Innholdsfortegnelse for 4-Oct-20 i Business Today

What is your view on Q1 GDP numbers? This is because of exogenous shock globally. If you look at the World Economic Outlook report, the fraction of countries whose GDP per capita will contract this year is the highest since 1870. Despite that, the impact on our economy has been the severest. The intensity of our lockdown was very severe. The Oxford University, for instance, maintains that India had the most intense lockdown by far. There was complete lockdown in April and May. We started some unlocking on June 1. We have had such a severe fall due to the intense lockdown in April and May. The effects persisted in June. Would you attribute the fall only to that? Or would you accept that coronavirus hit us at the weakest…

A ARTHI SUBRAMANIAN has many similarities with Tata Group Chairperson K. Chandarasekan. Both are committed, aggressive and known for attention to detail. Both are National Institute of Technology graduates with interests in movie, music, books and fitness. And both cut their teeth in IT sector behemoth Tata Consultancy Services (TCS). It is an experience that Subramanian will need to tap more and more as she leads the group’s digital transformation to make the businesses future-proof. Tata Sons has formed a company, Tata Digital, under a grand plan that involves launching a “super app” for food and grocery, fashion and lifestyle, consumer durables, insurance/financial services, healthcare and bill payments, among others. Even legacy companies such as Tata Consumer Products, Tata Steel and Tata Chemicals are expanding their digital footprint to reach…

“WHAT LIMITS you is between your ears.” A piece of advice that Daisy Chittilapilly received from a mentor a few years ago woke her up to the importance of realising her career path. Daisy has been leading Cisco India and SAARC’s Digital Transformation Division for two years now. She has performed several important roles during her 16 years at Cisco such as leading Cisco India & SAARC Partner Organization (90 per cent-plus business of Cisco India & SAARC is executed by partners) where she expanded partnerships and focused on cybersecurity, data centre and bringing new partners. Her initiatives per cent to Cisco India’s revenues. Daisy has also been at the forefront of driving digital transformation in several states. Her team, along with Teslon Technologies, developed an ICU cart for primary…

GEETHA MANJUNATH’S entrepreneurship career was triggered by an unfortunate event in her family. For 25 years, until 2016, she was heading data analytics research in Xerox India and as Principal Research Scientist at Hewlett Packard Laboratories. She was also a member of the C-DAC team that built India’s first commercial supercomputer. A PhD in Computer Science from Indian Institute of Science and management degree holder from Kellogg’s School of Management in Chicago, Manjunath was devastated when she lost her 42-year-old cousin to breast cancer in 2016. “I realised that accurate cancer screening with technology at an early stage can save so many lives.” She founded Niramai, which soon developed ‘Thermalytix’, a computer-aided diagnostic engine powered by Big Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence and machine learning for early breast cancer screening. A…

KARUNA NUNDY is known more for her work in the field of constitutional law and human rights, having played a key role in drafting the anti-rape bill after the 2012 Delhi gangrape case, getting the Section 66A of IT Act struck down by the Supreme Court in 2015, and winning a compensation case in favour of the differently-abled Jeeja Ghosh, who was offloaded from a SpiceJet flight. She had also represented the Bhopal Gas survivors in the Supreme Court, and got them better healthcare systems. She also won the case where the SC ordered closure of the water outlets of the toxic waste dump of Union Carbide. However, Nundy is also an accomplished commercial litigation and arbitration lawyer. “From the beginning of my career, there were two streams I wanted…

THESE ARE BUSY DAYS for Samina Hamied, Executive Vice Chairperson, Cipla Ltd. Her company has been readying the largest portfolio of medicines to treat Covid-19 patients. As a thirdgeneration member of the founding family of India's leading pharmaceutical company, Hamied has proven that Cipla's response to Covid-19 reflects the company's DNA: putting patients first, caring for life. The company’s US focus has been primarily driven by Hamied. Her next agenda is transition in the mindset of the company — from illness to wellness. "We took major steps towards growing Cipla Health (a business division) into a holistic wellness player,” she adds. The company has been always at the forefront of responding to health crises globally, be it HIV/AIDS, Bird Flu or Swine Flu. In fact, it was Y.K. Hamied, Non-Executive…

