the former chairman of ICICI Ltd who opened the doors to women leaders, Kamath said that today, there is no job that women cannot do. As a result, he said: “The pool has only gotten richer and richer in the past five to six years.” Kamath’s chat was then followed by the second panel discussion of the evening, on the subject “Diversity in Organisations”. A free-flowing discussion ensued with the stellar line-up of panellists including Ashima Goyal, Member, Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Committee, Vibha Padalkar, MD and CEO, HDFC Life, Suparna Mitra, CEO, Watches and Wearables Division, Titan Company, and Parizad Sirwalla, Partner and National Head - Tax, Global Mobility Services, KPMG in India, moderated by Aayush Ailawadi, Technology Editor & Presenter, Business Today TV. 

Engaging with a variety of issues from diversity, equity, mentorship to pay parity, the panel felt that while the mandate of having a woman on every board did help, it is the cultural transformation—of inclusion, being recognised and actively promoted—that is more needed in organisations. The stage was then graced by another stalwart from the banking industry, who is also known for his efforts towards making his organisation—Kotak Mahindra Bank—one that is known for gen der inclusion. Uday Kotak, MD & CEO of the bank, in a conversation with Siddharth Zarabi, Managing Editor of Business Today TV, said there are many stereotypes regarding certain jobs that a woman can’t do at a bank, but there are a number of areas where women actually score much better than men. “One is commitment to repay a loan. That is clearly superior.

Second is stickiness in the job. The attrition ratio of women is much lower than men, at least at Kotak. And it’s something which we find quite fascinating,” he said. That probably is the secret sauce to the 26 per cent share of women in the bank’s workforce, which Kotak intends to increase to one-third in the next three years. The session with Kotak was then followed by a fireside chat that Aaditya Thackeray, Maharashtra’s Cabinet Minister of Tourism and Environment, had with Rahul Kanwal, Executive Director, Business Today and News Director, TV Today Network, on the subject “Women and the State: The Leadership Agenda”. 

Calling the recent state elections, especially in Uttar Pradesh, a “defining moment” for politics in India, Thackeray noted that women voted in huge numbers in the state in the recent legislative assembly elections, creating a new dynamism, and a new dynamic for governments. “And for us as governments, it is something for us to look back and think over if we are getting our policies for families right,” adding that largely, what women voters go for are policies for families. 

Following Thackeray’s conversation, the Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of the India Today Group, Aroon Purie, took to the stage for his address to the august audience. Purie said that having attended most of BT’s MPW awards since when it began in 2003, “I can safely say that I have literally seen the evolution of India’s women leadership before my eyes.” Unlike those early years when the listing was dominated by banking, and had a sprinkling of women from other sectors, today no sector dominates this list simply because women are succeeding everywhere. “That can only be good for the country and its economy.” The awards were then given away to the deserving winners by Thackeray, Kotak and Purie, and the evening then got more joyful with the celebrations also of the 30 years of existence of Business Today.