Managerial Communication

FINAL PROJECT

FEMALE LEADERS
IN BUSINESS

Submitted by
Group 12

Souvik Chakraborty 2210057

Raj Krishna R K 2210043
Vaishnavi Kore 2210066
Shruti Sonawane 2210054
Krishna Kant Verma 2210030

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 INDEX

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CONTENTS PAGE NO

CHAPTER 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 3

CHAPTER 2 INDIAN WOMEN CEOs and MDs

2.2 MALAVIKA HEDGE 4

2.3 LEENA NAIR 6

2.4 KIRAN MAZUMDAR SHAW 7

CHAPTER 3 CONCLUSION 9

REFERENCES 10

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 Executive Summary
We have taken Malavika Hedge, Kiran Mazumdar, and Leena Nair as our three prominent
Indian Women CEOs and MDs who are in leading Global companies. We chose these three
CEOs as we studied a lot of Indian Women CEOs and we found that these three have made a
significant impact on their companies and also serving as an inspiration amongst the young
women power of our nation. These women have inspired a generation of entrepreneurs. They
have demonstrated courage and willpower. Taking the example of Kiran Mazumdar Shaw
who was recognized as the best Entrepreneur in the discipline of Healthcare and Life
Sciences in 2003 by Ernst & Young. She was also honored as the Businesswomen of the year
2004 by the Economic Times. And she also got India’s third highest civilian award Padma
Bhushan. Our next chosen leader is Leena Nair who was on Fortune India’s Most Powerful
Women’s list in 2021 and made a revolution in the fashion industry. And lastly, Malavika
Hedge took over Siddhartha her husband after he committed suicide. She shattered all kinds
of suspicions and achieved making CCD a success again. She made the company grow and
recover from a whopping debt of INR 7000 crore. so, on learning this report the
organization’s women power can get the movement forward toward gender balance and
diversity across an organization.

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 Malavika Hegde
Malavika Hegde born in Bengaluru, Karnataka, in the year 1969 attended a local Bengaluru
school for her education. She attended Bangalore University to study engineering. Malavika
is a member of the Vokkaliga group. She is the daughter of, Somanahalli Mallaiah Krishna, a
well-known politician in India, who held several significant roles, including the chief
minister of Karnataka and the minister of external affairs. In 1991, Malavika Krishna Hedge
wed VG Siddhartha, the proprietor of the well-known restaurant chain Cafe Coffee Day
(CCD). VG Siddhartha died on July 29, 2019. One of India's greatest domestic success stories
is the rise of Cafe Coffee Day. The business that entrepreneur VG Siddhartha created and
launched revolutionized the nation's coffee culture and fast-food joints. However, the
business suffered a severe debt crisis, which led to Siddhartha's death. The company,
according to sources, owed 7200 crore rupees in debt. When his wife Malavika Hegde took
over as CEO of CCD, the business was all but forgotten in the world of business. She put in a
lot of effort to make sure the company her late husband founded was a success.
After Siddhartha's passing, many people believed that the Coffee Day business would not
survive, and they were unsure of his successor. Due to the accumulated debt, most thought
the corporation would never be able to recover. However, Malavika Hegde, V G Siddhartha's
wife, dispelled all the rumors and made history by preventing CCD from vanishing despite
being a single mother of two sons.
Malavika assumed leadership of Cafe Coffee Day Enterprises Ltd. in December 2020.
(CDEL). She started working nonstop the next day to help the business expand. Malavika,
who was grieving the loss of her husband, carried a heavy load because of this. She
persevered though. According to the Times of India, Hegde expressed her commitment to the
firm's future in a letter to the 25,000 employees of the company in 2020 before taking over as
CEO. She also assured them that the Coffee Day tale was "worth maintaining." Hours after
an investigation her letter arrived and found out that Coffee Day Enterprises Limited, a
publicly traded company, was owed Rs 2,693 crore by a private company owned by the late
founder Siddhartha (CDEL). “We will work to reduce the debt to a manageable level by
selling a few more investments as I am committed to the company’s future,” she wrote.
Malavika Hegde was able to pay down his debt after Siddhartha committed himself despite
the COVID shutdown. She has previously stated that although the difficulties grew, "my
objective has been to uphold the great heritage of Siddhartha somewhere along the line in the
last 12 months." He has given me work to complete, including trying my best to pay off every
lender, expand the company, and motivate and develop our staff. Numerous businesses
closed when Covid-19 hit the globe. However, despite the pandemic, Cafe Coffee Day
continued expanding. All of this has just been possible because of the current CEO of CCD,
Malavika, who upholds brand value, cultivated relationships with numerous new investors to
raise funds for the company, and persuaded the investors that the Café Coffee Day brand is
valuable enough to be preserved.
Several precautions were put in place throughout the entire network of cafés while taking the
COVID safety regulations into consideration. This made it easier to entice returning
customers to the cafes who have always had a soft spot in their hearts for CCD.

