Tag Archives: Indian School of Business

Five Powerful Businesswomen in India

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In today’s competitive business world, Indian women are increasingly becoming prominent in the domestic and international sphere in media, entertainment, business, IT, politics and literature. The increasing role of the private sector and the increase in the number of multinationals emerging up, has facilitated a rise in the number of women managers and entrepreneurs in the corporate sector. The Fortune India Magazine has ranked India’s ‘Most Powerful Women in Business‘ for the first time and here is the list of top five powerful businesswomen in India.

1. Chanda Kochchar:
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Chanda Kochhar, who heads the ICICI Bank, the world’s largest private bank, in the country has been ranked as the most powerful Indian women in business. Chanda began her career in 1984 as a management trainee and successfully rose through the ranks by handling multidimensional assignments and leading all the major functions in the Bank at various points of time. Since 2006, she has been the head of international Banking arm of ICICI Bank. The corporate Diva has wide experience in the fields of corporate credit, e-commerce strategy, infrastructure financing, and retail business. She worked as a Joint Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer of ICICI Bank from October 2007 to April 2009. Chanda served as the Chief Financial Officer of Corporate Centre at ICICI Bank and was also the official spokesperson. In addition to finance, planning, and communications; her responsibilities included the global treasury, principal investments and trading, risk management, and legal functions. From May 2009, she was appointed the CEO and MD of ICICI Bank for a period of five years succeeding K. V. Kamath, who held the post since 1996. Chanda is honoured with Padma Bhushan Award, the third highest civilian honour by the Government of India in 2010 for her services to banking sector.

2. Shikha Sharma :

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The IIM graduate Shikha Sharma became the CEO of Axis Bank in 2009. Earlier she was the head of ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Co. She has been instrumental in setting up various group businesses for the axis bank, including investment banking and retail finance. She was honoured as the Woman Business Leader’ by CNBC TV18 in 2007 and ‘Business Woman of the Year’ by Economic Times in 2009.Shikha was also ranked 89th in the list of ‘World’s 100 Most Powerful Women’ by Forbes magazine, 2010. She also launched an innovative micro insurance cover of 1 dollar a month for poor people in India.

3. Mallika Srinivasan

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The strong headed women, Mallika Srinivasan is the General Manager of Tafe (Tractors and Farm Equipment) Company. In 2006, she was named the Economic Times Business Woman of the year. Mallika has been able to rise and stand out above all others and make a name for herself in the competitive business world. She is also referred as the most successful women CEO’s in India. Mallika is the first women to have acquired the role of “President of the Madras Chamber of Commerce and Industry”. She is also a prominent member of the governing board of the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad. Within two decades, she has converted the company through innovative products and processes which put her firm in the global map. Today, the company has not only found a position for itself as the leading tractor manufacturer, but also extended its area of operations. It has also moved into others businesses like engineering plastics, panel instruments, automotive batteries gears, hydraulic pumps, and farm implements.

4. Aruna Jayanthi:

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Since January 2011, Aruna Jayanthi has been the Chief Executive Officer of Capgemini, improving the quality, productivity and profitability for Capgemini worldwide. Joining the firm in early 2000, she was part of the core team that setup the offshore capabilities. She was ranked as one of the 25 Most Powerful Business Women in India by Business Today. She has over 25 years of experience in IT and has been working closely with many multinational and Indian system integrator companies. Aruna holds a Master in Management Studies in Finance. She oversees the operations across India and supports Capgemini Group’s growth agenda.

5. Zia Mody

The Co- Founder of ABZ partners Zia Mody is a top corporate lawyer and India’s 5th most powerful woman according to the Fortune Magazine list. In 1984, she started her own practice in Mumbai. She was listed by Business Today as one of the 25 most powerful business women in India in September 2004 and February 2006 respectively. She was honored with the Financial Express Knowledge Professional of the Year Award. Zia was also named as one of India’s 100 Most Powerful CEOs by The Economic Times in 2004 and 2006. She is also the recipient of the Economic Times Awards for Corporate Excellence as the Businesswoman of the Year, 2010.

