Power women

POWER WOMEN

By :- Priyanka Tanwar

Ekta Kapoor, Creative Director
Balaji Telefilms
SHE’S the lady who year on year has been ruling the
soaps and her bubble just gets bigger. This 1975-born
entertainer-entrepreneur started out earning a
bachelor’s degree in commerce. But academics
wasn’t her cup of tea. So at age 19, she ventured into
TV production on the advice of her film-star
Jeetendra. Today, Ekta Kapoor is the creative director
and head honcho of the mammoth Balaji Telefilms,
where actors queue up to be considered.

Balaji Telefilms
Her most famous television venture has been Kyunki
Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi, which started airing in 2000.
Today, several of her serials feature among the most
popular 25 programmes on the tube. And of course
her fetish for the alphabet ‘K’ is well-known. It
couldn’t be a coincidence that almost all her serials
have names beginnign with the alphabet, whether it
is Kahaani Ghar Ghar Ki, Kasautii Zindagi Kay or
Kahiin to Hoga. Kapoor’s super-successful saas-bahu
formula for her productions has

Balaji Telefilms
has been working its magic unfailingly on audiences
that predominantly comprises women. Seeing the
popularity of her storylines, senior and more
experienced producers are also adapting their serials
to give the Modern Woman portrayal a miss, settling
instead for her “gharelu” avatar. Kapoor’s journey
seems to have just begun and she almost certainly
has many more hits coming up.

Farah Khan, Choreographer and
Director
SHE made a name as a choreographer in Bollywood
think Aamir Khan in Joh Jeeta Wohi Sikander or
Malaika Arora’s sensuous swaying in Dil Se’s Chaiya,
Chaiya. And in 2004, sheturned director and
delivered the biggest hit of the year. Khan ruled the
box-office with the Shahrukh Khan-starrer Main
Hoon Na. Three years later, she has again ensured
that her Om Shanti Om, a lookback at the 70s, made
a huge splash at the box-office. She admits that her

Farah Khan, Choreographer and
Director
guardian angel is Shahrukh Khan, who formed a
production company to produce Main Hoon Na.Even
critics agree that her biggest contribution to
Bollywood is the fact that she is willing to take on the
challenge to make a big-budget film. Khan, 42, won’t
make a niche film just because of her gender. Her
global fame came after she choreographed and was
nominated for a Tony forthe Broadway musical
Bombay Dreams

Shahnaz Hussain, Chairperson of
Shahnaz Herbals
HER name is synonymous with natural cosmetics and
she was one of the pioneers of herbal magic. But the
beginnings this Padma Shri recipient made were
small. Seeing that existing salon treatments had side
effects, Shahnaz Husain decided to start her own,
using herbal products. She launched a totally new
concept of “care and cure”. Thus was born Shahnaz
Herbal. She is best known for her specialised clinical
treatments and therapeutic products for skin and
hair problems. Today, Husain

Shahnaz Hussain, Chairperson of
Shahnaz Herbals
heads a chain of over 400 franchise salons in India
and abroad, with outlets in prestigious stores and
locations all over the world. Her franchise-based
enterprise has helped in the worldwide extension of
the Shahnaz Herbal clinics, popularising her
formidable range of nearly 350 products. Her group’s
products are sold in leading global stores like
Bloomingdales (New York), Galleries Lafayette (Paris),
Seibu (Japan), Harrods and Selfridges (London), and
La Rinaeccente (Milan).

Vinita Bali, MD of Britannia Industry
When ITC and local brand Priya Biscuits proved to be
a threat in the middle of 2006, Britannia Industries
made Vinita Bali, 51, its MD. An FMCG expert, Bali,
who skeptics thought wouldn’t be able to deliver,
proved them wrong. In a year-and-a-half she had
turned round the company. And though margins are
under pressure, because of rising input costs, and
the controlling groups — the Wadias and Danone —
are sparring, the topline’s doing fine, not least
because of Bali and her pulling-everyone-along style
of functioning. If she has succeeded at Britannia, it’s
because she loves a challenge and more.

Bali has done stints with great brands like Coca Cola
and Cadbury’s and has never shied away from
exploring new terrain — from Santiago to South
Africa, Atlanta to Bangalore. The story goes, perhaps
not apocryphal, that she picked up Spanish in
Santiago out of sheer necessity and then used it to
her advantage while talking to local Coke bottlers.
She is low-key (the difference made sharper because
her predecessor at Britannia was the highly visible

sunil Alagh) but has many interests other than her
day-time job. Like playing the sitar, going to the
theatre, dancing Kathak. She also loves reading, both
fiction and non-fiction, and western and Indian
classical music and is particularly partial to ghazals.
Such eclectic tastes are probably helping Bali infuse
new ideas into an old company that was till very
recently in dire need of refurbishing.

