Innholdsfortegnelse for 23-Sep-2018 i Business Today

THERE ARE numerous studies which show that having more women in the workplaces is good for business – not because it is the politically correct thing to do in today’s era, but because it is better for the bottom line. Two years ago, a study by eY and Peterson Institute of the US, looking at 21,000 companies in 91 countries, showed that companies with more women in their leadership teams had better bottom lines. Two McKinsey reports – one in 2015 “Why Diversity Matters” and another in 2018 “Delivering Through Diversity” – came to similar conclusions. Companies with a higher number of women in top management ranks were more likely to outperform those with lower gender diversity in top rungs. and these are not the only ones – there have…

THERE IS NO RESPITE for the Rupee as it breaches the 70 mark against the US dollar. There are estimates of the Rupee remaining at the 69 to 70 level because of weaker external parameters; the trade deficit is a big worry because of oil imports. The current account deficit (CAD) is expected to touch 2.8 per cent GDP in 2018/19, which was less than 1 per cent two years ago. The rising interest rates in US and later in the Euro zone will bring more trouble for rupee. With inflation above the comfort zone, there are expectations of an interest rate hike to provide some cushion. The RBI is already following a calibrated approach by intervening in the forex market to reduce high volatility. The longterm outlook for the…

ALL PATIENTS WHO got a faulty hip implant (eight years ago), sold by a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary must be compensated, said a February 2018 report by an expert committee of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare. Seven months after the report, five of the victims have written to the ministry seeking the details of the recommendations. Patient advocacy groups have been demanding that the government make the report public to avoid any scope for subsequent alterations in the recommendations. Two things are clear. India does not have proper electronic, traceable health records or a registry of patients. We fail to enforce time-bound penalties on wrong doers. For a robust healthcare ecosystem, both ingredients are crucial. It is time to make India’s digital drive more purposeful.…

THE NON BANKING Finance Companies sector with over 11,000 players of all shapes and sizes is showing reduced numbers. This is good news. In the first half of the current year, there were some 368 cancellations, while in 2016/17 there were 169 offset by 105 new registrations. The RBI says the cancellations are mainly voluntary surrender, and non-compliance of the revised criteria for net owned funds. After the Payments, and Small Finance banks (mostly MFIs), there are many NBFC players not renewing licences, and there are fintechs with NBFC licences where entry and exit are rapid. The NBFC as a sector is just 14 per cent of the banking industry’s total assets and its share in loan and advances is about 18 per cent. Clearly, the industry needs fewer but…

BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY INVESTS IN PAYTM In its first direct investment in India, Warren Buffet-led Berkshire Hathaway has picked up a small stake of 3-4 per cent in One97 Communications, the parent company of digital payments major Paytm. The US investor will also get a board seat. Although details are not known, Buffet’s company was reportedly in talks with Paytm to invest about ₹2,200-2,500 crore at a valuation of about $10-12 billion. US POSTS STRONG GROWTH IN SECOND QUARTER The U.S. economic growth in the second quarter was stronger than expected as GDP growth was revised upwards to 4.2 per cent, the fastest rate in four years. The economy was on track as lower consumer spending was offset by investments in software and reduced imports. Compared to the second quarter of…

Alice Vaidyan, 59, is a compulsive reader. Incidentally, she has laid her hands on Skin In The Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author of The Black Swan, which talks about embracing uncertainty rather than trying to predict everything. In Skin In The Game, Taleb talks about the foundation of risk management. The choice is apt considering that Vaidyan is in the business of risk, uncertainty, and making the most of them. She has been heading GIC Re as Chairperson since January 2016. Under her, GIC Re has secured a place among the top ten global reinsurers, displacing US-based Transatlantic Reinsurance Company and South Korea-based Korean Reinsurance Company, in terms of top line. It has also launched a syndicate in Lloyd’s of London for garnering global business. The corporation has…

