Meet India's Top Self-Made Women in 2024

Ananya Tripathi is the newest managing director at Brookfield Real Estate Group. She's made a career by constantly stepping outside her comfort zone. Be it with her first job at McKinsey or the switch to Myntra. She finally landed at Brookfield via KKR and WhiteHat Jr. At Brookfield, her mandate is to drive its Indian real estate investments so that investors get the returns they were promised. She is also constantly on the lookout for new ideas and opportunities for its vast India portfolio which includes the Leela hotel chain.

From managing finances of the State Bank of India to now tackling major global challenges such as climate change and inequality as the first woman managing director and chief financial officer of the World Bank, Anshula Kant is one of the most respected bankers. She has successfully led teams through several crises over nearly four decades. At the World Bank, she oversees risk management and the mobilisation of financial resources to meet the goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030, boosting overall prosperity, while addressing climate change. Kant’s team seeks to undertake projects that are scalable and replicable to solve some of the world’s most pressing problems.

She is the first woman to lead the global M&A business of one of the world’s largest banks. The managing director and global head of M&A at JP Morgan has advised deal transactions to the tune of $1 trillion over the last 25 years. Her long list of big-ticket mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, and leveraged buyouts includes French luxury giant LVMH’s acquisition of the iconic American jeweller Tiffany & Co for $16 billion in December 2020; Allergan’s $63 billion sale to AbbVie in May 2020; Walmart’s acquisition of Flipkart for $16 billion in August 2018, to name a few. Aiyengar is a guest lecturer at Chicago Booth and Harvard Business School.

A decorated IAS officer—she stood first among women candidates in UPSC and ninth overall. Ashwini Bhide is the managing director of the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation and additional commissioner of the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai. She’s been the driving force of Mumbai Metro-3 [Cuffe Parade to Seepz], a complex project involving multiple hurdles, that is touted to be the city’s new lifeline. She previously helmed big-ticket projects such as the Eastern Freeway, Sahar Elevated Road, Monorail-Phase I, and various flyovers. Bhide says there are both challenges and advantages of being a woman IAS officer.

Deepti Sharma is the only Indian cricketer to feature among the Top 5 in ICC’s T20 and ODI world rankings. She is also the only Indian to have been selected for ICC’s T20I team of the year. In January, during the T20I series against Australia, she completed 1,000 runs and picked 100 wickets in the format, becoming the only Indian woman to achieve the twin milestones. Last December, the all-rounder single-handedly defeated England in a Test match in Mumbai, taking nine wickets across two innings and scoring a half-century in the first. Sharma was named BCCI’s international cricketer of the year for 2022-23 for the second time in four years.

Jahnavi Phalkey is a respected historian of science and technology, and is currently the founding director of the Science Gallery Bengaluru. Phalkey earned her PhD in the history of science and technology from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2007. Her previous notable positions include senior lecturer in history of science and technology at King's College London and a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. Her major work is the highly regarded book ‘Atomic State: Big Science in Twentieth Century India Science, History, and Modern India (2013)’. She is also the co-editor of ‘Key Concepts in Modern Indian Studies (2015)’ and the director of the documentary film Cyclotron (2020).

Janice Pariat is a Sahitya Akademi Award-winning writer who is emerging as one of the most distinctive literary voices in India. Her latest book ‘Everything the Light Touches’, was included in ‘The Best Books of 2022’ by The New Yorker. It went on to win the 2023 Sushila Devi Award and the AutHer Award for Best Fiction in 2023 and was longlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature. Pariat calls herself a "forest-seeker" and says that her writing reflects her experiences of growing up in Shillong, where fairy tales and realist narratives coexisted quite easily in people's lives.

Jayanti Buruda is the first tribal from Malkangiri district, Odisha, to receive the NWMI Fellowship for Women Journalists. Her stories offer a firsthand account of what it means to be in the hinterland of Odisha and explores the depth of the digital and infrastructure divide there. Six years ago, she started Bada Didi Union, a young female volunteer-led movement to increase awareness about menstrual hygiene and reproductive health in the community. To empower her community, she started the Jungle Rani initiative in 2023, a social media platform run by women to publish adivasi stories that do not make it to mainstream media.

