- Sunday, July 07, 2024
Three other Indian women were also named in the list — Roshni Nadar Malhotra of HCL Corporation, Soma Mondal of Steel Authority of India Limited and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, founder of Biocon.
By: Shubham Ghosh
INDIAN finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has found her name in the Forbes’ list of world’s most powerful women that featured the likes of US vice president Kamala Harris and musician Taylor Swift. The Indian leader was ranked 32.
Three other Indian women were also named in the list and they are Roshni Nadar Malhotra, chief executive of HCL Corporation (rank 60); Soma Mondal, chairperson of Steel Authority of India Limited or SAIL (rank 70) and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, founder of Biocon (rank 76).
The elite list was topped by Ursula von der Leyen, chief of the European Commission. She was followed by Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank at No.2 and Harris at No.3.
The 64-year-old Sitharaman, one of the prominent leaders of the Narendra Modi government, took over as India’s first full-time woman finance minister from the late Arun Jaitley in May 2019. She also heads the ministry of corporate affairs. Born in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Sitharaman had worked at the UK’s Agricultural Engineers Association and the BBC World Service before joining politics. She was also India’s junior finance minister in 2014 and served as the defence minister between 2017 and 2019. She has also been a member of India’s National Commission for Women.
Malhotra is the daughter of Shiv Nadar, founder of HCL and industrialist. She is responsible for all strategic decisions for HCL Technologies, said Forbes. She succeeded her father in the role in 2020.
Mondal is the first woman chairperson of the state-run SAIL, according to her profile on SAIL website. She took up the role in 2021 and has seen the steelmaker register financial growth, her profile read.
Mazumdar-Shaw has been one of India’s leading women voices who founded biopharmaceutical firm Biocon in the late 1970s.