Although the Indian IT industry is three decades old, there are only a handful of Indian women in global roles. Aruna Jayanthi, the former India boss of European IT services giant Capgemini, is one of them. After running just India operations, Jayanthi took over as the CEO of Business Services, created by Capgemini to provide BPO and Platform services in 2016. This year, in July, she was appointed as managing director of the company’s Asia-Pacific and Latin American business units. WHY SHE MATTERS She is among the very few women in the IT industry with global roles The past year, at Business Services, Jayanthi helped Capgemini develop new markets. “In Asia Pacific, we won deals in Japan, Australia. Capgemini, as a group, was present in these countries already. However, the…

WHY SHE MATTERS The company has been posting strong growth under her AT SOME POINT OF TIME, you are bound to have used products of 3M India — be it office stationery products like Post-it and glue stick to home care product such as the Scotch-Brite scrub sponge. 3M has kept pace in tune with the India growth story after the liberalisation in 1991 and built on growth in the country. At the conclusion of its 30th year of operations in India, Debarati Sen, Managing Director, 3M India,…

NRB Bearings Ltd’s Vice Chairman and Managing Director Harshbeena Zaveri – who has made it to Business Today’s MPW list for the second consecutive year – is ready to take up challenges. The auto-ancillary industry may face a crisis in near future, with challenges of transiting to hybrid and electric vehicles. “I believe in energising and motivating the team in such challenges,” she says. WHY SHE MATTERS NRB Bearings, under her leadership, recorded a whopping 75% jump in profits in FY 2017/18 NRB will invest over ₹200 crore over the next couple of years in R&D and is beefing up infrastructure and manufacturing facilities. New products are coming out every year. “We have developed prototypes and will come out with new products every year,” says Zaveri. “We have a flexible…

WHY SHE MATTERS A deep dive into the growth strategy makes her a successful agent of change NISABA GODREJ, the Executive Chairperson of the ₹10,000 crore Godrej Consumer Products, has been trying hard to change the over-100-year-old conglomerate’s old-economy image to a contemporary and vibrant one whose products appeal to the millennials. And she is not doing it by launching new variants of the soap that her company has been making since 1918. The categories she has entered are undoubtedly extensions of the company’s traditional personal wash and hair colour businesses, but now they cater to the new-age consumers. Be it crème-based hair colours, a wide range of salon hair products under the B-Blunt brand or the Goodknight Fabric Roll-on, Nisaba has ensured that her brands would resonate with the…

A couple of years ago, when 50-year-old Vibha Padalkar was holidaying in Barcelona, she was fascinated by flamenco dancing at Theatre City Hall. “The music sounded so Indian,” she says. Curiosity led her to dig more. She found that there were Indian influences in its origin, especially from the states of Punjab and Rajasthan. Recently, after watching Wild Wild West, a documentary on Osho Rajneesh, Padalkar read several books to understand the phenomenon behind his immense popularity. Such inquisitiveness best describes Padalkar. In a career spanning two-and- a-half decades, Padalkar, a chartered accountant from England and Wales, has seamlessly moved across industries as diverse as auditing and FMCG to BPM and life insurance. WHY SHE MATTERS She manages finances of one of India's most highly valued life insurers In her…

WHY SHE MATTERS Yadav’s NGO is helping over two lakh women and 13,000 self-help groups PAANCHVI PASS and married off at the age of 10 – these are not the ideal living conditions for anyone to thrive. But that has not deterred Phoolbasan Bai Yadav from leading tens of thousands of women in their fight against poverty and gender bias. She hails from the Rajnandgaon district of Chhattisgarh, a state mostly known for its rich mineral deposits and Maoist activity. Nevertheless, she is determined to script a different story for the underprivileged women resigned to their fate. Yadav’s journey started in 2000 when her group of 11 women bid for bazaar theka, a contract to collect tax from the shops in a market. Not a job meant for women, as…

