Bookmarked: How Being “Ziddi”, Dreaming Aloud Can Break The Glass Ceiling

A 2022 Deloitte report noted that globally, 19.7 per cent of the board seats are held by women, an increase of 2.8 percent since 2018 compared with 1.9 percent over 2016−2018. But even at this pace, near parity could only be expected by 2045. In terms of India, while there are several norms in place to increase corporate representation of women, the report noted that the numbers suggest a significant gap between the ideated measures and ground realities. In her latest book Equal, Yet Different: Career Catalysts for the Professional Woman, author Anita Bhogle, an alumnus of IIT Bombay and IIM Ahmedabad who has worked in the advertising and marketing space, pens down certain catalysts that could help women excel professionally.  The book delves into the stories of successful career women and what they did differently, views of experts on diversity, equity and inclusion and other stakeholders to get a better understanding of what it really takes.  

Here is an excerpt from the book:

Falguni Nayar was sitting under a massive tree in the garden of her home in Alibaug while we were chatting over a Zoom call. Falguni, as many of you would know, is the woman behind the beauty business Nykaa. Nykaa is now a listed company whose market cap at the recently concluded initial public offering (IPO) is $7.2 billion. That makes Falguni a billionaire and India’s richest self-made woman! To me, Falguni is more than her success story. She and I were batchmates and dorm-mates in IIMA. I am very proud of how well she has done for herself, more so because she has done it all on her own steam. 

‘I have always been ziddi, yaar,’ she says, when I ask her to analyse her phenomenal success. That, to me, translates as somewhere between determined and stubborn.

‘Knowing what you want and pursuing it. Like even this dream house that we built,’ says Falguni, her gorgeous villa serving as the perfect backdrop for the conversation.

The problem is that we need many more Falgunis in leadership positions in order to be heard. When we passed out of IIMA in 1985, we were just nine girls in a batch of 180. That embarrassing statistic of 5 per cent is now up to a healthier figure of 25–30 per cent across various IIMs. Having realized the importance of diversity in classrooms, the admission process has been rejigged to make sure that it is not skewed towards selecting only male engineers. This intervention by the institute has been hugely successful, especially in achieving better gender diversity. We are told that it has resulted in more vibrant class discussions. In a sense, we seem to have found the direction forward, at least at the entry level. However, the problem of fewer women in leadership and board positions persists. 

A study by Credit Suisse Research Institute released in October 2019 says that women accounted for just 15.2  per cent of corporate directors in India. The same study shows that India has the third-lowest rank among countries in the Asia-Pacific region when it comes to women CEOs and CFOs, with numbers as low as 2 per cent and 1 per cent. The pattern is identical even in the case of architects, doctors, engineers, chartered accountants and lawyers. There is now a mandate that there must be at least one woman member on the boards of publicly listed firms. But we all know that a directive like this, while being a quick and effective leveller of sorts, is neither desirable in the long run nor does it do anything to strengthen the pipeline.

As Dr Saundarya Rajesh of Avtar puts it, ‘The optics are deceptive.’ Women continue to drop off the corporate ladder  at an amazing rate, and few manage to make it to the top. We start with equal dreams, but somewhere along the way the dreams decouple. Women like Falguni are the encouraging exceptions and, therefore, great case studies for success.

When I look back, Falguni was no different from the rest of us. Simple, hard-working, middle-class. Falguni’s story has been one of remarkable achievements in the corporate world. In her first avatar, she rose to head Kotak Investment Bank but it is in her second avatar, as the founder of beauty business Nykaa, that she has truly achieved superstardom. As the head of a multibillion-dollar company, Falguni represents what it is possible to achieve through sheer hard work and enterprise. When I ask her why she threw away a successful corporate career and decided to be an entrepreneur, she puts it down to being an adventurer at heart, a fearless person capable of taking open-ended risks.

In a world where women’s career graphs are dotted with safe options, Falguni’s story stands out as she has consistently embraced challenges that sounded exciting, without being daunted by the newness of the situation.

In the mid-nineties, when she decided to quit her job at Kotak Mahindra Bank in Mumbai to follow her husband on a transfer to London, Uday Kotak asked her if she would set up a London office for them, when she had absolutely no experience handling legal or compliance issues. Setting up an office for the bank in a new country would involve a lot of that. She took it up, nevertheless. When she started Nykaa in 2012 at the age of fifty, the seasoned banker had a lot to learn about the unfamiliar beauty business. She was merely a first-time entrepreneur who had spotted an opportunity that she believed had potential. Whether it was the thrill of moving to a foreign country or the adventure of a startup, she jumped right in and backed herself to ‘figure it out’. ‘Once you decide that your career is very high in terms of priority, everything else falls in place,’ she says.

Falguni, like the rest of us, faced her share of challenges in balancing work and life. In fact, she has raised twins while working in London and the US. Her husband, Sanjay Nayar, is a successful professional and runs the India office of a large American global investment  company. Falguni admits that when family and friends make demands on her time and attention, it is awkward, and she frequently has to turn them down because of prior commitments. The ones she declines are amply made up for at more convenient times or in some other manner, she says. The ability to say ‘no’ nicely can be a huge asset for a busy professional woman who needs to use her time wisely. This firm focus on what is important to you is a trait I have seen in many successful people, both men and women.

Falguni says she always made clear to her family her ambition at every stage, so that she set the right expectations. Knowing what you want is the first and most crucial step, but articulating and making it known to people at home and work is just as important. A passion or ambition that goes unrealized because of fear that others may not approve or support you is as tragic as talent that fails to achieve its true potential. In an attempt to keep everyone around them happy, which is in any case an impossible goal, young women often sacrifice their own dreams. 

(Excerpted from Equal, Yet Different: Career Catalysts for the Professional Woman by Anita Bhogle by Penguin Portfolio, 2022)

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