Indian Women Mean Business - Building Gender Balanced Business

Kiran Bedi, police officer and former head of Mumbai’s largest prison
Kiran Bedi, police officer and former head of Mumbai’s largest prison, set the tone. A tiny woman with immense energy and charisma, she is India’s first and highest ranking female police officer (and a former tennis champion).

A believer in ‘positive aggression’, she exhorted the crowd to decide what they wanted and to go after it. ‘Change the status quo of what is irrelevant.’ She herself had transformed Mumbai’s largest prison, with no money and no resources -– just a massive shift in approach, highly emblematic of the kind of paradigm shifts that women often bring to their leadership roles. She knew she would never be able to manage 10,000 violent male criminals on her own. So she opened her jail to a myriad of NGOs with whom she partnered, enrolled the detainees in a transformative vision of rehabilitation and got them all to … meditate! The turnaround has been phenomenal.

‘A believer in “positive aggression”, Kiran Bedi exhorted the crowd to decide what they wanted and to go after it. “Change the status quo of what is irrelevant.”

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Managing Director of Biocon
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, the Managing Director of Biocon, also illustrates this shift to new management approaches. She founded one of India’s first biotech companies back in the 70’s, long before the industry became fashionable. She had wanted to be a brewer like her father, but after studying in Australia, she found that women were not welcomed into management in the brewing industry in India.

So she turned an obstacle into opportunity, and set off into the uncharted territory of biotech. She started off with a team of 80% women scientists who were attracted to her as a female role model, while most men were not convinced that biotech was a safe career bet. Some 30 years later, she runs one of the world’s big biotech companies with 4,000 employees, 40% of them women, and some $500 million in turnover.

‘I went from using yeast in beer, to yeast in insulin,’ she laughs. ‘My vision was to keep Indian scientific expertise in India, and to move the country from imitation to innovation. I’ve accomplished both.’

I had the pleasure of chairing a panel discussion that included several other powerhouse women:

Naina Lal Kidwai, the head of HSBC in India
One of the many women who happen to work in finance in India. (The conference was opened by Chanda Kochhar, the head of ICICI, India’s second largest bank).

Vinita Bali, the CEO of Britannia
One of India’s leading food companies, she successfully steered the company into a health and nutrition strategy, adding vitamin elements to its products, pushing the company to its highest ever growth rate (22%).

Nandita Gurjar, the head of HR for Infosys
Infosys has now partnered with Cherie Blair’s Foundation to do more, much-needed research on women in business in India.

India’s Gender Balance Record
Corporate India has been more traditional in terms of gender balance than one would have thought given women’s longstanding role in Indian politics. Yet Grant Thornton has done research showing that 15% of the country’s senior executives are women, not far from the US figure of 20%. Many of the country’s leading businesswomen are the daughters or wives in large family business empires. And while the country as a whole may not be good at educating its daughters, the elite offer them top-flight global education.

Meritocracy at ICICI
But there are signs of change. Except on the crowded roads, things are moving fast in India, and this conference begins the laudable effort of showcasing what is working. K. V. Kamath, the Chairman of the Board of ICICI, says he has simply ‘unshackled’ women, removing all the obstacles that are in their way. As for the rest, he says, ‘they take care of themselves.’ He has 12 women on the 20-person board that he chairs. ‘I don’t see them as women,’ he insists, ‘I see them as talented executives.’

Balanced Recrutiment for Men and Women at Britannia
Vinita Bali at Britannia has done a bit more. While swearing that she is simply being gender neutral, she has clearly and unequivocally introduced a mandatory 50/50 male/female candidate slate for every job. That makes the choice, she says, truly gender neutral. She says she communicates a lot, explaining the rules of the game, and standing firm. She says once the rules are clear, they don’t cause dissent. What she really seeks to establish is a ‘clear, transparent meritocracy’ where everyone knows the rules of the game –- and the playing field becomes truly level for all.

India Can Leapfrog Ahead in Gender Balance
The challenge is to bring the men along too, convinced and convincing about the need for change in this area. Above all, they need to be convinced of the business benefit of gender balance; and the quicker the better. Very few men were present at the conference in Mumbai. But let’s not wait to get the guys to see the light.

India has the chance to learn from what other companies in the West have done on gender balance and avoid costly and less than effective ‘fix the women’ programmes. In doing so, it could jump straight to management gender bilingualism focused on the economic opportunities of balance.

Given the level of energy and ideas unleashed by this first women’s conference, India would have a lot to gain. The playing field, like the roads in India, will need a few more conferences like this one. The transformation ahead is a massive one.

Triumph of Female Scions in India
India Leads in C-Suite but Trails on Boards
Soap Operas Raise Status of Women in India
Indians Don’t Want a Female Boss
Number of Women in IT in India Surges
What Happens to All Those Brilliant Female Students in India?
Mazumdar Shaw, Kiran, Chairman and MD, Biocon
The Top 25 Women in India
How Indian B-Schools Can Help Women and the Nation
Stevie Awards
India’s Future Depends on Women in the Workplace
Crime Against Women on the Rise in India
Comparing Men and Women Managers in US and India
The Top 5 Women Executives of India