A VISIT to McDee's was always about burgers and French fries. But things changed when Hardcastle Restaurants Pvt Ltd, the franchise partner of the Big Mac in western and southern India, added to its menu to include breakfast items and the McCafe, among a host of other things. “The coffee drinker was a client who wasn’t coming to us. Now he/she does,” says Smita Jatia, Managing Director, Hardcastle Restaurants. “The consumer is changing everyday and the menu should reflect that.” There are currently around 223 McCafes in India, with 33 added last year. New breakfast menus including Belgian waffles and masala dosa burger with whole wheat bun have also proved to be successful. Another big area of growth has been home delivery, where sales have more than doubled in the…

THIRTY ONE-YEAR-OLD Manasi Tata always prefers to go off the beaten track. The fifth-generation member of the Kirloskar group, Manasi sits on the board of several group companies. She looks at large business investments and creation of new verticals. The Executive Director of Kirloskar Systems was appointed the first United Nations in India Young Business Champion for sustainable development goals (SDGs) in 2018 to work with the UN on issues, including climate change and women empowerment. For Manasi, power is synonymous with responsibility, “Power is the ability of individuals to take control of their own actions and therefore be in a position to contribute to society in a positive and meaningful way." She is also an avid painter. In fact, after finishing early schooling in Bengaluru, she chose to study…

PRUKALPA Sankar has a knack for starting up businesses in unexplored territories. While doing her undergrad from Nanyang Technical University, Singapore, Sankar along with her batchmate Varun Banka, launched data intelligence firm SocialCops in 2013. They collected data from government bodies, volunteers, onfield workers and went on to build Disha, India's national data platform, which has data from the country's 42 government schemes. During their work, they realised the big chaos that data management was, which led to the birth of Atlan. Almost 200 data projects for SocialCops such as India’s National Data Platform, global SDG monitoring portal, and gas subsidy programme Ujjwala were built on data management platform Atlan. After two years of incubating it in-house, in 2019, the co-founders launched it as another venture to help out analysts…

EVERYONE GETS on a Zoom call these days, for literally everything. The company has clearly been one of the biggest beneficiaries of Covid-19, adding billions to its market value and topping 300 million daily subscribers, as it became the default option for businesses and educational institutions to stay connected. Originally developed for enterprise use in 2011, the company had to deal with a lot of negative perceptions around privacy. Chief Operating Officer Aparna Bawa led the 90-day security plan, including releasing multiple safety and privacy features, launching a CISO Council and Advisory Board, which includes security leaders from across industries, enhancing the bug bounty programme, to name a few. Various versions of the platform were also launched, including security features and privacy updates, to take the platform to the next…

1 Sangeeta Pendurkar, CEO, Pantaloons Fashion, Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail 2 Vibha Padalkar, MD & CEO, HDFC Life 3 Shanti Ekambaram, Group President, Consumer Banking, Kotak Mahindra Bank 4 Karuna Nundy, Advocate, Supreme Court of India 5 Meena Ganesh, Co-Founder and CEO, Portea Medical 6 Richa Arora, President, Packaged Foods, Tata Consumer Products 7 Geetha Manjunath, Co-Founder and CEO, Niramai Health Analytix 8 Gargi Banerjee Dasgupta, Director, IBM Research India; CTO, IBM India and South Asia 9 Ipsita Dasgupta, Country Manager, Apple Services India 10 Nita Ambani, Founder and Chairperson, Reliance Foundation 11 Smita Jatia, MD, Hardcastle Restaurants 12 Nivruti Rai, Country Head, Intel India; VP, Data Centre Group, Intel Corporation 13 Neerja Birla, Chairperson, MPower 14 Debjani Ghosh, President, NASSCOM 15 Roshni Nadar Malhotra, CEO, HCL Corporation; Chairperson,…

It’s double trouble for India — a health crisis and a tumbling economy, both at once. On one hand, Covid-19 cases in the country have exceeded 4.5 million, making it the worst affected after the US. On the other, the economy is in a free fall as gross domestic product (GDP) contracted 23.9 per cent in the April-June quarter. Largely, because over the past seven years, all four engines of growth – exports, private investment, consumption, and public expenditure — have crashed, one after another. The last two, as recently as the past three years. There is growing demand from industry and economists for an urgent second stimulus. But the Centre believes that must wait until a vaccine hits the market and economic activity resumes thereafter. Business Today spoke to…