Schauna Chauhan CEO, Parle Agro

SCHAUNA Chauhan, the eldest of Prakash Chauhan’s
three daughters, and chief executive of Parle
Agro,says, “I’m like the eldest son in the family.”
Prakash Chauhan, chairman and managing director
of the Rs8 billion Parle Agro group, handed over the
responsibilities of the group to his 26-year-old
daughter Schauna in 2002. Even as a high school
student she would accompany her father to
production facilities to keep herself up-to-date with
the kind of technology in the industry. The young
Chauhan, who holds a Bachelors

Schauna Chauhan CEO, Parle Agro

Degree in International Management from
Switzerland, has worked in different departments-
including production, finance, advertising and sales-
within the organisation. As director Parle Agro, she
has taken products like Frooti, Appy and N-Joi to the
international market. She is also the brain behind the
launch of Frooti in pet bottles, the first tetrapak
beverage to hit the market in this avatar. Married to
model-turned-actor Bikram Saluja, she is never out
of step or behind time.

Neelam Dhawan MD, Microsoft India

SHE had been a much-respected figure in the IT world
for years, but when Neelam Dhawan was made
managing director, Microsoft India, in 2005, it still
came as a surprise. A pleasant one. It’s hard to find
too many women who have zoomed up to the top in
IT. “Our priority is to become relevant to one billion
Indians,” is what Dhawan is known to have said when
she took over the reins. And she is pulling out all
stops to ensure that. She is now all set to foray into
Project Bhasha, a programme that focuses on
hastening computing in local languages.

Neelam Dhawan MD, Microsoft India

Prior to Microsoft, this hardware pro was vice
president, Customer Solutions Group, HP India with
additional responsibility for strategic alliances and
partner relationships. This stint was for about six
years, starting 1999. She's done stints with IBM and
HCL before that. Dhawan’s recipe for success: You
need to have ambition, staying power and organising
ability. And she also credits her supportive family for
her rise to the top.

Shyamala Gopinath Deputy Governor,
Reserve Bank of India
STRESS. If there is anyone who knows what that is,
it’s Shyamala Gopinath. Her job as deputy governor
of the Reserve Bank of India requires management of
risk on a daily basis. An ordinary CEO perhaps does
not know this kind of stress. True strain comes with
the pressures of running India’s monetary policy in
the face of the falling greenback. Unlike the West
and Japan, the central banker is a far more powerful
entity in a relatively closed banking market such as
India’s.

As the deputy governor of this mighty central
bank, she is in charge of not only the entire portfolio
of the monetary policy, but also its internal debt
department as well as the external investments
operations. Now if there ever was a handful of
management responsibilities, surely this is it. Her
management style is known to be solution oriented.
To break down the big picture into workable and
applicable regulatory frameworks comes naturally to
this career banker.

In 2008, Gopinath will have to grapple with the
problem of plenty in the banking scenario. The stakes
have never been higher and she knows that.

Naina Lal Kidwai CEO, HSBC India
IN 1977, when Naina Lal Kidwai, after completing a
course in chartered accountancy, joined
Pricewaterhouse Coopers as a trainee, it is believed
that one of the partners told her he didn’t quite
know what to do with her because there were no
other women employees. Kidwai has gone on to
become one of India’s best known bankers —
gathering many firsts along the way, not least being
the first Indian woman to graduate from Harvard
Business School (HBS) in 1982.

Now, as CEO of HSBC India — she joined the bank in
2002 as head of its investment banking and bagged
the top job in four years — Kidwai, 50, is driving the
bank’s endeavour to tap the huge potential that India
offers private banks. She made a name as an
investment banker while at ANZ Grindlays Bank,
which she joined soon after her graduation. In seven
years she was promoted to head the entire
investment banking division.

In 1994, after spending a decade at Grindlays, she
joined Morgan Stanley when they opened offices in
India. She soon engineered a joint venture with JM
Financials. It is no surprise that Kidwai is a high
achiever — her father was CEO of an insurance
company, her sister a top golfer and her husband is
MD of a non-profit organisation.

