Fortune India Magazine - November 2017

In this issue

This is the seventh edition of the MPW rankings, and a surprising number of women have been on this list from year one. A sample fun fact: Eight of the top 10 this year have been on every list so far. This year has been somewhat different because many of the high-ranking stalwarts have fallen off the list, some because they’ve retired, others because they’ve taken on global roles. But there are plenty more to take their place. Among the new faces on this year’s list, there’s Alice Vaidyan, head of India’s largest reinsurer GIC. She led GIC’s successful IPO, which makes it the second-largest public sector financial services company. State Bank of India is the largest. (Talking of SBI, its chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya retired this year. We hope to see her on the list next year too in some other capacity.)The other new face is that of Nisaba Godrej, who was recently made executive chairperson of Godrej Consumer Products. As a rule, we do not rank heirs and spouses unless they are clearly the ones taking key decisions. And, as associate editor Pavan Lall says persuasively, Nisa Godrej has been taking decisions even before she was put entirely in charge.There’s a lot more, but we’ll leave you to discover that in the following pages.