In August this year, Axis Bank launched a new hiring initiative, Gig-A-Opportunities, under which it offered full-time job seekers a hybrid workplace. Employees can largely work from home and will have to come to office twice a week. Gig-A-Opportunities does not cover consumer-facing roles but has openings in mainstream functions such as audit, compliance, marketing and human resources. Given the job losses over the past few months due to the pandemic, it’s not surprising that it got 30,000 applications in a week. Interestingly, 46 per cent applicants were women who have taken a career break. “The hybrid workplace model encouraged women to get back to professional life. We have got applications from women who were in corporate roles and had to quit because of motherhood. The initiative is helping us…

Following the 2017 debacle of Hollywood moghul Harvey Weinstein, social media hash tag movement #MeToo saw women across the world share their stories of sexual harassment at workplaces and beyond. The result — global CEOs, celebrities and politicians were called out on social media platforms for their behaviour, and companies could no longer ignore the accusations. Some of the biggest names in global businesses, including Uber’s former CEO Travis Kalanick, former Google Senior Vice President and Android Creator Andrew Rubin, former Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, former McDonald CEO Steve Easterbrook, were fired due to allegations of sexual misconduct. In India, a past allegation of sexual harassment surfaced against Flipkart Co-founder Binny Bansal. Though Bansal denied any wrong doing, Walmart-owned Flipkart asked him to leave on the basis on ‘personal misconduct’…

"THERE IS NEVER a substitute for being closely connected to those connected to the front line of the business.” The statement by Abanti Sankaranarayanan, head of Corporate Affairs and Strategy of Diageo India, is also the key to her success in navigating Diageo through the country’s complex, fragmented and non-harmonised regulatory landscape, including taxation, prohibition in some states and hundreds of different statelevel regulations. ABANTI IS THE FIRST WOMAN TO CO-CHAIR THE INTERNATIONAL WINE & SPIRITS ASSOCIATION OF INDIA Dynamism is the key. In March this year, Diageo India repurposed its manufacturing units to produce sanitisers. The sanitisers were donated to governments and health workers. She also worked to ensure that alcohol home delivery was allowed in six states during the national lockdown, including big states such as Maharashtra and…

AT THE DUBAI airport lounge days before the lockdown, an Italian lady walked up to Aparna Purohit, enquiring about the stickers of various Amazon shows on the latter’s laptop. “She asked me where I got the stickers from. When she got to know I was from Amazon Prime Video, we spent the next few hours discussing about Made In Heaven’s lead character, Tara,” says Purohit, Head of Indian Originals, Amazon Prime Video. And it was not a one-off case. Purohit has had long discourses with people about her shows in airport lounges across the world. From Family Man, Paatal Lok, Panchayat and Bandish Bandits to Breathe: Into the Shadows, Four More Shots and Made In Heaven, there has been a steady roll out of original shows from the Indian arm…

TECHNOLOGY GIANT APPLE now has Columbia and Harvard graduate Ipsita Dasgupta to fast-track the company’s streaming and app businesses in India, comprising the App Store, Apple Music, iTunes, iCloud and the recently launched Apple TV+ service. With all over-the-top (OTT) platforms now focusing on original content, Das will also spearhead Apple Originals content in India. With an experience of over four years at Hotstar International as the President of Strategy and New Ventures and Sports League, Dasgupta took over as the Country Manager of Apple Services in India in June this year. With hardware sales, especially the iPhone, plateauing globally for Apple in the last couple of years, the Cupertino-based technology giant has now shifted focus on the services business. Dasgupta, who hails from Kolkata, is known to speak six…

IT IS NO SECRET that Nandini Piramal, Executive Director of Piramal Enterprises, was instrumental in Piramal Healthcare’s sale of branded generic-medicine business to Abbott Laboratories, for a record $3.72 billion in 2010. A decade later, recently in June, she played a similar role when PE firm Carlyle picked up 20 per cent stake in Piramal’s pharma business for $490 million, according to sources. For the 10,000-plus people employed by the Piramal group, Nandini heads the Human Resources and IT functions, and the Quality and Risk functions for the Pharma business, besides directly heading the over-the-counter (OTC) or consumer health business. In 2011, Ajay Piramal entrusted Nandini with the OTC business, which included six brands with revenues of ₹127 crore. “We ensured a nationwide distribution network, identified potential legacy brands and…