Chanda Kochhar Joint MD, ICICI Bank

FOR the past three years, she has been on Fortune’s list
of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Global Business.
With her elevation to joint MD of ICICI Bank, India’s
largest private bank this October, she is in line for the
top job when MD and CEO KV Kamath retires in
2009. When she began at ICICI in 1984, Kochhar
worked in the project appraisal division and moved
throughvarious divisions before being given charge of
the bank’s retail section in 2002. In 2004, The Asian
Banker named Kochhar as Retail Banker of the Year.
With her at the helm of the retail business, ICICI Bank
became the largest player in India in the retail

Chanda Kochhar Joint MD, ICICI Bank

market, garnering more than 30% share of all retail
loans. In 2006, she also took charge of corporate
banking and international operations. Now, as she
has taken over as joint MD and CFO and become the
bank’s spokesperson, the spotlight is on the 45-year-
old Kochhar. The cost accountant and management
graduate from Jamnalal Bajaj Institute has spent two
decades at the bank and according to analysts has
won acolades by adopting some winning strategies
— like she has cut prices on consumer loans by
reining in operating costs.

Zarina Mehta Founder Director, UTV

UTV founder-director Zarina Mehta is passionate
about Mumbai and is pained that the city is losing its
cultural spaces. So, in 2007, when she launched
UTV’s Brand Bindass, India’s first 360 degree
entertainment brand for Young India, she planned to
open cafes for youngsters sometime soon. As of now,
Mehta, 46, CEO, Bindass, is busy positioning the
brand as an assortment of TV channels, events,
mobile entertainment, websites, gaming and
merchandising. The former theatre actor has many
other firsts to her credit — the first daily soap Shanti;
the first game show Snakes and Ladders and the first


game showfor children Gol Gol Gullam.
As COO of UTV’s Hungama TV, her innovations,
including a nationwide hunt to set up a board of
directors comprising children, drove the channel to
become the top kids channel within 18 months of
launch. It was finally sold to Disney in 2006. She has
spent over 15 years nurturing UTV. Starting and
creating some of the production house’s major
divisions, producing over 3,500 hours of high-TRP
award-winning multi-lingual programming, she has
been awarded for her corporate documentaries.


Mehta also loves to chill out on Sundays at
home with her husband and Sprite, a
gorgeous golden Labrador.

Deena Mehta President, Bombay
Stock Exchange
SHE can lay claim to have broken the glass ceiling at the
Bombay Stock Exchange. Hitherto the domain of
men, Deena Mehta was the first woman to go into
the trading ring in 1986. Sheholds the distinction of
being the only woman broker in the country to have
been elected to the BSE board in 1997 with the
highest number of votes secured by any member in
its history. She's been a twice-elected vice president
of the BSE. After 125 years, the BSE got its first
woman president when Mehta, or Deenaben as she
is fondly called, was elected.

Deena Mehta President, Bombay
Stock Exchange
Mehta is the mastermind behind many reforms at the
BSE. She is credited with reforming the archaic
bylaws of the exchange, was a key player
instrumental in computerising the BSE, amongst
others. The lady did not set out to enter the crowded
male bastion of the BSE. Her dream was to become
an engineer. When that did not materialise, she
shifted tracks and took up a Commerce degree,
graduating from Mumbai's Sydhenham College.
Mehta followed that up with a Master's degree in
management studies, a CA later and then an MBA
degree.

Vandana luthra Founder and Mentor,
VLCC Health Care
With her nationwide chain taking beauty and fitness to
Indians as few others, Vandana Luthra was among
the earliest in contemporary India to realise the
potential of the wellness sector while making people
look and feel happy. After a degree from Delhi
University, Luthra did courses in nutrition,
cosmetology, beauty care, fitness and skin care in
Germany, London and Paris. VLCC, ehich she set up
almost two decades ago is today present in 46 cities
in India.

Vandana luthra Founder and Mentor,
VLCC Health Care
And with a CAGR of 35% over the last five
years, the company, which has a fifth of the
national market share, is on an expansion
spree. Luthra has chartered a beauty map for
her Rs 1.20 billion business, which will see her
open centres in 200 more cities in the country
by 2009, besides more than quadrupling the
turnover in the next four years. The expansion
to over 250 centres will largely be through the
franchise mode.

Vandana luthra Founder and
Mentor, VLCC Health Care
The company also plans to enter West Asia, Sri Lanka
and the UK. Luthra has developed brand extensions
of VLCC that include the VLCC Personal Care range of
products, VLCC Studio and Spa, VLCC Workout
Factory and VLCC Institute. VLCC is the world’s first
slimming, fitness and beauty corporate to get the ISO
9001:2000 certification and first of its kind to get the
SA: 800O (Social Accountability) certification for
implementing CSR standards. A factor in making her
a name to reckon with in the business space.