Almost everyone in Maharashtra’s Gadhchiroli district would know where Bangubai's dawakhana is. The Maa Danteshwari Dawakhana in Dhanora (Gadhchiroli) is a landmark in this naxal-infested area, and Gangubai is none other than Dr. Rani Bang, a Padmashree awardee and Co-Founder, Search. Dr. Bang, a gynaecologist, along with her husband, Dr. Abhay Bang, a physician, has been providing healthcare to women and children for over three decades. The couple, alumni of John Hopkins University, gave up lucrative job offers from US hospitals to serve people in one of the poorest districts of India. "We were always clear that we wanted to be in the community development space and among the poorest of the poor." The Bang duo not only picked up health and social issues that impacted communities, they also did…

The Mahabharata happened due to envy, says eminent Odia environmentalist Radhamohan to this writer at his home in Odisha. “Awards and recognition are a burden. It turns friends into enemies,” he says. It is with such upbringing that Sabarmatee got from her father that she has been working for the last 28 years to develop a forest using organic farming, without any promotion. It started as an experiment in 1988, when Sabarmatee, her father and other likeminded people wanted to rejuvenate barren land using organic farming. They zeroed in on wasteland in the interiors of Nayagarh district (earlier Puri). People from surrounding villages came, and one elderly person said: “You from cities don’t understand farming. It’s impossible to grow anything here.” The land was eroded, and the soil gravelly. “We…

Sumita Ghose is well set on her journey to make RangSutra the ‘Amul’ for handloom and handicraft products. After all, she has founded the only Indian producerowned company in the handicraft space. The inspiration was her work with Urmul Trust in western Rajasthan, where she saw how most handicraft businesses were not sustainable and depended on grants for sustenance. She did not have a lot of money of her own and turned to artisans for help. A thousand artisans pitched in ₹1,000 each from their savings. Ghose put in ₹10 lakh and incorporated RangSutra. In 2007, impact investor Aavishkaar and ethnic retailer Fabindia invested ₹23 lakh and ₹70 lakh for 17 per cent and 38 per cent stakes, respectively, and RangSutra was incorporated as a public company. Each entity in…

How do you see the trade war playing out? A: Dr. Ira Kalish: There is a high degree of uncertainty about it. It’s not clear how far we’ll go and what the specific causes will be. There’s evidence that businesses in the US and Europe are putting investments, particularly in the global supply chain, on hold. What we know is that we’ve already had tariffs imposed and there is threat of substantial tariffs as retaliation. On top of that, there is a threat that the US might withdraw from NAFTA and the WTO. The US has done things that undermine the WTO. The dispute resolution mechanism, which adjudicates disputes between countries, is supposed to have seven members. There are only four now. By the end of the year, only one…

COMPANIES, even the most innovative of them, have run out of new things to do with smartphones. When the new flagships are launched every year, there is disappointment all around at the lack of radical new designs and features. Maybe it is the right time for someone to finally come up with that elusive foldable phone that has been discussed for years. There have been flip phones before, but the foldable phone of not-too-distant future is meant to be much more than a screen, a small keyboard and a hinge in the middle. It may even have a foldable screen, an idea more associated with Samsung than with anyone else. Samsung wants to be the first off the mark to make that phone and D.J. Koh, head of Samsung Mobiles,…

Nevertheless, SHE Persisted: True Stories of Women Leaders in Tech By Pratima Rao Gluckman Publisher: FriesenPress Pages: 330 Price: ₹1,622 (PB); ₹2,447 (Hardcover) ARE YOU A WOMAN in the field of technology, feeling stuck or pressured and contemplating to give up? A male manager asked to diversify the workforce or one with many women on your team or the mentor of a bright woman who will be just another statistic in a leaky pipeline? A parent of a young girl and wondering if you should tell your daughter to take the beaten path because so few women are doing what your daughter wants to do? A husband who is unable to understand why your wife needs to work so hard? Well, here is a book that will motivate you and…

CARRIE TEFFNER CFO and EVP, Crocs Global Q. The biggest challenge you faced in your career A. Setting up a financial shared-service centre for a large multinational. I had no previous experience, and it required me to relocate my family to another state, and it challenged me to lead, inspire and drive change on a scale I had never done before. It was scary, empowering and a career-defining opportunity for me. Q. Your best teacher in business A. There are many, but if I have to pick one, it will be David Bergeron, my second boss. He took the time to teach me how to think, question who I am and understand the contribution I am capable of making. By following his examples, I have learnt to be passionate about…