“Every Bloody Indian Cooperated with the Government,” Rajaratnam

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Raj Rajaratnam, head of the Galleon Group hedge fund, who has recently been sentenced to 11 years imprisonment for insider trading, feels that he has been seduced and betrayed by people from India.

In an interview with the Newsweek magazine‘s Suketu Mehta, he said, “Every bloody Indian (whom he trusted) cooperated,” with the FBI to nail him.

The Sri Lankan-born self-made billionaire founded his own hedge fund in 1997, which had an exponential growth over the years to be the biggest technology-based hedge fund on the planet by 2008 and he established himself as the richest Sri Lankan in the world.

However, Suketu Mehta writes, “Part of Rajaratnam’s narrative is that of a man from a smaller South Asian country seduced and betrayed by people from the Big Brother country.”

Today as he faces an 11 year long stay in prison, his immediate answer to the question “Did you regret anything?, was, “I’d probably not be so trusting of people” referring to his Wharton classmates Anil Kumar and Rajiv Goel, both pleaded guilty under prosecutorial pressure.

The betrayal by the Indian associates hurts the most and he barely mentions the white government witnesses. He regrets doing a joint venture with the Indians, writes the interviewer.

Talking about their plan to start an Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, Rajaratnam said, “I gave them [the school] a million dollars. I later found out they never contributed any of their money, and are listed as the school’s founders. And I’m not even a fucking Indian.”

Talking on his fellow accused and the Indian friends’ decision to plead guilty, he said, “There are two types of plea bargains. One is you cooperate with the government. You finger 10 other people. The other is a plea bargain without cooperation. The white defendants all pleaded without cooperating; they did not wear a wire. The South Asians all did the plea bargain with fingering. The Americans stood their ground. Every bloody Indian cooperated – Goel, Khan, Kumar.”

He also claimed that he was heavily pressured to wear a wire to trap Rajat Gupta, Former Goldman Sachs director but said he couldn’t do that. “They wanted me to plea-bargain. They want to get Rajat. I am not going to do what people did to me. Rajat has four daughters,” he told the Mehta.

Immigrants Vs Natives
Suketu Mehta sensed the anger in Rajaratnam caused by the ethnic disparities in the U.S. and the Wester world and wrote. “When it came to the biggest bet of his life, this master of information was guided as he saw it by the political history of his people, his personal journey as a dark-skinned immigrant through the rich countries. Rajaratnam is an immigrant, not American-born. He had grown up, as he tells it, in fear: of the Sinhalese majority in his homeland; of the skinheads in Britain where he’d studied; and of the established elites of Wall Street where he did business. At just about every stage of his life, there were people out to get him. And he says, “I saw myself as an underdog.”

While it’s a questionable issue if his ethnicity is a factor in the process of investigation and ensuing trial, the strong man recollects the words of FBI agent B. J. Kang who upon taking him away from his home in October 26, 2009 told him, ‘Take a good look at your son. You’re not going to see him for a long time. Your wife doesn’t seem so upset. Because she’s going to spend all your money.”

Rajaratnam, a fearless fighter and an underdog as he claims, also gives a short glimpse of his life in Briton during his younger years. He experienced the bitter tastes of immigrant discrimination and said, “I was conscious of the fact that I could be attacked because of my ethnicity.”

As a pioneer on Wall Street, he says, “Wall Street was tough to get into for us. Not to be crude, but there’s a Jewish mafia, and a WASP mafia, and an Irish mafia up in Boston. We didn’t grow up reading The Wall Street Journal. We didn’t have someone who knew someone who could give us an interview. We didn’t have the domain knowledge; we were all foreigners. Americans had the connections.”

However, his brother Rengan had a different take on it. “For years these guys were sitting around in sports clubs and exchanging information. That wasn’t a crime. And now we immigrants do the same thing and it is?” he asks the interviewer.

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