Nirmala Sitharaman, 5 other Indians among Forbes’ 100 most powerful women

New York:

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Executive Chairman of Biocon, and Nykaa founder Falguni Nayar are among the six Indians featured on the annual Forbes list of the world’s 100 most powerful women.

Ranked at number 36, Nirmala Sitharaman has made the list for the fourth time in a row. In 2021, the 63-year-old minister was ranked number 37 in the list, while she was ranked 41st in 2020 and 34th in 2019.

The other Indians on the list are HCLTech Chairman Roshni Nadar Malhotra (rank: 53), Securities And Exchange Board Of India (SEBI) Chairman Madhabi Puri Buch (rank: 54) and Steel Authority Of India Chairman Soma Mondal (rank: 54). 67).

Roshni Nadar Malhotra, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and Falguni Nayar also made the prestigious list last year at 52nd, 72nd and 88th respectively.

This year, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is ranked 72, while Falguni Nayar is ranked 89, according to the list released by Forbes on Tuesday.

The list includes 39 CEOs; 10 heads of state; and 11 billionaires with a combined worth of $115 billion.

Highlighting Falguni Nayar’s profile, the Forbes listing noted that the 59-year-old businessman “worked as an investment banker for two decades, led IPOs and helped other entrepreneurs achieve their dreams. In 2012, she decided to work for herself and invested $2. million of her own savings to launch the beauty and retail company Nykaa, which she took to the stock market in 2021 and became India’s richest self-made woman.”

According to the Forbes website, 41-year-old Roshni Nadar Malhotra is responsible for all strategic decisions for the $12 billion technology company.

“HCL was founded in 1976 by her father, Shiv Nadar, and became a pivotal player in India’s emergence as an IT hub,” it noted.

On March 1, Madhabi Puri Buch, 56, became the first female chairperson of SEBI, which oversees India’s more than $3 trillion stock exchange ecosystem.

Soma Mondal, 59, who became the first woman to chair the state-run Steel Authority of India (SAIL) in January 2021, has led the company to record growth since the takeover. According to the Forbes website, the company’s profits tripled to 120 billion rupees in its first year at the helm.

It described 69-year-old Mazumdar-Shaw as one of India’s richest self-made women. She founded India’s largest publicly traded biopharmaceutical company measured by revenue in 1978. The company has successfully entered the lucrative US market. The company has Asia’s largest insulin factory in Malaysia’s Johor region, it noted.

“The list was determined by four main metrics: money, media, impact, and spheres of influence. For political leaders, we weighted gross domestic products and population; for business leaders, revenue and employee numbers; and media mentions and reach for all of them. The result is a collection of women who fight against the status quo,” the website said.

For her leadership during the war in Ukraine and her handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, tops the 19th annual Forbes list of the world’s 100 most powerful women.

“Her influence is unique – no one else on the list is formulating policy on behalf of 450 million people – but her commitment to a free and democratic society is not. Von der Leyen is just one face of 2022’s biggest storyline: women acting as stalwarts for democracy ‘ the website underlined.

While European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde ranks 2nd, US Vice President Kamala Harris ranks 3rd.

At number 100, Iran’s Jina “Mahsa” Amini has made the influential list posthumously. Her death in September sparked an unprecedented women-led revolution for their rights in the Islamic nation.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)