SHE HAS ALWAYS been a risk-taker. Her mantra: “In failures, we learn; in successes we earn.” This has helped Nivruti Rai, Country Head, Intel India, and Vice President, Data Platforms Group, Intel Corp, in her over 27-year stint in the company — the first 13 years as a technologist and the latter 14 as a management leader. Intel India is the company’s largest design centre outside the US with engineering sites in Bengaluru and Hyderabad. It has invested over $6 billion in India. Rai has led the expansion of Intel’s innovation and design footprint in India, including growing the company’s presence in Bengaluru, launching a state-of-the-art design centre in Hyderabad, focussing on next-gen computing and communications technology, and strengthening collaborations with the government, industry, and academia. The two centres contribute…

THE MERGER of the food business of Tata Chemicals with Tata Global Beverages, which was renamed Tata Consumer Products Ltd, was a crucial step towards building a FMCG company within the salt-to-software conglomerate. TCPL’s emergence as the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) giant will depend on the performance in the food category, and a lot on the performance of Richa Arora and her team. Arora is President, Packaged Foods, India, TCPL, and drives its growth strategy and outcomes, including innovations for the packaged foods category in India. It was the expectation from her team that laid the foundation of TCPL, which already has Tata Salt and Tata Sampann spices, pulses and snacks. Arora has a challenging job in front of her. But she is confident. “It is difficult to achieve new…

AFTER ACQUIRING Pantaloons from Future Group in 2012, Aditya Birla Fashion Retail Ltd was struggling to turn around the fashion retailer in the face of stiff competition from cash-rich online platforms and offline retailers. The choice of Sangeeta Pendurkar, who was earlier Managing Director of Kellogg India, for the role of CEO was a well thought out plan to revive the business. She had a career spanning across five companies in four different sectors — from pharma to packaged foods to banking — before joining Pantaloons in December 2017. Pendurkar came up with a revival strategy within six months of joining. She introduced new portfolios, including women’s ethnic wear, and acquired the Jaypore brand. The new strategy helped the fashion retailer register organic growth after six years of stagnation, despite…

VIBHA PADALKAR, MD and CEO, HDFC Life, has been going from strength to strength after taking the helm of the biggest private life insurance company of India, both in terms of market capitalisation and new business premium. While leading the growth chart in good times is essential, minimising the fall during a crash is what differentiates a true industry leader. In March 2020, the life insurance industry de-grew by 50 per cent, while HDFC Life de-grew only by 28 per cent. “Covid-led challenges were witnessed towards the end of FY20. However, we always see opportunities emerge when times are tough and our agile way of working helped reinvent ourselves. We took a bold step to shut down offices and branches even prior to the official lockdown and started servicing our…

EVERY CRISIS presents an opportunity and this is that inflection point for education, where we expect the rise of a blended model,” says Divya Gokulnath, Co-founder and Director of Think & Learn Pvt Ltd, or the brand Byju's. Having met her future husband and Founder Byju Raveendran as one of his students aspiring to take up GRE exams, Divya has been a part of the transition from live to recorded classes and the launch of Byju’s Learning App in 2015. Apart from her teaching classes on Byju’s, Divya is involved in strategic decision making of the company and overlooks the products that Byju’s rolls out. “The ‘Classrooms of Tomorrow’ will have technology at its core, empowering students to cross over from passive to active learning,” she had said in an…

THE TRAILER OF NETFLIX series Masaba Masaba, launched in August, ends with Masaba Gupta’s argument with a local garment shopkeeper. She claims the print he has shown was designed by her. The shopkeeper explains to her it is Masaba print, which is imported. She asks him who is this Masaba? He replies it’s a country in Africa! Thirty one-year-old Masaba Gupta, daughter of legendary West Indian cricketer Vivian Richards and actor Neena Gupta, launched her womenswear label at 19, which debuted at the Lakmé Fashion Week one year after. The House of Masaba was formed in 2009 and the first store was opened in Mumbai as a bridge-to-luxury womenswear label, which caters to both millennials and slightly seasoned consumers. House of Masaba now has 10 stores in India, besides its…

SONAL SINGH, co-founder, Fittr had her first ‘fight or flight’ moment in 2009 during the global financial crisis when she graduated from London School of Economics and struggled to find a job. She was advised by many to return home in Canada but she chose to fight. She managed to land a short-term job in London and that’s what anchored her life. “I had no place to live and only 200 pounds in the bank account. I gave myself 30 days to look for a job and succeeded. Now, whenever I am in a difficult situation, personally or professionally, I look back to those days for motivation,” she says. Singh, who worked as management consultant in Deloitte, joined forces with Fittr (formerly known as Squats) founder Jitendra Chouksey in 2016…