STAY CONNECTED WITH US ON www.facebook.com/BusinessToday@BT_India PERSPECTIVES A Loss-making Unit for Almost a Decade, AI Has No Reason to Exist For an airline surviving on ₹4,600-crore annual bailout package, the reasons for its existence have to be extremely convincing businesstoday.in/ai-bailout Google Turns 'desi' in a Bid to Tap New Users in India Most updates by Google are aimed at tapping the vernacular user-base in India, which is growing at a rapid pace businesstoday.in/google-language Why Telecom Players Will Offer Aadhaar-based Face Authentication UIDAI has to work with all biometric device providers to integrate face modality into certified registered devices businesstoday.in/aadhaar-face.authentication In Defence of Mutual Fund AMCs Why SEBI Chief Ajay Tyagi is not right in harping on the need for more competition in the mutual fund business businesstoday.in/sebi-mutualfunds NEWS Panel Suggests…

RELIANCE COMMUNICATION is racing against time to conclude the deal with Reliance Jio to sell its wireless business, towers, fibre and media nodes, for about ₹18,000 crore. Jio is expected to take on over ₹7,000 crore of RCom’s deferred spectrum liability debt. After the Jio deal, RCom will sell its remaining 66 units of spectrum (valued at around ₹3,700 crore), and is likely to make another ₹10,000 crore by selling real estate. Effectively RCom will reduce its current ₹46,000 crore debt to ₹7,300 crore of debt on paper; The estimated net worth of RCom’s remaining business is close to ₹7,000 crore. Last year RCom’s debt-structuring deal with lenders involved banks converting ₹7,000 crore worth of debt into 51 per cent equity in RCom. Though this would have left RCom’s books…

INDIA’S GAS monopoly GAIL, is set to restructure operations and become a pure infrastructure provider. It opened its Natural Gas Pipeline Open Access System governing the 11,400-kilometre pipeline network to private gas marketing companies. This strengthens the marketing business of the company, along with freer movement of gas. Almost two-thirds of GAIL’s capacity stays unutilised. With this move, private players can now import and sell gas to consumers using GAIL’s infrastructure. Regulator PNGRB is already working out plans to unbundle the marketing and pipeline business in a phased manner. It is learnt, that GAIL plans to segregate the two businesses. Meanwhile, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan is pushing GAIL to concentrate on building pipeline infrastructure and sell off non-core businesses like petro-chemical complexes at an ‘appropriate’ time and price. Stateowned oil…

AMEERA SHAH, Promoter and Managing Director, Metropolis Healthcare, worked as a CEO, accountant, sales person and even as a receptionist when she got on with turning around her father’s laboratory from Dr Sushil Shah’s Laboratory to Metropolis Healthcare. “There were no computers or mobiles then in our office,” recalls Ameera. Working in a resource-crunched environment, Ameera realised women entrepreneurs needed a lot more than just ideas and funds. With this thought, she recently launched Empoweress, a not-for-profit venture, which mentors women entrepreneurs, and provides expert guidance and funds. Already more than 3,000 women entrepreneurs across India are her followers. “Women in business need huge support beyond funding and ideas to succeed in life and business,” says Ameera, a new entrant to Business Today’s “Most Powerful Women” listing. WHY SHE MATTERS…

DEBJANI GHOSH, PRESIDENT, NASSCOM, plotted her career well. Ever since she was a young marketing executive at Intel, Ghosh wanted to head the company’s India operations. Every career decision she took thereafter was taken with this goal in mind. In 2012, she returned from abroad to head Intel South Asia. In five years, she was looking out for the next challenging assignment, the next big platform. She quit Intel and became an angel investor before joining Nasscom in April 2018. The Indian IT industry’s powerful body is one platform from where she can influence policies and the direction the industry is taking. Nasscom, however, is now a complicated animal. Even a decade back, it was largely a big boys’ club. Now, it has a diversified member profile — start-ups, SMEs,…

