Women achievers of India - 2

Thank you Abha and GayathriSundar. Your words of appreciation are like a tonic to me. I am also amazed at the successes of these Indian women as I get more and more information about them. India's future is very bright indeed!

Regards,

TDU

 

RENUKA RAMNATH,

42, CEO, ICICI Venture

Renuka Ramnath has helped shake the private equity landscape of India over the past year or so. Having scripted a blueprint for innovative investment transactions, she has some eight big deals to her credit, including capacity-expansion investments in such firms as Welspun and Samtel, some real estate deals, buyouts and restructuring initiatives.

With $400 million under management, ICICI Venture is big on the investment map of the country. In May this year, its India Advantage Fund raised $240 million, some 50 per cent above the set target. Ramnath is unfazed by this success. "It is not just one fund story," she says, "By making the right investment, nurturing those companies in the right direction, we enjoy trust and credibility with investors."

It helps, of course, that she adds to that credibility. Armed with a BE followed by an MBA from Mumbai's Chetna College, Ramnath began her career with ICICI in the merchant banking division in 1986. When it was spun off into a separate joint venture with JP Morgan, ICICI Securities, she went on to head the corporate finance and equities business. She returned to ICICI in 1997 to set up structured finance business. In 1999, she took a break to do a three month advanced management programme at Harvard. On her return to India, E-commerce was hotting up and Ramnath too wanted to do something different, and she went on to head the e-commerce initiatives of ICICI as managing director of ICICI Eco-net. In early 2001 when Eco-Net merged with ICICI Venture, Ramnath was the CEO of the new outfit. Three years later, at ICICI Venture, Ramnath has managed to take the company with 40 professionals on a different platform to offer win-win solutions.

The key challenge for Ramnath today is creating a healthy platform for private equity. As of now, Ramnath and her team are making investments in broad areas across businesses, as she does not see enough depth to have focused funds for each of the chosen sectors. However, going forward, says Ramnath, "Each of the saplings (business areas) having a potential to be a big banyan tree in the future".

 

Ms. Tarjani Vakil

ex-Chairman, EXIM Bank

Tarjani Vakil, former Chairperson of the Exim Bank, is one of the distinguished Indian bankers. She is the first woman to head any large bank in India.

Ms. Vakil joined IDBI at its inception in 1965 and worked for 17 years in various departments. Ms. Vakil has been on the Board of Directors of IDBI, LIC, GIC, ECGC, STCI and a number of private sector companies during her long career.

In 1997, she was recognized as one of the top 50 women "to prove her valor" in the business by KPMG Worldwide Business

 

Anu Aga

Executive Chair person, Thermax Ltd.,

Anu Aga was born in Bombay, India on 3rd August 1942. She began her industry career in Thermax in 1985 and later was in charge of the Company's human resources function from 1991 to 1996. After her husband Rohinton Aga passed away, the Board appointed her as the Executive Chairperson of the Thermax Group in February 1996, and two years later became non-executive Chairperson.



As chairperson, Anu had facilitated four major turnaround initiatives at Thermax. Reconstitution of the board, shedding of non-core activities, rightsizing of operations and increased focus on the customer. She is also instrumental in driving a high performance culture at Thermax, especially at the senior levels. In October 2004, Anu decided to retire as the chairperson.

Anu has been very active in various national and local associations like Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) and was the first woman Chairperson of CII's Western Region. She has written extensively and given talks on the subjects of women empowerment, corporate governance, value-based management and on corporate social responsibility.

She has done her BA in Economics and holds a post graduate degree in medical and psychiatric social work from Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS). She was selected for the Fullbright Scholarship for social workers to study for four months in the U.S.

Anu is keenly involved in the causes of communal harmony and human rights, especially women and children.

She also supports various organizations that promote education, in particular of underprivileged children from slums. With the help of a Mumbai based NGO called Akanksha, 21 centres have been opened in Pune for the slum children. Currently she is involved with several NGOs.

 

Hema Ravichandar

Ex-Head, HR, INFOSYS
Consultant-Mercer

The numbers are absolutely mindboggling. Today, Infosys Technologies alone employs 32,178 people and the figure shoots up to 36,750 if one includes subsidiaries (read Progen). In FY 2004-05, 14,13,018 job applications were received across the Infosys group of companies, that's over a lakh applications processed every month, and 19,080 offers were made.