Roopa Kudva MD and CEO, CRISIL

IN October 1992, Roopa Kudva joined CRISIL, then an
up-and-coming rating agency as a senior rating
analyst in Bangalore. She stayed on and became
executive director and chief rating officer a decade
later. This year, Kudva, 44, was elevated to the top
job, taking over as MD and CEO of CRISIL, now a
leading ratings, research, risk and policy advisory
company. As CEO, Kudva, who has a degree in
Statistics and an MBA from IIM-A, wants to maintain
CRISIL’s ratings business’ current position of
dominance in India and is expected to play a

Roopa Kudva MD and CEO, CRISIL

bigger role in the company’s rapid expansion and
diversification, both in domestic and international
markets. In this, her stint at Standard & Poor’s
office in Paris in 1998, where she covered emerging
markets in the Mediterranean and West Asian region
should stand her in good stead. Kudva began her
career with Industrial Development Bank of India at
its project finance department before she opted to
join a rating agency with a Bangalore posting.

Punitha Arumugam Group CEO,
Madison Media
She is the winner of the GR8 Woman Achiever Award
for the year 2006. In the same year she was voted
among the Top 10 most influential people in the
Indian media industry by the Brand Equity Ad Agency
Reckoner. Meet Punitha Arumugam, chief executive
officer of the Rs 900-crore Madison Media, arguably
one of the three most powerful media agencies in
the country today. In her 17 years in the industry,
Arumugam has looked at every aspect of the media
business — strategy, planning, buying, research and
operations.

Madison Media
Her experience spans a wide range of
products, including FMCG, durables and financial
services. She has worked with top agencies such as
Ogilvy & Mather and Initiative in the key
markets of Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore, before
dropping anchor at Madison Media. Arumugam
joined the agency as media services director in 1999.
Interestingly, her first break in advertising came while
she was a student. Here a little background may be
handy

Madison Media
Born and educated in Chennai, Arumugam’s father
was in business and her mother was a housewife.
She completed her graduation in Physics and went
on to study management at the Madras University.
Media was her first break and she took to it like a fish
to water. In fact, while doing her MBA, she was
assigned a summer project with Chennai-based ad
agency RK Swamy and it was there that her tryst with
advertising began. She joined O&M on
completing her education and stayed there for

Madison Media
a full five years, soaking up all she could in her media
planning job, even though her heart lay in servicing.
After 17 years in this highly competitive field,
Arumugam still loves everything about it — the
numbers, the logic, the simplicity in thinking, the
negotiation and the people.

Vedika Bhandarkar Managing Director
and Head of Investment Banking, JP
Morgan India
Becoming managing director and head of investment
banking at JP Morgan India took very little time for
Vedika Bhandarkar. It’s her reputation of being a star
performer in the circles that actually got her there.
Bhandarkar has been in financial services for 14
years, and in the last six, she has earned plenty of
laurels. This includes her stellar performance in the
$1.1-billion Tata Consultancy Services public offering.
This IIM graduate has been crucial to executing and
closing significant deals.

Morgan India
Examples include ONGC’s acquisition of MRPL from
the AV Birla group. Right from the start, when ONGC
chairman Subir Raha called up Bhandarkar and
evinced his interest, the odds were tipped against
the deal. MRPL’s balance sheet was far from healthy,
being loaded with $1.5 billion of high-interest debt.
Bhandarkar and her team pulled off what is
considered a miracle by convincing the 15 lenders to
the project to take an average 25% cut in shares.

Morgan India
She has been heading the investment banking
division of JP Morgan India since 1998 and in March
2004, she was also appointed managing director of
the firm. Here is a tip off from the finance wiz: there
will be more outward than inward deals as Indian
companies look to grow at a global scale. Within
India, she sees telecom and IT and IT-enabled
services sectors as ones that are likely to see
M&A and consolidation.

Runa BanErji Sehba Hussain
Founders, Self-Employed Women’s
Association (SEWA)
IT was the early 1970s. Chikankaari was dying a slow
death in Lucknow. Wages were as low as Rs 10-15 for
a hard day’s work for the craftsmen. Most were
looking out for greener pastures. Enter Runa Banerji
and her friend Sehba Hussain on a UNICEF-
sponsored project on child labour. The abject penury
and exploitation of the workers, specially the
women, shook them. They began a school but soon
realised “roti” was the first priority.