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She made the decision to run the company and made sure to rebuild while many business
tycoons fled to other nations. We applaud her bravery and tenacity. Along with closing
several unprofitable outlets. She is known for her retail management skills even throughout
the pandemic. There are currently more than 572 Café Coffee Day locations in the US. High-
quality coffee beans from her 20,000-acre plantation are in great demand all over the world.
Additionally, there are approximate, 36000 coffee vending machines spread among a variety
of organizations. Following the footsteps of her late husband, Malavika hopes to make Café
Coffee Day into a multi-billion dollar firm, a debt-free enterprise and grow coffee shops in
every region of the nation. Many believed the business would never recover, but Malavika
rose from the ashes like a phoenix.

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 Leena Nair
Leena Nair, a 52-year-old lady, was born & brought up in Kolhapur, Maharashtra. She did
her schooling at Holy Cross Convent High School, Kolhapur & The New College, Kolhapur,
Maharashtra. Completed her engineering in Electronics & Telecommunication from
Walchand College of Engineering, Sangli. Further post-graduation in MBA-HR from XLRI
Jamshedpur – Xavier School of Management with a Gold medal from 1990 to 1992.
Nair started her employment with Unilever in 1992 as a management trainee before
progressively moving up the corporate ladder to take on several HR positions. She feels every
experience is crucial and credits her professional trajectory to the fact that she never said no
to "grassroots positions." In 2016, she was appointed the conglomerate's first Asian, female,
and youthful chief HR(Human Resource) officer in the corporation. Leena Nair is a British
Indian executive. She also worked for the British government's division of the business,
energy, and industrial policy as a non-executive director. Her former position was Chief
HR(Human Resource) officer of Unilever, a global company based in the Netherlands. She
spent more than 30 years working for the firm before leaving to take over as Alain
Wertheimer's replacement as CEO of the French luxury brand Chanel in 2022.
Unilever CEO Alan Jope, complimented Nair for helping the firm expand and evolve
throughout her time, expertly handling over 1,50,000 workers, and making Unilever the top
employer for FMCG graduates in 50+ countries. "Leena has been a trailblazer throughout her
career at Unilever, but no more so than in her role as the CHRO," said Jope in a statement
announcing her resignation. "She drives our equity, diversity, and inclusion agenda,
transforming leadership development and preparing for the future of our work."
Nair was appointed as Chanel's next global head last month & expected to start her duties by
the month end of January 2022, in London. She will continue the company's history of
sustained success. Although she has no experience in the fashion industry, her selection as the
company's CEO illustrates the brand's strategy for broadening its management base.
Leena was elevated to a new level and positioned to compete with the other CEOs of Indian
descent like Sundar Pichai, Parag Agarwal, Satya Nadella, and some others, serving on top
spots in some of the giant companies over the world, admired for her significant leadership
qualities, creating human-centered workspaces, and emerging as a worldwide young driving
force.
In addition, Leena followed in the footsteps of her mentor, former Pepsico CEO Indira
Nooyi, to become the 2nd person of Indian descent to run a large firm as CEO. Nair is well
known for developing people-oriented growth models and has also been recognized as one of
the most influential women.
Leena is recognized with many awards such as LinkedIn Top Voice from 2018-20. She was
able to make it to Thinkers50 List in 2019 and some awards in recent years.