As head of HR at Infy, Hema Ravichander has set new benchmarks in HR practices. The sheer volume of recruitments alone validates the statement. And it was not just recruitments that the lady handled at Infosys. As senior VP and group head of HRD, she has been responsible for learning and development, compensation, employee relations, managing diversity, even visas and work permits. And of course, it was history of sorts when Infosys announced ESOPs, the first company in India Inc. to do so.

Fame and success has been synonymous with Hema Ravichandar. In 2005 alone, she has received three awards for her contribution to HR. Her inspiration? Her great grandmother, the consort of the Maharaja of Kochi: "She was a great administrator, a strong believer in the Welfare State concept and a true partner in implementing progressive reforms and measures for women and the weaker sections of society."

 

Kiran Desai:

Booker – Prize Winner

Kiran Desai, the daughter of Anita Desai. She has just won the prestigious Man Booker Prize for her novel, The Inheritance of Loss. It carries a hefty sum of 50,000 pounds (more than Rs. 42 lakh). The daughter has won were the mother could not succeed. Anita Desai's novel was short listed for the prize thrice and thrice she had failed to get it.



Kiran walked in the footsteps of her mother. Anita was more interested “in the interior landscape of the mind than in political and social realities”. Writing for her was “an effort to discover, and then to underline, and finally to convey the true significance of things”. Her novels dealt with the “terror of facing, single - handed, the ferocious assaults of existence”. Her characters were those for whom aloneness alone is the natural condition.

Kiran Desai is proud of her mother and admits that she owed a huge debt to her. Her prize - winning novel is “as much hers as it is mine”, Kiran says. “It feels like a family endeavour”. Kiran, who beat five contenders who were in the field, was the unanimous choice of judges and this is said to be a rare occurrence in the history of the Booker Prize. The person who chaired the jury was Hermione Lee, academic and literary critic. She is all praise for the novel. In her opinion, it is a “magnificent novel of humane breadth and wisdom”.

 

Vedika Bhandarkar

36, Managing Director & Head (Investment Banking) , J.P. Morgan India

If you perceive investment bankers as machinists fuelled by greed, hypocrisy and high risk-you could blame Michael Lewis' Liar's Poker for that imagery perhaps-you obviously haven't met Vedika Bhandarkar. A few minutes into a conversation with the MD & Head of Investment Banking, J.P. Morgan India, are enough to wipe out those vivid images of fat-cat, short-sighted traders dancing in your head.

Bhandarkar has been in financial services for 14 years now, but you don't see too much of her in the media, pontificating about corporate prospects and fiscal well-being. Along with her penchant for the low profile, her candour too is refreshing. For instance, she'll tell you that when she went on maternity leave to deliver her second baby, it was pretty much a tumultuous period for the firm, which was being restructured to become J.P. Morgan Chase. "My fear was: Would I have my job when I returned? Fortunately, my firm surprised me positively."

It's not for nothing that J.P. Morgan surprised Bhandarkar positively. In the past six years, Bhandarkar has earned plenty of laurels for herself and the firm, the most recent and significant one being the $1.1-billion (Rs 5,060-crore) TCS public offering, where J.P. Morgan was the joint bookrunner. You won't find her taking individual credit for such deals, and that's largely because the "star" culture is pretty alien to J.P. Morgan. Yet, when it comes to executing and closing out deals, it's difficult to leave out Bhandarkar. Like, for instance, in ONGC's acquisition of MRPL from the A.V. Birla Group. Right from the outset-when ONGC Chairman Subir Raha called up Bhandarkar and evinced his interest-the odds were tipped against the deal. mrpl's balance sheet was a mess, loaded with $1.5 billion (Rs 6,900 crore) of high-interest debt. Bhandarkar and her team pulled off a minor miracle by convincing the 15 lenders to the project to take an average 25 per cent haircut. Today, MRPL has a comfortable capital structure, a healthy bottomline and a share price that's climbed over five-fold (in the Rs 40 range) since the restructuring.

Does that make Bhandarkar a star in Indian investment banking circles? She'll probably recoil with horror at such a suggestion. "It's a lot of grunt work. It's the visible results that add a touch of glamour-you either raise equity/debt or you don't; an M&A either works or it doesn't." In Bhandarkar's case, it invariably does.