Association (SEWA)
So, getting the mothers who came to the school
together, Banerji and Hussain formed SEWA (Self-
Employed Women’s Association) in 1984. Yes, it is
the same name by which Ela Bhatt runs her NGO in
Ahmedabad, but the areas of operation are entirely
different. The aim of SEWA of Lucknow has been to
get these craftswomen better wages and
today, thanks to

Association (SEWA)
this effort, chikankaari has becoming haute couture.
There were threats from local middlemen, money
was in short supply, most of the time they had to
work under cover of darkness, but Runa Banerji and
Sehba Hussain just kept going. Their very first
exhibition in Delhi was sold out. Many more such hits
have followed over the years and others have tried to
fake the SEWA brand name too. Financial gain has
resulted in these women artisans getting themselves
better houses and educating their children.

Association (SEWA)
SEWA today boasts of over 5,000 members, with
each one having a happy story of progress to tell.
And they have this tenacious duo to thank for
fortune smiling at them.

Shobhana Bhartia Vice Chairperson
and Editorial Director, HT Media
THIS Calcutta University graduate has definitely
driven her father, industrialist KK Birla’s media
ambitions to heights. Shobhana Bhartia, 50, now not
only runs the Hindustan Times, the capital’s favoured
English daily, despite the tug-of-war with arch rival
and Bennett and Coleman-run The Times of India
notwithstanding, but also Hindi daily Hindustan. She
also launched a business paper with a difference
called Mint

If HT looks slick and stylish today, it’s largely thanks
to Bhartia who was convinced the stodgy daily
urgently needed a makeover. This year has been a
year of many firsts for Bhartia. She saw her media
empire expand to other genres like radio with FM
channel Fever104 impressing in its debut in Mumbai
and Delhi. She managed to bring together rivals —
HT and TOI — to launch the capital’s first morning
tabloid Metro Now.

A Rajya Sabha member and till recently chairperson
of the Audit Bureau of Circulation, Bhartia was
conferred the Padma Shri in 2005 for her
contribution to journalism. HT Media’s stock too has
been doing well, having gone public in September
2005. Bhartia is now apparently going to concentrate
on Hindustan, with HT Media planning to invest Rs
200 crore over two years to set up 14 more editions
of the Hindi daily across India’s tier-II and tier-III
cities.

Ela R Bhatt Founder, SEWA

HER father was a lawyer and her mother was active in
the women’s movement. So becoming a social
activist seemed to be pretty much in Ela Bhatt’s
genes. She came through law college with a gold
medal and went on to teach English, which she didn’t
quite like. So, in 1955 Bhatt joined the Textile Labour
Association (TLA) in Ahmedabad. With marriage and
motherhood, there came a break in her career. But
she soon picked up the threads and joined the
Labour Ministry of Gujarat as an Employment Officer
in 1961. In 1968, she went back to TLA as


Proving that there is strength in numbers, Bhatt has
shown that the weak too can climb every mountain.
head of its Women’s Wing. It was a revelation to her
that thousands of self-employed women were not
recognised as workers, and that there were no laws
to protect their livelihood. That’s when, in
1972, Elaben, as she is affectionately referred
to, founded the Self-Employed Women’s Association
(SEWA). Today, SEWA operates in over seven states
and provides these self-employed women
banking, insurance, healthcare and micro-finance
services.


And, it has an impressive 800,000 + women as
members. Proving that there is strength in numbers,
Bhatt has shown that the weak too can climb every
mountain.

Rama Bijapurkar Leader on market
strategy and consumer related issues
PROVIDING a “market focus to business strategy” is
what keeps Rama Bijapurkar engaged. She worked
with several reputed organisations before she
decided to go it alone. And now she is doing what
she likes best — problem solving. An alumnus of the
IIM, Ahmedabad, Bijapurkar first opted for client
servicing with Lintas. Disillusioned by the work
content, she moved on to the market research
agency of the company. She then moved on to Mode
and six years later to HLL as a full-time consultant.

Thereafter she join MARG and stepped out as its
deputy managing director only to move on to
McKinsey. But two years on, she realised she wasn’t
doing quite what she had set out to do. So since
1999, she’s set up her own shop and is happy being
the bridge between business and consumer.
Bijapurkar now serves as an independent director on
the boards of Infosys Technologies, CRISIL, Axis
Bank, Godrej Consumer Products, Give
Foundation, Subhiksha, Mahindra Holidays
Resorts, among others. Her recently published book,

We are like that only — Understanding the Logic of
Consumer India, created quite a buzz. Today
regarded as one of India’s foremost thougth leaders.

Madhabi Puri Buch Executive
Director, ICICI Bank
M Puri Buch, executive director on the Board of ICICI
Bank, has a job description that covers several areas.
She looks after the global markets business covering
treasury solutions for clients, fixed income and
derivatives solutions, global operations of the bank,
besides working as the chief brand officer for the
ICICI Group.

