India Inc doubles down on getting the gender mix right

India Inc.’s drive to onboard women leaders is getting stronger than ever, driven by multiple factors -- a greater push on ESG (environmental, social and governance) standards, fixing the gender imbalance in companies’ top echelons and a growing appreciation of the value women bring to the table.

“It’s now gone from being an HR agenda to a business agenda, as business folks/boards see the merit of getting more women in,” said Shiv Agrawal, managing director of executive search and talent advisory firm, ABC Consultants.

Around half-a-dozen leading executive search firms ET spoke to said it’s now mandatory to have women candidates among the slate of prospects in searches; in many mandates, the preference is for hiring a female candidate, all other factors being equal. Several companies are even paying search firms a 5-10% premium if a woman candidate is closed for a top management role, they said.

EMA Partners has bagged diversity projects to onboard women leaders; Transearch says diversity searches have soared 2.5-3x in the last couple of years. For Korn Ferry, diversity is a preference in 100% of mandates; in 20-30%, companies are looking at diversity hires only.

K. Sudarshan, regional chair – Asia and managing director at EMA Partners India said they are currently running a big diversity project: a global technology outreach for a multinational bank, where they will be hiring as many as 20 senior tech women leaders globally. Last year, EMA did a similar project for another global bank recruiting seven women leaders across engineering, tech and digital roles.

“The idea is that once you set this in motion, there will be enough women to create the momentum for building on it further,” said Sudarshan. “Diversity searches have nearly doubled in the last two-three years; nearly 70% of searches in tech, banks, GCCs (Global Capability Centres) are looking for diversity hires.”

While the movement towards hiring more women professionals for senior management roles has been going on for a while, the push has now intensified, say recruiters and board members.


Naina Lal Kidwai, chairperson of Rothschild & Co, who is also on the board of directors of Biocon and UPL, said one of the big factors fuelling this change is ESG reporting. Companies, especially the larger ones, are seeking ratings from global firms like Moody’s where one of the questions being asked is around diversity and inclusion. Indian companies also need to disclose Business Responsibility and Sustainability reporting besides adhering to integrated reporting where ESG etc, is being integrated into annual reports.

“This data is becoming more public and under scrutiny. This helps in forcing the agenda,” said Kidwai. What also helps, she says, is that more women have come into the workplace and risen through the ranks and companies have put in place more supportive workplace practices to retain them.

“Both these things are happening simultaneously. On one hand, these factors are being considered by financial investors who look at company ratings; on the other, women are contributing more strongly to the workforce and are being sought for the skill sets and perspectives they bring to the business,” she said.

The ratio of women leaders is less, so there’s also a lot of catching up to do. “Purely from an ESG perspective, companies are judged and valued on diversity norms. In the Indian context, diversity is mostly gender diversity,” says Atul Vohra, managing partner at executive search firm Transearch India. “About 80% of companies say their first preference is a diversity candidate.”

Navnit Singh, chairman and regional managing director at Korn Ferry said while MNCs always had a very strong diversity agenda, in the last 1-1.5 years, Indian promoter-driven companies are also pushing this aspect, including specifying that they only want diversity for certain positions.

“We are also seeing traditional manufacturing companies looking at diversity in a strong manner.”

Given the limited talent pool, particularly in male-dominated sectors like manufacturing, these new asks are sometimes proving to be a challenge for headhunters. Searches are also getting delayed in some cases.

Headhunter R. Suresh cites a recent instance where a multinational equipment maker engaged his firm Insist Consulting to hire the head of the manufacturing function. There were no women candidates with experience suited for the role. The company got back to them saying they could club design, customer service and R&D, and include a woman with this kind of background in their slate of candidates.