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 Kiran Mazumdar
Company - Biocon

Kiran Mazumdar did her Bachelor’s degree in Zoology from Bangalore University in the year
1973. Later she earned her Master Brewer degree from Ballarat College, Melbourne
University In the year 1975.
Previous Firms she worked with:
 Carlton and United Breweries, Australia
 Barrett Brothers and Bursten, Australia
 Jupiter Breweries Limited, Calcutta
 Standard Maltings Corporation, Baroda

She was denied jobs at several Beer Breweries as she was a woman, so she moved to
Scotland she was not able to get a job in her homeland India. At the age of 25, she got her
first job in Scotland. It was there where she met Leslie Auchincloss who sparked her with the
idea of starting a Pharma business in India. And that is how the inception of Biocon happened
in the year 1978.
The Inception of Biocon:
In Ireland, at Biocon Biochemicals Limited she worked as a Manager trainee before she came
back to India. With an initial capital of Rs. 10,000, she started Biocon India in her house in
Bangalore. As a joint venture firm, Indian rules limited ownership of foreign people to 30%
of the firm, which means Kiran Mazumdar Shaw owned 70% of the company.
She initially encountered credibility issues due to her youth, femininity, and unproven
business plan. She was unable to obtain money for her business in its early stages. An
accidental meet with a banking official at a gathering led to her initial financial support
Furthermore, she confronted the technological obstacles that come with attempting to create a
biotech firm in a country with little infrastructure.
Innovative Ideas brought in:
Cancer and Auto-immune disorders are currently among Biocon's primary research fields. As
in India more people used to take betel and tobacco. About 86% of the oral cancers are from
India. Diabetic is common, and those who refrain from wearing shoes are in danger of having
a minor scratch or abrasion turn into gangrenee, sometimes known as "diabetes foot." They
are also developing medications to cure psoriasis, a skin pigmentation disorder.

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Visionary Leader:
A Pharmaceutical industry always needs to have a fair share of its income spent on R&D.
And Kiran took the extra step ahead of all her competitors at that period and spent roughly
10% of its sales on R&D in the year 2014. This was very much a substantially large
proportion than typical Indian pharmaceutical businesses.  Based on its research effort, it has
submitted patent applications nearly upto 950.  She remained very active in pharmaceutical
and bio-pharmaceutical acquisitions, collaborations, and in-licensing, entering into over
2,200 value-rich R&D licensing and agreements between the years of 2005 and 2010.
She contributed to the creation of the Arogya Raksha Yojana. Biocon Foundation creates
clinics through this initiative to provide clinic care, generic drugs, and normal testing to
individuals who finds it hard to afford using them. In 2010, she introduced seven clinics each
servicing a big mass of around 50,000 patients residing inside a 10-kilometer radius, serving
more than 300,000 individuals each year. Clinics send in doctors from a network of hospitals
to conduct regular general health checks in distant towns. They educated young women of
our country to work as health workers of the community to transmit images of worrisome
cases to doctors at the cancer hospital in order to enhance cancer diagnosis.
She also supported the development and usage of Maths textbooks in the schools of Kannada
in 2006. Mc Millan India really helped a lot for her in order to collaborate and perform these
activities for the welfare of the nation at a cheaper cost. Prathima who was a school teacher
also played an important role in making sure this dream of making the students of the remote
villages in Karnataka are given the chance to learn Mathematics. She also funded a Biocon
Cell at the ISB, Bangalore which was a multiple year research and development program in
the year 2009. Following the 2009 floods, Biocon, Infosys, and Wipro all pledged to help
flood victims in north Karnataka rebuild their houses. Biocon has committed to constructing
3,000 homes at a cost of Rs 30 crore.
As an appreciation of her activities and inspiring nature she has received a lot of awards
which include the likes of Padma Bhushan in the 2005 and also other well-recognized awards
in the field of Health and Lifecare sciences which were on International stages. She is now
one of the four people who have got the highest civilian award from the country Australia
where she did her early master’s degree.

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 Conclusion
On reading about these great Indian women CEOs, the women who are working in an
organization can get the motivation and inspiration, which can be a driving force for an
organization towards attaining a better gender balance and gender diversity in a talent-rich
country like India. We hope these women inspire a million other women who have
entrepreneurial ideas ingrained in the back of their minds. The youth of the nation should
understand everybody in their lives has achieved because they worked hard for it and nothing
was given on a plate.

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 References
 www.femina.in
 peoplepill.com
 en.wikipedia.org
 www.indiatimes.com
 www.businesspac.com
 au.finance.yahoo.com
 www.ncjp.org
 www.business-standard.com
 www.newshour.press

 www.Biospectrumindia.com

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