An engineering graduate, Kriti Sanon, has successfully established herself in the competitive film industry through years of struggle and hard work. After her National Award-winning performance for Mimi (2021), Sanon has been expanding her horizons, outside acting as well. Last year, she launched a skincare brand, Hyphen with the founding team of mCaffeine. This year, her release—Teri Baaton Mein Aisa Uljha Jiya—with Shahid Kapoor has worked well at the box office. She has two more films lined up: Crew, co-starring Tabu and Kareena Kapoor Khan, and the thriller Do Patti—which she has co-produced for Netflix—co-starring Kajol.

Maleesha Kharwa, also known as the princess of slums, is the youngest member on Forbes India’s W-Power list this year. Her life changed after she crossed paths with Hollywood actor Robert Hoffman. The Step Up 2: The Streets actor saw what others had overlooked for years. Hoffman decided to support Kharwa, who used to live in a shanty near Mumbai's Bandstand. He extended help in pursuing her dream of becoming a model and dancer. Today, Kharwa has 450,000 followers and 88,700 subscribers on Instagram and YouTube. The teenager was featured on the cover of The Peacock magazine and became a brand ambassador for luxury Indian cosmetics brand Forest Essentials.

Meghana Narayan is an international swimming champion and the co-founder of millet-powered Wholsum Foods, which has attracted big-ticket investments, doubled its growth for the past three years, and is eyeing profitability by 2025. After winning more than 400 gold medals at the national level, she hung up her swimsuit at 22, when she received the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship from the University of Oxford, UK. Inspired from her parenting challenges, Narayan and co-founder Shauravi Malik set up Slurrp Farm, a brand for easy and healthy meals for children, and in 2023, launched an adult-focussed brand called Millé. They champion the use of Indian millets such as ragi and jowar, fashioned into instant pancakes, dosa, and noodles, among others.

Minakshi Singh is the co-founder of Cocktails & Dreams Speakeasy (Gurugram) and SideCar (Delhi)—two of India’s best bars. Singh started her career as a bartender, then became a marketer for big alcohol brands, before starting her own bar in 2012. Her second bar SideCar, established in 2018, ranked 91 on the list of the world’s best bars in 2020 – India’s only entry in the top 100 and only the second bar in India ever to be selected—all before turning two. It climbed to rank 47 in 2021, and further to rank 26 in 2022. Along with her co-founder Yangdup Lama, Singh is planning to open bars across India, and is opening her third in Gurugram soon.

Nandita Sinha has been instrumental in establishing and scaling ‘beauty & personal care’ as an additional pillar at Myntra, alongside fashion and lifestyle. Last year, Myntra Beauty grew 3X, and Myntra hit the highest monthly active users mark at 60 million during the festive season. An engineering grad from IIT-BHU, she started her career at Hindustan Unilever Limited, and later moved to Britannia Industries. Armed with a Master's degree in business administration in marketing and strategy from FMS, Delhi, Nandita cofounded MyBabyCart.com, an e-commerce platform for baby products, in 2012, and joined Flipkart in 2013.

Praveena Rai has significantly contributed to shaping India’s digital payments landscape. In her current role as NPCI’s chief operating officer, she is responsible for promoting the growth of its products and introducing new use cases for its flagship products such as UPI and RuPay. The veteran banker, with over three decades of experience, joined NPCI in 2019 after professional stints at Citi Bank, HSBC Bank, and Kotak Mahindra Bank. Rai, an engineering graduate from College of Engineering, Guindy, and an MBA from IIM-Ahmedabad, has built expertise across banking verticals, technology, and marketing and this diverse background has helped her steer NPCI to drive rapid digitalisation in some of the remotest villages of India.

Roop Rekha Verma has fearlessly raised her voice, oftentimes at great personal cost, to fight discrimination on grounds of gender, caste, and religion. In 2023, she was part of a PIL to the Supreme Court against remission orders for the 11 men convicted in the Bilkis Bano gang rape case in 2002. She also stood surety for journalist Siddque Kappan when the latter was being tried under sedition and UAPA, after being arrested while on his way to report the gang rape of a teenage Dalit girl by four upper caste men in Hathras. “There is a fight inside of me as well. I resurrect myself every time I feel there’s no hope,” she says.