CHENNAI-BORN Dhivya Suryadevara’s decision to quit US automobile heavyweight General Motors for the CFO’s chair in California-based online payments startup Stripe last month would have felt like hara kiri a decade ago. Today, it reads more like a smart career move. With its technology powering businesses of companies such as Target and Amazon, Stripe is among Silicon Valley’s most prominent startups with a valuation of nearly $36 billion. There are plans to launch an IPO soon. “I really enjoy leading complex, large-scale businesses,” Suryadevara said on August 11, the day she jumped ship. Suryadevara broke the proverbial glass ceiling when she became the first female Chief Financial Officer of GM in mid-2018. She had joined the company in 2004. At GM, she was credited for playing a pivotal role in…

AUS CITIZEN rooted to her land of birth and its economic issues — that is perhaps the best way to describe Gita Gopinath as an individual. As the first woman Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the second Indian (by birth) after Raghuram Rajan, one of the first things she did just before officially taking charge at the IMF over a year-and-a-half ago was to join hands with Rajan and 11 other economists to prescribe an “economic strategy for India”. Whether politicians listened to their advice is a matter of academic research, but Gopinath is busy advising countries, about the economic conditions that are prevailing or are likely to prevail. The latest was her analysis of the economic performance of countries during the Covid-hit April-June 2020 quarter,…

AMASTERS in computer science engineering and a Stanford Business graduate, Kirthiga Reddy is the first female partner at the $100-billion SoftBank Vision Fund. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, Kirthiga has been with Softbank Investment Advisers for nearly two years now. She was also appointed on the board of WeWork as one of its directors earlier this year. In her vision fund profile, she says the process of analysing a problem statement and applying technology to find a new solution is a magical experience. “I worked with pioneers like Silicon Graphics, Good Technology (acquired by Motorola), and Phoenix Technologies. I learned the importance of marrying groundbreaking technology with the right business model to build high-growth, sustainable businesses.” Kirthiga describes her role at Softbank as energising, one where she gets…

The idea of 'mutual fund sahi hai’ seems to have caught on with investors. From 3.11 crore at the end of March to 3.31 crore at the end of August, the number of outstanding SIPs has been consistently on the rise. But MF investors are still a worried lot. While markets have bounced back swiftly post-Covid, just like the quick recovery after the 2008-09 crash, mutual fund long-term averages are still below expectations, largely in single-digits. The Sensex closed at 38,357.18 on September 4, only 8 per cent away from the record closing of 41,952 on January 14, 2020. However, MF categories — large mid-cap, mid-cap, multicap, large-cap and small-cap — have yielded 7-8 per cent returns in the last five years, and up to 11 per cent in the last…

CAPTURING THE ‘WILD’ GRANDEUR “It’s not the strongest that survive, nor the most intelligent, but those who are most adaptable to change." Pramod Bhasin, Founder of Genpact and current Chairman, Clix Capital, quotes Charles Darwin to drive home the lessons learnt from wildlife. Bhasin’s African safari of over 20 years is the main reason behind his interest in wildlife photography. For him, the magnificent plains of the Serengeti and the Masai Mara and their herds of animals are unparalleled. The animals are astonishingly beautiful in their diversity and movements, with birdlife being an entirely different world, says Bhasin. In fact, his passion for wildlife photography has landed him in dangerous situations more than once. “We have travelled across Africa — Kenya of course, which has some of the best viewing…

At 40, Priti Rathi Gupta, Promoter and Managing Director, Anand Rathi Group, was enrolled in Owner/President Management programme at Harvard University where she made a business case for a financial management platform for women as part of a class project. The skepticism from fellow classmates surprised her. “They were oblivious to the varied needs of women — they earn less, live longer, and have a different outlook towards investing. They didn’t seem to understand the rationale,” says Rathi. She launched her university project — LXME — a digital financial planning plat form for women. In the last four months since its launch, it has got 5,000 users. Not just financial services. As consumers, women are under-served across sectors, be it auto, hospitality, fashion or sports. Most brands, say experts, have…