INDU MALHOTRA’S appointment as a Supreme Court judge was fraught with controversy as the government had earlier refused to elevate Uttarakhand High Court Chief Justice K.M. Joseph and promoted her instead. However, no amount of controversy could take away from her the feat she had achieved. Malhotra became the first woman lawyer to be directly appointed as a judge of the Supreme Court from the Bar. She is also the second sitting woman judge in the apex court – only six women had been there before Malhotra came in. She was also the second woman, after Leila Seth, to be designated as Senior Advocate in the Supreme Court. WHY SHE MATTERS Her expertise in arbitration makes her stand out Hailing from a family of legal practitioners – her father late…

NADIA CHAUHAN, Joint Managing Director of Parle Agro, has been her father Prakash’s biggest critic since her childhood. Prakash created the iconic beverages Thums Up, Gold Spot and Limca, first sought her feedback whenever they were experimenting with a new product. Therefore, joining her father’s business was a natural choice. “I not only used to spend my vacations at my father’s office learning how to type from his secretary but also attended brand meetings and went for market visits,” she remembers. When she joined the group in 2003, she was in charge of marketing and innovations. But the one thing that constantly bothered her was that the company was not growing according to its potential. “In spite of having a huge sales force, we were stuck at distributing to four…

One of the leading ladies in intellectual property rights in India, Pallavi Shroff, has made it to the Business Today Most Powerful Women list for the sixth time. The jury specifically noted Shroff’s contribution to the path-breaking case of Bharat Matrimony vs Google, where the regulator – Competition Commission of India – held Google guilty of ‘search bias’ and fined it $21.17 million. “Google was found to be indulging in practices of search bias and by doing so it causes harm to its competitors as well as to users,” CCI’s 190-page order noted in February 2018. Google has challenged the judgement in the Competition Appellate Tribunal. “Almost five years ago, for the first time a very complex issue like this was being addressed. It took us quite a bit to…

AS THE CEO AND PRESIDENT of National e-governance division, Radha Chauhan, a Uttar Pradeshcadre IAS officer, got a challenging assignment in 2016. She was asked to find out whether an Amazon- like e-marketplace could replace the traditional government procurement systems and operations of the century-old Directorate General of Supplies and Disposals (DGS&D). By March 2016, Chauhan’s team delivered a model that retained all checks and balances, including regulatory compliances and lowest bid requirements. In August that year, it was launched by DGS&D as its e-procurement initiative. Later on, DGS&D was wound up and Chauhan was asked to head the Government e-Marketplace (GeM), a new special purpose vehicle that would carry out DGS&D’s operations. GeM started by offering e-procurement of computers, tablets and smartphones and also cab services, but Chauhan soon…

VANAJA SARNA was a member of the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) — earlier called the Central Board of Excise and Customs — for two years. The then chairperson, Najib Shah, was to retire on March 31, 2017, just ahead of the scheduled rollout of the goods and services tax or GST. Being the senior-most CBIC member after Shah, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley asked her in early 2017 to start attending GST Council meetings, even though the government had not decided Shah’s successor. The CBIC chairpersonship does not automatically go to the senior-most member. So, Sarna decided to apply. “I knew the risk involved. If it didn’t go well, I knew my neck would be on the line. They would have chucked me out,” she says. For…

IF YOU ARE A WOMAN aged between 20 and 40, and experiencing specific syndromes such as severe acne, dark skin patches, excessive hair growth on face or stomach, weight gain or irregular/no periods, these could be warning signs. You need to see your doctor and find out whether you are suffering from polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS, a hormonal imbalance that affects a woman’s ovaries. Diagnosing PCOS is not difficult, though. You should either go for a simple blood test to check the level of androgen (a male hormone) or get an ultrasound done to find out if you have cysts in the ovaries. Left untreated for a long time, it could result in diabetes, hypertension, heart conditions and other obesity-related issues as well as delayed pregnancy, a risk of…