A graduate in mathematics from St Stephen’s
College, Delhi, and an MBA from the IIM,
Ahmedabad, she worked for a year with an NGO
before joined ICICI in its corporate finance
department for four years. After a career break of
three years to join her husband in the UK (where she
is reported to have worked as a sales girl), she
returned to India to do a one-year stint with ORG
Marg in market research for financial products.

In 1997, she returned to ICICI Bank, and worked to
make ICICI the top bond issuer in the country. her
efforts contributed to making it a leader in mutual
fund distribution. The bank leveraged technology to
create the pioneering online share-trading site with a
market share of over 60%. The home loans business
too grew four-fold. She now wants to bring the
benefits of technology to the thousands of small-
ticket customers doing daily transactions.

Lynn D’Souza Director, Media
Services, Lowe
She has spent almost 25 years in the media industry
training some of the best talent in the country. But
more than this, Lynn D’Souza of Initiative Media is
known for calling a spade a spade. A management
graduate from the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute, D’Souza
began her career in 1982 with Speer before spending
five years at OM, working on brands such as JJ, Asian
Paints, Titan Watches and Unilever. In 1988, she
joined Trikaya Grey (now Grey Worldwide) as media
director, where she

Lynn D’Souza Director, Media
Services, Lowe
championed the cause of media buying as an
independent business. Today her venture is India’s
largest print buyer and second largest TV buyer, with
maximum number of AOR clients. D’Souza is also
passionate about animal welfare. She started and
now chairs the Goa SPCA, owns and manages a
veterinary hospital for strays and wildlife at Goa, is
an active life member and volunteer for several
animal NGOs.

TANYA Dubash Executive Director and
President (Marketing), Godrej Group
NOT many people would know that the eldest
daughter of Adi and Parmeshwar Godrej, who is the
executive director and president (marketing) of the $
1.3 billion Godrej Group, has been nominated among
25 Indians in this year’s list of 250 Global Young
Leaders by the Geneva-based World Economic
Forum. Inducted into the company as director at 28,
Dubash began with the country’s most competitive
markets — the FMCG sector. Two years ago, she
made her intentions of expanding into the overseas

TANYA Dubash Executive Director and
President (Marketing), Godrej Group
market clear when she snapped up the Middlesex-
based Keyline Brands in a $15.75 million deal to
complement Godrej’s domestic business in hair
colour, talcum powder and shaving cream. On top of
her agenda at the moment is a strategy to re-
formulate and revitalise some of her brands, for
which she has already hired a global consultant, the
UK-based Interbrand.

Manisha Girotra Managing Director
and Chairperson, India, Union Bank of
Switzerland
SHE clinches the most talked-about deals and has a
mean golf handicap too. She also finds the time to be
a mother, work out and occasionally wave the ladle.
That’s investment banker Manisha Girotra for you. A
Delhi School of Economics topper, Girotra is quite an
eyeful too, having been judged ‘Rose Princess’ in
Chandigarh few years ago. Currently managing
director and chairperson, India, Union Bank of
Switzerland (UBS), she is known to have said her
biggest competitor in the business is her husband,
Sanjay Agarwal of Deutche Bank.

Manisha Girotra Managing Director
and Chairperson, India, Union Bank of
Switzerland
Credit to her the management of the Vodafone
acquisition of Hutch-Essar and the Hindalco buy-out
of Novelis. Before UBS hired her, Girotra did stints at
ANZ Grindlays and BZW Investment Banking where
she spearheaded the team that secured the GAIL
privatisation deal. Patience and tenacity are what
you need to crack these deals, feels the pro. It’s been
a steep climb up for this ace negotiator from the
time she was mistaken for the secretary to the
“Sahaab” when she visited ministries.

Renu S Karnad Executive Director,
HDFC
SHE began her career in the legal and credit
department of HDFC in 1978, supposedly by peddling
loans to housewives, personally going to borrowers’
homes for interviews. Through the years, even as
borrowers’ profiles changed, Renu S Karnad, who
holds a master’s degree in economics from Delhi
School of Economics, swiftly grew through the ranks
to become head of the lending business in HDFC. At
55, she is number 3 at one of India’s most well-
known home loan companies. She travels

Renu S Karnad Executive Director,
HDFC
extensively — home is Delhi, but she keeps traveling
to Mumbai and other places. And despite the fact
that the housing loan industry has slowed — due to
various reasons, not least rising interest rates and
soaring property prices — she has often said that the
fundamentals are still in place. She would know,
being in the profession for more than 25 years, and
now overseeing an exciting phase in India’s mortgage
industry.

