Recently happened to come across news that though Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) had pushed the deadline by 6 months (from 1st October 2014 to now 1st April 2015), for listed companies to to have at least one woman director on their boards; data from the National Stock Exchange (NSE) showed that of the 1,479 companies listed there, 451 Indian companies, or roughly one-third, were yet to find women directors.
Having decided to, and having extensively in the past, devote much of my time and energy to working on ventures & collaborating with fabulous individuals and teams who get things done (fast), I have always felt things work a ‘bit’ slow in BHAC or ‘Big Hairy Audacious Corporate’ – Ok, that’s a play on BHAG, & a compliment guys; let’s not get stereotyping, shall we?
All things aside, the first thing that crossed my mind was as to whether women, who had proven themselves in the entrepreneurial arenas, were being leveraged for the opportunity for companies at hand; and if not, why?
I have always been all in for merit especially wherever we can leverage talent and potential to achieve things; and have been guided by an individual or firm’s actions speaking more for them than their proclaimed intent on their Facebook wall, or, Vision & Mission statements. One of the potential answers, for me personally, has been obvious – Getting on board entrepreneurial leaders who had proved themselves in various fields, and who also happened to be women. Winning, twice over!
Just thinking of a subset from the entrepreneurial leaders I have the honor of personally being connected with, can think of entrepreneurial women who not only have run global business houses and the numerous verticals there with elan, but also women who have started companies from scratch, made acquisitions in India and abroad, worked on multiple ideas at a time and spun off ventures from their core companies, scaled ventures and initiatives not just within India but globally, convinced investors to partner with them and raised funding for their current and next ideas etc. To say that we might not have enough candidates who fit into a checklist made up by ‘someone’ is to miss out on partnering with entrepreneurial women leaders with skills and drive differentiated to a different level altogether.