Thanks to Brian Carvalho, Business Today

 

Shobhana Bhartia

47, Vice Chairperson, The Hindustan Times Ltd

Bhartia is still making news and if it isn't the headlines, it is still on Page 1.
This time last year, Bhartia was making the news a lot: The Hindustan Times was set to launch a Mumbai edition; she had inked the first foreign direct investment deal in print media by selling a 20 per cent stake in Hindustan Times Media to Henderson Global Investors; and popular opinion was coming around to the view that the newspaper, once considered the parochial voice of Delhi, was good enough to be labelled a national daily (this was no doubt bolstered by its 10 editions).


Today, Bhartia is still making the news, and if it isn't always the headlines, it is still material good enough for a Page 1 anchor. Earlier this year The Hindustan Times challenged the findings of the National Readership Survey 2003 in a much-publicised battle fought in the courts and on the front pages of newspapers. "The reason we challenged the NRS findings was not because there was a minor difference, not because The Times of India came out ahead of us, but because those figures were ridiculous," she says. The Mumbai edition is yet to launch and the lady admits that "the infrastructure is time consuming" and sets 2005 as the deadline. Meanwhile, she has pulled out a series of innovations, some unique, others not so, to retain reader interest: 2-Minute HT, a headlines-only newspaper; Brunch, a large-format magazine that comes with the Sunday paper; HT Premiere, a supplement on movies; and HT Sports, a four-page-pullout upgrade of the newspaper's sports pages. Bhartia is candid enough to admit that the benefits have to kick in. "This kind of product (Brunch) has to catch on. Though reader response has been great, advertisers have still not found a slot for a magazine that comes with a newspaper."

As if that isn't enough, Bhartia, who burned her hands on a failed diversification into television (Home TV) in the 1990s, says, "We may possibly look at the television business, not in the immediate future, but more on a five-year horizon." That leaves her little time to pursue her interests, especially reading (areas of interest include public and international affairs). Still, she is manfully wading through Bill Clinton's 900-page autobiography. "I enjoy my work terribly," says Bhartia. "So, in a sense, I do not feel I am working (at all)."

(Thanks to Shailesh Dobhal, Business India)

 

Nina Bhatti

Principle Scientist, HP Labs, U.S

Nina Bhatti is responsible for the creation of leading-edge web, performance and networking technologies at HP Labs, the company's central research organization, and driving the transformation of these technologies into successful commercial products for HP.



Bhatti built and leads Labs' Customer Business Innovation team, which has led to the design and creation of novel mobile technologies for some of HP's largest customers.

Based in Palo Alto, Calif., Bhatti first joined HP in 1996, holding a position in HP Labs as principal investigator for Internet performance research and the invention of Quality of Service (QoS) techniques for web servers to differentiate treatment of traffic based on client classes, application classes or server load. She served in this role until 2000, and then joined Nokia Ventures Organization as senior investigator for wireless Internet technology for next-generation mobile devices.

In 2002, Bhatti returned to HP Labs, and in 2007 she was promoted to principal scientist. Over the last three years, she has led the Customer Business Innovation team to create unique consumer experiences using mobile phones and specially designed imaging technology. She has also done extension research in consumer connection technologies using RFID-based technologies.

Bhatti holds master's and PhD degrees in computer science from the University of Arizona and a bachelor's degree in computer science and pure mathematics from University of California, Berkeley. Additionally, she has published more than 30 different papers and has filed 25 technology patents

 

Anupama Arya

Director of Mobera Systems Pvt. Ltd.

Anupama is the co-founder and Director of Mobera Systems Pvt. Ltd.

Prior to founding Mobera Systems, Anupama co-founded a venture-backed company in silicon valley. She was also involved in doing a roll up of IT service companies in the Bay Area.



Before starting on the entrepreneurial career is 2000, Anupama worked in the Software Development and Architecture groups at Lucent Technologies (Wireless Broadband Networks Group) and Synoptics / Bay Networks.

Anupama has taught topics on networking technologies at UC Berkeley and San Jose State Universities.

Anupama is an angel investor and member of the Band of Angels India, and, an advisor to CrossBridge Partners a silicon valley based venture capital firm.

Anupama Arya, was presented with the all India special award for outstanding woman entrepreneur for the year 2006-07 by Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council presented, at a function held at New Delhi, on 24th October 2007.