THE RESERVE BANK of India annual report says that 99.3 per cent of the high value notes that were demonetised have come back. It also says that people have started keeping their savings in cash again. Meanwhile, the introduction of new currency notes, with the much touted security features, has not stopped the production and circulation of fake currency. Other reports on the RBI website show that Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) were hit pretty hard because of demonetisation when it came to getting credit. (A Mint Street Memo on the RBI site says that demonetisation hit an already decelerating credit growth to MSMEs). The other stated objectives of demonetisation -- from reducing corruption to becoming a less cash economy – have only been partial successes. And whether the government…

THIRTY-FOUR STRESSED power sector accounts that defaulted on ₹1.5 lakh crore worth of dues are now before the National Company Law Tribunal – yet again. They were given a 180-day deadline to settle their debts but failed. Lender banks are expected to take a haircut and write-off these ‘bad loans’ – 18 of which had already been referred to the NCLT earlier. The remaining, including Ind-Barath Energy (Utkal), Lanco Anpara, Jindal India Thermal Power and others will be at the bankruptcy tribunal within two weeks. RBI has refused any relief on the deadline to avoid setting a precedent even as SBI – the lead lender to nearly eight power plants is hoping for resolution, and has been given a fortnight to appoint a legal team for the NCLT proceedings.…

IT WAS AMONG the wisest decisions taken, when the Finance Ministry junked Air India’s demand for a ₹30,000-crore fund infusion, reportedly because the airline didn’t present a turnaround plan. The Finance Ministry had discussed a ₹11,000-crore bailout package with the Civil Aviation Ministry earlier when the attempt to sell a 76 per cent equity stake in the Maharaja bombed. One could well argue that for a government preparing for the general elections next year, there are more urgent issues than reviving Air India. The airline has already sucked in ₹28,175 crore from the ₹30,231-crore (10-year) turnaround plan (TAP) approved by the previous government in 2012 with a marginal improvement in its operating profits for two consecutive years but with the deterioration in market fundamentals, Air India will most likely struggle…

DEMYSTIFYING GST WHAT: Workshop on GST and e-Way Bill WHEN: Sept 7, Patna WHAT TO LOOK FOR:Technical experts from the Department of CGST and SGST will give a demonstration and help understand the nuances of the GST and the e-Way Bill. Tax experts will also analyse the impact of the last GST Council Meet and its implication for the industry. FUNDING SMEs WHAT: Rajasthan MSME Finance Summit WHEN: Sept 27, Jaipur WHAT TO LOOK FOR: The MSME sector contributes significantly to the Indian economy. The theme of the event is Financing the Aspirations of MSMEs. It will host discussions relating to credit flow to MSMEs, issues and solutions and financial products for MSMEs. PENSION TIME WHAT: 20th Insurance and Pensions Summit WHEN: Sept 11, Mumbai WHAT TO LOOK FOR: It…

Radha (name changed), 39, is a Senior Partner at an investment banking firm where she has been working for seven years. She was rising swiftly, managing important clients, cracking multi-million dollar deals. Since last year, when she became a mother of twins, she is not sure where her career is headed. She has been allowed flexi-time – part of company policy – enabling her to work from home, whenever needed, but she is no longer given difficult assignments. She fears she will have little to show when her appraisal comes up. “I have worked hard for so many years. I don’t want to give it all up,” she says. “But my company seems to have already decided that I will not be able to perform as before.” This is nothing…

FOR AARTHI SUBRAMANIAN, who was elevated as Chief Digital Officer (CDO) of Tata Sons a year back, work dynamics have changed a lot but not the work environment. In her earlier profile at TCS, where she was global head of delivery excellence, governance and compliance, she was driving digitisation big time to meet market challenges. Now, she is “driving digital adoption across group companies.” Despite the new work dynamics, Subramanian has the same reporting head, Tata Group Chairman N. Chandrasekaran, who mentored her during her TCS days. Subramanian’s understanding of the Tatas' work culture makes the process of executing digitisation in group companies easier. Chandrasekaran had said after announcing her appointment that she would play a key role in driving digital adoption across group companies as well as the group’s…