Anushree Anita is surely among the flag bearers of holistic success. A Scholar in Bachelors of Science from Vikram University, Ujjain. She Could have stridden down the golden path of Doctorate, a cushy corporate job or fancy lifestyle. But she chose instead the road less travelled. Having exposed to Spirituality she later in her life chose this as a career and became the successful astrologer. Anushree Anita a scholar of Hindu Vedic Astrology, a keen observer of Indian Heritage, and an Astro Coach. Through her practice, she has been able to Coach and Guide people to strike the fine balance between spirituality and daily living. Thousands of lives across the globe find themselves empowered with renewed perspectives towards life and its possibilities. She believes spirituality is that which enhances human…

GARGI DASGUPTA’S technical abilities stood out even as a child. She remembers how at school she was attracted towards analytical problems such as solving the Rubik cube and magic square. “My father and I would spend weekends addressing the harder problems that my sisters, five and seven years older, would be solving. I recognised that I always had the knack of questioning and problem solving. STEM career was natural for me,” she says. The chosen career path took her places, making her the first woman to head IBM Research India. As Chief Technology Officer and Director of IBM Research India, Gargi is in charge of setting and executing the technical agenda of IBM Research and developing the company’s overall technical vision and strategy by working closely with all business units…

AT A TIME when bigger financial services players are para-trooping into unbanked geographies to give loans, the four-and-a-half-decade-old Shree Mahila Sewa Sahakari Bank is expanding its portfolio to change the lives of poor illiterate women. “More than credit, the poor people need savings, insurance, pension, housing and financial literacy,” says Jayshree Vyas, Managing Director of the Gujaratbased urban cooperative bank. Vyas should know, having spent more than three decades nurturing the institution that is focussed on the bottom of the pyramid and building a deposit book of ₹300 crore and a credit portfolio of ₹200 crore. The bank's client portfolio is spread out among 1.5 lakh borrowers and 6 lakh depositors. Vyas, a chartered accountant, is proud of the fact that the bank has now graduated to ‘virtual training’ and…

MEENA GANESH has a word of advice for budding entrepreneurs. “Entrepreneurs who are just starting out should ask themselves – is the product or solution that I wish to launch a ‘must-have’ or is it something that will be ‘good to have’.” Businesses that have the potential to differentiate themselves from others, address a larger need and are based on technology have a higher chance of success, she says. This has also been the key to her entrepreneurship success. The CEO and Managing Director of Portea Medical, which provides home healthcare services, has founded and co-promoted quite a few disruptive startups, including BigBasket, Tutor Vista, Bluestone, Growthstory, Tesco Hindustan Service Center, Avagmah and CustomerAsset. She co-founded Portea in 2013 with her husband K. Ganesh after spending decades in Microsoft India,…

OVER 42.5 per cent of employees in the private sector suffer from various forms of mental health issues, including anxiety or depression, but ironically, not many are willing to acknowledge it. And it strikes irrespective of gender. In fact, over 65 per cent of the callers on the Covid-19 mental health helpline, set up by Mpower in partnership with the Brihan Mumbai Municipal Corporation, were men, says Neerja Birla, Founder and Chairperson, Mpower. “Even men have their share of issues, but there is so much stereotypism that they don’t want to express. An anonymous helpline helped them to express themselves freely.” “Initially, there was a lot of panic around the pandemic and people called to get advice on how to deal with it. Many were worried about their jobs. Loneliness…

THOUGH PRIYA NAIR, Executive Director (Personal Care), Hindustan Unilever, started her career with the organisation decades ago, the last few months have been by far the most exciting and challenging. As head of the Personal Care Division, which has iconic hygiene and health care brands such as Lifebuoy, Nair has led the company’s ₹100 crore efforts to fight the pandemic. From stepping up production of much-needed soaps and sanitisers to accelerating the innovation pipeline for hygiene-relevant launches such as Lifebuoy Disinfectant Spray, the pandemic has kept Nair on her toes. “Having the country’s biggest hygiene brand, Lifebuoy, was not just an opportunity, it was also our responsibility to make our products available across the country,” says Nair. Apart from helping municipal corporations across the country in their fight against the…

ROSHNI NADAR became the first woman chairperson of a leading IT services company, when the $9.9-billion HCL Corporation appointed her as the CEO and Executive Director in July. In her new role as non-executive chairperson, she will spearhead strategic guidance for the group, but will not be involved in operations. She is also the Chairperson of the Board of HCL Technologies and the Chairperson of its CSR committee. Her efforts in the field of education and wildlife define her the best. In her role as the trustee of the Shiv Nadar Foundation, Roshni has been nurturing young leaders through education. Under her leadership at VidyaGyan, the leadership academy for the economically underprivileged, meritorious, rural students of Uttar Pradesh, Roshni has helped foster future leaders, who can act as change agents…

