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.
AD Agencies
Prakash Nair reportedly quits Ogilvy after 23 years
One of the agency’s longest-serving leaders has moved on, with his next destination still unknown
MUMBAI: After more than two decades at one address, Prakash Nair has left the building. The president and head of office, north at Ogilvy has moved on from the agency, according to highly placed industry sources. His next move remains unknown. Ogilvy did not respond to requests for comment.
Nair spent over 23 years at the agency, making him one of its longest-serving senior figures. He was elevated to lead the Gurugram office in April 2022, a role that put him at the helm of Ogilvy’s northern operations at a time of considerable churn across the advertising industry.
Before taking charge in the capital, Nair served as associate president at Ogilvy Mumbai, where he worked on some of the agency’s most prized accounts, including Mondelez, Tata Motors, and BP Castrol. Over the years, he built a reputation for driving modern, integrated, and award-winning work, the kind that wins metals at Cannes and keeps clients from straying.
His departure was marked in style. A farewell gathering was held in Delhi, attended by senior figures from across the advertising fraternity, a signal of the regard in which Nair is held in an industry that does not always pause to say goodbye properly.
Where he goes next is the question the industry is now asking. After 23 years at one of the world’s most storied agencies, the answer, when it comes, will be worth watching.