Rameshbabu Vaishali overcame financial constraints to become one of the three women Grandmasters from India and was bestowed with the Arjuna Award in January 2024. She has a slew of achievements in her short career: The Girls’ World Youth Chess Championship for Under-12 in 2012 and Under-14 in 2015, the International Master title after scoring her final norm at the Biel Masters Open 2021 and the Women’s Grand Swiss 2023 where she qualified to compete at the prestigious Candidates Tournament. In December 2023, at the IV El Llobregat Open Tournament 2023 in Spain, she crossed the 2500 mark, earning her the title of a Grandmaster.

Rajshri Deshpande has received acclaim and awards for her powerful performance as Neelam Krishnamoorthy in Netflix’s Trial By Fire in 2023. The former advertising professional is also a social worker, who, through her non-profit Nabhangan Foundation, takes up causes related to rural rejuvenation and community building. The impact of her foundation’s work now reaches 30 villages in Marathwada, Maharashtra. In these villages, she helps rejuvenate groundwater, build schools and toilets, and conduct gender sensitisation.

Ranima Das has been chosen to represent 23 lakh Anganwadi workers and helpers in the country. The All India Anganwadi Workers Federation nominated her to feature on the Forbes India W-Power list 2024. Hailing from Parakhowa village in Assam, her experience and expertise in advising villagers, particularly women, on health, have received accolades. She has let her work dedication and commitment speak for herself, and it has earned her special recognition as a didi (sister) to everyone. For the last seventeen years, Das has been helping children join school, and providing early care for pregnant women, among other jobs, for a meagre salary.

Emmy-winning journalist turned anti-trafficking activist Ruchira Gupta founded the anti-sex trafficking NGO Apne Aap Women Worldwide, which enables women and girls to escape prostitution and realise their full potential. She has received numerous awards and distinctions, including the French Ordre National du Mérite, the Clinton Global Citizen Award, and the UN NGO CSW Woman of Distinction, for her contribution to the establishment of the UN Trafficking Fund for Survivors, the passage of the US Trafficking Victims Protection Act, and her grassroots activism with Apne Aap. She has worked for the UN in Nepal, Thailand, Kosovo, Iran, and the US. ‘I Kick and I Fly’ is her debut fiction novel.

Safeena Husain founded Educate Girls in 2007, an NGO dedicated to empowering communities by promoting girls' education. In partnership with the government, Educate Girls operates in villages of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Bihar. Volunteers help enroll and retain out-of-school girls, mobilising more than 1.4 million girls for enrolment to date in more than 24,000 villages. She is the first Indian woman to win the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) Award 2023—a global recognition for any individual or a team for outstanding contribution to education.

A Maths graduate, Mehta ventured into the world of finance by working with Lehman Brothers before it collapsed in 2008. It was followed by Nomura, where she worked with the fixed-income sales team. In 2012, she was approached by KKR and now leads KKR's investments in consumer, retail, and healthcare segments since 2017. She is also on the boards of companies such as Vini Cosmetics (Fogg brand), Lighthouse Learning, Avendus Capital, and RE Sustainability.

For three decades, Malhotra has been a driving force in the Indian fashion, sports, and beauty space. She has spearheaded the launch and expansion of several global brands, set up vast, robust multi-channel businesses, and scaled them for profitable growth. An alumnus of Miranda House and NIFT Delhi, she started her career in the early 1990s at Benetton India. She then worked with multiple global sports brands like Nike, Puma, Converse, Speedo and Planet Sports in diverse roles across sport licensing, branding, retail, distribution channel network, and general management. In 2006, she launched The Body Shop in India through Quest Retail.

While her family was full of engineers, Sowmya Suryanarayanan was always interested in economics and social science and inclined towards the development sector. She has earlier headed CSR, and developed impact and ESG management systems for companies. Today she heads Impact and ESG at Aavishkaar Capital and helps fund sustainable businesses that can create value for both investors and the society.