AS PRESIDENT AND CEO of FANUC India, Sonali Kulkarni handles one of the most complex engineering product manufacturing companies in India. Every second car in India is welded by FANUC robots and almost all motorcycle engines are machined using FANUC’s CNC technology. Japan-based FANUC Corporation is the pioneer in Computer Numerical Control (CNC) technology — a method used to automate the control of machine tools. Its Indian arm controls 80 per cent of turnkey shopfloor automation solutions and industrial robots in the country, mainly for the automotive industry. “Despite industrial slowdown and less factory automation, we have been growing revenues by 30 per cent in 2018/19 and 42 per cent a year before that, though FY20 was not that great,” says Kulkarni. About 1,85,000 CNC machines and 10,000 industrial robots…

(Q&A) Ms. Aradhana Galgotia did her Political Science Hons. from the Esteemed Jesus & Mary college under Delhi University and successfully completed her Masters in Law from the prestigious Queen Mary University, London. It is an underlying truth that with the paradigm shift in the prevailing trends, women are taking center stage and having enormous influence in decision making like top leaders in the world. They are not only excelling in all walks of life wherever they are taking plunge into, they are also instrumental in bringing far-reaching changes in various fields with their innovative ideas. They are being widely acknowledged amongst the change-makers in the World. One such change-maker is Ms. Aradhana Galgotia, a Charismatic Personality with the resolute determination. HARBINGER OF CHANGE: Ms. Aradhana Galgotia completed her LLM…

THOUGH SHE JOINED the family’s telecom and retail businesses as director in 2014, Isha Ambani, the eldest of the twins of billionaire Mukesh Ambani, had a larger role to play in the last two years. She had been one of the lead negotiators with Facebook in the latter’s bid for acquiring 9.99 per cent stake in Jio Platforms Ltd (JPL) for ₹43,574 crore. She flew down to Facebook headquarters in California along with her twin brother Akash multiple times in December last year for the negotiations. When Reliance Retail Ventures acquired the retail, logistics and warehousing businesses of Future group for ₹24,713 crore, for the first time, RIL issued a statement by Isha, and not by Mukesh Ambani. Isha's complaint of slow Internet speeds at home in 2011 led to…

FOR PRAJAKTA KOLI, meeting Michelle Obama in Washington has been the most favourite moment in the “history of her existence.” She collaborated with Michelle Obama for a YouTube original documentary on girl’s education last year, which was released in March. “Working on this project was amazing,” says Koli, or @mostlysane, the YouTuber with 5.57 million subscribers. Her videos mostly focus on the comedy in daily life, and carries social messages. Such is her popularity that within an hour of uploading any new video, she attracts around 150,000 views. In just two years, her followers have grown from 1 million to 5 million on YouTube. She recently forayed into movies, releasing her first shortfirm Khayali Pulao in July. She has signed up for a Netflix original series, Mismatched, the release date…

SIXTY-YEAR-OLD Anshula Kant, responsible for Financial and Risk Strategies of the World Bank Group, had cut her teeth in banking in the carpet and silk belt of eastern Uttar Pradesh. Currently, as Managing Director & Group CFO, she contributes to mobilisation of resources for development from donors and shareholders, as well as from the capital market. At a time when the world is in the grip of a pandemic, Kant is part of an institution that has a big role to play. The Bank is supporting over 100 countries in the fight against the pandemic. It expects to provide up to $160 billion by June next year. "The World Bank Group's role is more important than ever,“she says. Kant, along with her team, has worked to maintain a strong financial…

WHERE HAVE WE come from? The six-year old would wonder looking at the night sky. She made a career out of stars to find the answer. Astrophysicist Madhulika Guhathakurta, working at NASA headquarters since 1998, is Senior Adviser for new initiatives. She divides her time between NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre and NASA Headquarters, focussing on future concepts and policy environment, respectively. Devoting most part of her career to Living With a Star (LWS) programme that provided science underpinning for space weather, she took on new challenges to explore the use of AI and Machine Learning in in science and space exploration through the NASA Frontier Development Labs. “For last three years I have been at the heart of Silicon Valley at NASA's Ames Research Centre to figure how AI…