Geetanjali Kirloskar Deputy
Chairman, Toyota Kirloskar Motor
Wife of Kirloskar Systems Ltd CMD, Vikram
Kirloskar, Geetanjali has successfully managed to
carve out her own identity in the corporate world.
She started her career in advertising with the
Kirloskar owned Ad Agency Pratibha Advertising. In
1998 she led her Agency in a 50:50 JV with the
Interpublic Worldwide Group. The turning point
came when IPG appointed her as President
professionally to run the JV company Quadrant
Communications Ltd for them. In 2003 started a non-
profit venture The India Japan Initiative for better
industrial and cultural relations between India and

Geetanjali Kirloskar Deputy
Chairman, Toyota Kirloskar Motor
The multi-faceted Kirloskar writes, is vice president,
Karnataka State Lawn Tennis Association and is is a
great collection of contemporary Indian Art The slim
and tall Kirloskar, who works out regularly, loves the
outdoors. She has acted in character roles in two
Hindi films — Cheluvi and Samay. And she has no
plans to give up, she said in a recent interview.
Kirloskar has also hosted a reality show for a news
channel where she did 38 episodes.

Leena Nair Executive Director, (HR),
Hindustan Unilever
A gold medallist from Xavier Labour Relations
Institute (XLRI) Jamshedpur, Leena(Menon) Nair, the
first woman and youngest ever executive director at
Hindustan Unilever, is in charge of the company’s
human resources. After completing her Bachelors in
electronic engineering and her MBA, Nair, 37, joined
the FMCG major in May 1992 as a management
trainee. Today she has risen to head a team that is
responsible for the well-being of about 15,000
employees in 70 locations across the country.

Hindustan Unilever
Starting her career as a factory personnel manager in
Taloja Chemicals, Chennai, Nair moved on to
management development planning and then to HR
for the company’s detergents business in April
2000.Nair feels HUL is woman-friendly. And, with her
at the helm of HR affairs at the company, HUL should
see women playing a bigger role in handling its
businesses. “Our trainee programme is part of a
conscious attempt to increase the number of women
leaders we could groom for the future,”

Hindustan Unilever
she told a daily Nair is the first woman in the history
of HUL to have been appointed a member of the
company’s management council. A Bollywood
enthusiast who loves to travel and read, Nair is
married to Kumar Nair, who runs a financial services
firm, and has two sons.

kalpana Morparia Chief Strategy and
Communications Officer, ICICI Group
FOR someone who just wanted to get married and
have children, holding the designation of Chief
Strategy Communications Officer, ICICI Group seems
pretty much like the other end of the spectrum.
Kalpana Morparia thanks her mother for it — her
mother encouraged her to be self-reliant and
financially indepedent. She joined ICICI in 1975,
armed with a law degree from Bombay University. In
2001, she

kalpana Morparia Chief Strategy and
Communications Officer, ICICI Group
spearheaded the ICICI group’s major corporate
structuring initiative, the merger of ICICI Limited with
ICICI Bank to create India’s second largest bank. A
science graduate, Morparia has earned a track record
of working in the areas of
planning, treasury, resources and corporate legal
services. Till May 2007, Morparia was Joint Managing
Director, Corporate Centre at ICICI Bank.

Sulajja Firodia motwani Joint
Managing Director, Kinetic
Engineering
AS joint managing director of Kinetic Engineering Ltd,
part of the Rs 1,200 crore Firodia Group, Sulajja
Firodia Motwani is in charge of its overall business
development activities. Under her leadership, the
group graduated from being a manufacturer of
mopeds and scooters to a full fledged two-wheeler
and motorcycle company, (Zoom, Nova, and Marvel,
Boss, Velocity, GF 170 City, Laser and Aquila, to name
a few), targeted at a whole spectrum of customers.

Sulajja Firodia motwani Joint
Managing Director, Kinetic
Engineering
Motwani has a management degree from Carnegie
Mellon University, Pittsburg, and her first stint was
with Barra International, a California-headquartered
investment consultancy. Motwani claims she has
been applying what she learnt on the badminton
courts to the Kinetic Group ever since she joined it in
1996. Her grandfather HK Firodia set up Kinetic
Engineering and father Arun Firodia founded the
Kinetic group. When not launching new bikes,
Motwani likes to play golf, ski, read non-fiction and
watch movies.