Apurva Purohit, President, Jagran Group, has had a difficult year. GST and demonetisation severely impacted the company’s bottom-line growth. However, Purohit, known for finding opportunities in challenges, did exactly that. She made sure to focus on early-stage businesses such as outdoor and digital to turn them around. Outdoor, says Purohit, is usually the last thing that advertisers spend on when they tighten their purse. “But advertisers weren’t looking at other media, too, so the idea was to get the outdoor team to push advertisers to try out hoardings. We increased the number of pitches that we were making to clients. We also built a tool where they could monitor hoardings online. This is how we gave a scientific analysis to the clients about hoardings,” says Purohit. WHY SHE MATTERS She…

IF YOU ARE HEADING the country’s largest ratings agency, you have a good understanding of the pulse of the economy. Ashu Suyash, MD & CEO of CRISIL Ltd, an assignment she got three years ago, doesn’t shy away from expressing her views on risks the Indian economy faces as well as its growth prospects. The 51-year-old professional, who honed her skills at the fund management and banking industry, expects the economy to grow 7.3-7.5 per cent in the current year, but is worried about the geo-political situation. For the ex–Citibanker who previously headed asset management businesses at L&T and Fidelity in India, the transition has been smooth. Her mandate three years ago was to stabilise operations after the sudden exit of the CEO and identify new areas of opportunity and…

FALGUNI NAYAR, the founder of omni-channel beauty retail chain Nykaa, has every reason to smile. In an environment when profitability is evading almost every ecommerce retailer, Nykaa which reported revenues of Rs 570 crore in 2017/18 achieved EBITDA profitability. “We have just turned EBITDA profitable and if we keep that momentum going, this year we will achieve profitability. That’s a big goal for us and I will be delighted if we can achieve that this year,” says Nayar. Nykaa, in its five years of existence, has emerged as a sought-after retailer for most beauty and personal care brands. Nayar, who likes to be called as the Indian Sephora, in the last one year has also got a number of leading international beauty brands to foray into the Indian market exclusively…

Jyotsna Suri started her journey more than three decades ago with Bharat Hotels, the parent of The LaLiT luxury chain. After the death of her husband Lalit Suri, she took over the reins at the homegrown hospitality brand. Now, Suri is about to take ₹645 crore hotel chain to the next level. The company has recently filed for a ₹1,200 crore IPO with the capital markets regulator SEBI, which will place it in the big league of established brands such as The Indian Hotels Company and The Oberoi Hotels. WHY SHE MATTERS The group’s rebranding exercise, which started in 2008 under her leadership, has led to steady growth According to the 2017 trends and opportunities report by New York-based hotel consultancy firm HVS, The LaLiT is the 15th largest hospitality…

WHEN NEERU CHADHA was elected to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) last year, she became only the second woman to be appointed as a judge. Hamburgbased ITLOS is an independent judicial body under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and deals with all international disputes in this space. Chadha, a lawyer of repute in the field of international arbitration and dispute, won the election in the first round itself with 120 votes, the highest in the Asia-Pacific group, thus proving her worth. Chadha has been elected to the tribunal for a term of nine years, from 2017 to 2026. After getting her Law degrees from Delhi University and the University of Michigan, Chadha worked with the Ministry of External Affairs for…

PRATHIBA Singh’s journey from a top IPR lawyer to a Permanent Judge in the Delhi High Court is full of milestones. She was a member of the IPR Think Tank which drafted India’s National IPR Policy in 2015, member of the committee to amend the Copyright Act in 2012 and member of the Parliamentary Committee to amend the Patent Act in 2002. How powerful does she feel as a Judge? “It is humility combined with blessings to do justice. If I perceive it as power, I don’t think I can do justice. This is a position of humility, not power,” says Justice Singh, who became Permanent Judge of Delhi HC in May 2017. The jury noted Justice Singh’s judgement this February striking down an exclusion clause that allowed insurance firms…

