MAM
Women bankers lead India in Fortune list
MUMBAI: Eight Indian women have made it to the Fortune list of 25 most powerful women ‘shaping the new world order’ in the Asia-Pacific region.
ICICI Bank CEO Chanda Kochhar has been ranked second across the region while SBI’s Arundhati Bhattacharya, HPCL’s Nishi Vasudeva, and Axis Bank’s Shikha Sharma have also made it to the top-10 earning fourth, fifth and tenth rankings respectively. The list is topped by Australian banking major Westpac’s chief Gail Kelly.
Releasing the latest rankings, the Fortune magazine said that women around the world are continuing to win the top jobs, so much so that more than a third of the women on this Asia-Pacific list are making their debut in the coveted list, including two from India.
The two Indian new entrants are Bhattacharya and Vasudeva.
Bhattacharya is the first woman to hold the ‘three-year post at the country’s largest bank and oversees a 208-year-old institution with $400 billion in assets and 218,000 employees dispersed among 16,000 branches across India’.
On the other hand, Vasudeva, became the first woman to head an Indian oil company and is ‘and one of only four women to helm a Global Fortune 500 firm in the Asia-Pacific region’.
Other Indians on the top-25 list include Biocon chief Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw (19), National Stock Exchange CEO Chitra Ramkrishna (22), HSBC’s Naina Lal Kidwai (23) and TAFE chairman and CEO Mallika Srinivasan (25).
Meanwhile, Indra Nooyi, PepsiCo’s India-born CEO, has been ranked third among the world’s most powerful business women by Fortune. She is only Indian-origin woman on this year’s global list, which has been topped by IBM chairman and CEO Ginni Rometty and General Motors CEO Mary Barra.
MAM
Beacon Group appoints Dr Rajesh Patel as Group CEO
36-year healthcare veteran to lead Beacon Diagnostics, Vector Biotek, Biogeny.
MUMBAI: A new chief, a fresh diagnosis and a sharper prescription for growth. Beacon Group has appointed Dr Rajesh Patel as its Group Chief Executive Officer, effective April 1, 2026, signalling a decisive push to scale its presence in the diagnostics and IVD space. Patel steps into the role with 36 years of experience across the healthcare and diagnostics industry, bringing a career shaped by leadership roles spanning sales, marketing, business development and operational strategy. His mandate is both expansive and precise: to steer the group’s overall strategic direction while tightening coordination across its three core entities Beacon Diagnostics, Vector Biotek and Biogeny Diagnostics.
In practical terms, that means driving cross-company synergies, accelerating market expansion and strengthening organisational capability areas increasingly critical as diagnostic players compete for scale in a fragmented yet rapidly evolving healthcare ecosystem. The group is positioning itself to capture unmet demand across chain laboratories, key accounts and standalone labs, segments that remain underserved despite growing diagnostic needs.
The appointment comes at a time when the In Vitro Diagnostics (IVD) sector in India is entering a more competitive and innovation-led phase, with companies focusing not just on product pipelines but also on service delivery, integration and customer-centric models. Beacon’s leadership appears to be betting that Patel’s execution-focused approach can help translate ambition into operational momentum.
Welcoming the appointment, Chairman Dr D K Joshi described Patel’s induction as a strategic move aligned with the group’s long-term vision, emphasising the role of leadership depth in navigating the next phase of growth.
For Beacon Group, the message is clear, in a sector where precision matters, leadership is the new differentiator—and this appointment is intended to set the tone for what comes next.