Vishakha Mulye Chief Financial
Officer, ICICI Bank
SHE joined ICICI as a management trainee in 1993. In
12 years, Vishakha Mulye, 38, has risen to become
the group’s chief financial officer (CFO). Mulye
graduated in commerce from HR College, Mumbai.
An aspiring chartered accountant, she joined ANZ
Grindlays Bank’s merchant banking division in 1991.
A year later, Mulye joined Deutsche Bank’s corporate
finance team, which she quit after three months to
join ICICI, her ‘dream employer’. Today, Vishakha
Mulye has the tricky task of ensuring that the
process of raising capital in ICICI Bank continues.

Officer, ICICI Bank
In 2005, she helped the bank raise nearly $7 billion in
equity and another $12 billion from international
markets. Balancing her role within the family and her
profession, Mulye also played a crucial role in
preparing the blueprint for the merger of ICICI with
ICICI Bank. Sounding every bit a workaholic, she
recently listed “work-related stuff” as her hobby in a
business magazine. She said the ‘turning point’ in her
career came when

Officer, ICICI Bank
KV Kamath left Asian Development Bank to join ICICI
in 1996 as its managing director. Honoured with the
India CFO Award, 2006, instituted by International
Market Assessment (IMA) for excellence in finance in
a large corporate, Mulye was also chosen as a ‘Young
Global Leader’ for the year 2007 by the World
Economic Forum.

Usha Narayanan Executive Director,
Securities and Exchange Board of
India
THERE is one woman who is keeping a constant eye
on the primary market and Foreign institutional
investors. Usha Narayanan, 55, the first woman from
within the market watchdog, Securities and Exchange
Board of India (Sebi), to become its executive
director. After school, Narayanan began work as a
clerk with the Bank of India. Later, she completed her
graduation from Delhi University and then her post-
graduation from Mumbai University. After which, she
went on to complete her masters in business law
from the National Law School in Bangalore.

Usha Narayanan Executive
Director, Securities and Exchange
Board of India
Narayanan, who joined Sebi in 1991, once said, “Sebi
is a happening place and there is a lot to learn. The
job is demanding and there are challenges, but you
have to take it as it comes and not worry about
them.” A strong votary of the need for women to
balance work and home, Narayanan is known to have
never missed any parent-teacher meeting and still
cooks before she leaves home for office. However,
she does have a regret in life. “I didn't learn to play
any musical instrument,” says she.

Falguni Nayar Managing Director,
Kotak Investment Bank
FALGUNI Nayar, the 44-year-old managing director of
Kotak Investment Bank(KIB) likes her work to do the
talking. Nayar, who started her career with AF
Ferguson after graduating from IIM Ahmedabad,
joined the Kotak Mahindra group in 1993. Since then,
she has been responsible for steering the group’s
institutional equities franchise business in the UK
and the US, and now in India. Nayar joined Kotak
Mahindra when the firm offered her to join their
M&A team.

She was on her path to building a client franchise
when she decided to move to London along with her
husband. So, she was asked to build the Kotak
Institutional Equities franchise in the UK. Later in
1997, she moved to the US where she was working on
secondment to Goldman Sachs for eight months, after
which she joined Kotak again when they decided to
set up in the US. In 2001, the family moved back to
India and she joined Kotak’s Institutional Equities
department as Co-Head. In 2005, she took over as
managing director of KIB.

One of Nayar’s primary responsibilities included
steering the investment banking business and
institutional brokerage business using local expertise.

Amrita Patel Chairperson, National
Dairy Development Board
GROOMED by her mentor and ‘father of India’s co-
operative movement’, Verghese Kurien, Amrita Patel
took charge of NDDB in 1998 when Kurien stepped
down after a 33-year reign. Patel specialised in
veterinary science and agriculture from Bombay
Veterinary College in 1965. Later, she undertook
advanced training in animal nutrition at the Rowett
Research Institute, UK. In 1965, she joined the Kaira
District Cooperative Milk Producers’ Union in their
cattle feed factory as animal nutrition officer. In 1971
Patel joined NDDB as project executive.

Amrita Patel Chairperson, National
Dairy Development Board
In September 1990, she took over as managing
director of NDDB, which controls Mother Dairy.
Honoured with prestigious awards, like the Padma
Bhushan and the Norman Borlaug award, Patel has a
challenging task ahead. At a time when private
businesses and MNCs, like Nestle and Britannia, have
entered India’s milk sector, she has to ensure that
the country’s 96,000 dairy co-peratives, 170 milk
producers’ co-operative unions and 15 state co-
operative milk marketing federations emerge
stronger in the days to come.

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