VANI KOLA is among the few Indian women who have been able to reach the top in the male-dominated venture capital, or VC, industry. In the US, for instance, only 6 per cent women are VCs. The numbers in India are minuscule. Different VCs have different strategies for selecting start-ups to invest, but for Kola, the answer lies in the founders. “We very much believe in the founders’ first philosophy. We spend a lot of time getting to know them and if we like a company we stay invested with them for a very long time. That has helped us succeed,” says Kola. WHY SHE MATTERS She runs her firm with a founder first philosophy Anant Goel, CEO of Milkbasket, where Kalaari led a Series A funding round of $7…

WHY SHE MATTERS 1,50,000 girls in more than 250 schools are using these books as part of the curriculum MENSTRUPEDIA WAS FOUNDED in August 2012 by a young couple keen on creating awareness among young girls about health during menstruation and to demolish myths around the subject, still a taboo in large parts of India. Ask Aditi Gupta, who set up Menstrupedia with Tuhin Paul, on what she is proud of over the past 12 months in terms of impact, and she points at her engagement with the Andhra Pradesh government. “The government of Andhra Pradesh distributed Menstrupedia comic books in English and Telugu to 122 residential schools across 11 districts,” says Gupta. This is building on the efforts over the last six years. “Today, 1,50,000 girls across more than…

THE UNDERSTATED headquarters of Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan located in a nondescript lane of a Mumbai suburb host numerous workshops for the socially backward, lower income Muslim women. Its Founder, Noorjehan Safia Niaz, has a single-point agenda – that of making them realise that they are entitled to all Fundamental Rights as citizens of India and the clerics have no right to dictate their lives. To drive the point home, the walls of her office feature disturbing statistics of regressive norms. “Nowhere in the Quran is there any mention of triple talaq, polygamy or Halala. It is a complete mistranslation and misrepresentation Equality and justice are two basic values of Islam,” says Niaz. Niaz had always wanted to serve society, but in 1993, when she worked with the riot-hit Muslim…

WHY SHE MATTERS She identified the need to analyse social data for better understanding of social and economic milieu If data is integral to the financial world in decision-making, why can’t it be of use to the social world? To find out, Prukalpa Sankar, Founder, SocialCops, moved to India from Singapore with Co-founder Varun Banka and kicked off data research in India’s social milieu. Thus, an epiphany, while working with an investment bank in Singapore, led a 21-year- old Sankar to set up a social data aggregation company SocialCops in 2013. Fast forward to 2018. SocialCops now provides data help to several social projects and helps government and nonprofit organisations make informed decisions. From working with the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas in monitoring LPG connections under the Pradhan…

WHY SHE MATTERS She has taken a host of initiatives to make elementary education realistic for schoolchildren AROUND 57 PER CENT of 14-18-year olds could not solve a basic division problem. Forty-seven per cent of them couldn’t read a simple sentence in English. These figures from ASER (Annual Status of Education Report, 2017) hold up a mirror to India’s status of elementary schooling and basic learning. Rukmini Banerji, CEO, Pratham, is behind the ASER initiative, which has been revealing the status of India’s elementary education since 2005. “One of the significant contributions of ASER is that it has brought the learning agenda to the centre stage,” says Banerji, who has launched large-scale learning programmes to educate students in urban and rural India. The ASER approach has been replicated in more…

Q. Your career choice Milee Ashwarya: To be honest, it was an accident. I majored in English Literature, but was not much into MBA or civil services. There were other options like masscom or advertising, but I was a very confused person at the time. I could not imagine my life without books, though. So, a friend suggested I should work in publishing. I joined Rupa in 2006 and moved to Random House India two years later. Q. On leadership role It has been an exciting journey. There is a lot of learning, and I feel very humble when I think of all the opportunities I had. I was young and restless and wanted to try new things, and my bosses helped me push the boundaries. It is our turn…