THERE’S A TECTONIC SHIFT taking place out there in corporate India, from occupants of the corner offices to the foot soldiers at the front line. It can be ex-pressed in four words: The women are coming. Remember the ’80s, when an advertising leg-end Tara Sinha was the only poster girl of In-dian business? Or the ’90s, when an Anu Aga, the epitome of business integrity, or maxi-mally- paid banking wizard Naina Lal Kidwai comprised the thin band of role models? Then came the ICICI revolution, when India suddenly discovered that six of the top 10 executives in the financial services empire were, gulp, women!

And the trend’s just kept gathering strength till it’s reached the proportion of a flood. Ask Jai Jakhad, CEO of Delhi-based place-ment firm Grace Consultancy, and he will in-form you that the number of women, espe-cially in sectors like banking, human resource management, information technology and IT-enabled services, or any customer-support in-dustry, has risen by at least 60 to 70 per cent over just the last year. “That’s a staggering per-centage and in the coming few years will only go higher,” Jakhad predicts.

According to Priti Rao, vice-president and head of Pune Development in Infosys, the de-mand for women employees has shot up tremendously following the recognition that women are perhaps more capable of handling delicate matters tactfully and delivering the same quantum and quality of results. “Women’s ability to multi-task is seen as a dis-tinct advantage in the IT field where their headcount has risen by 60 to 70 per cent in the last one year,” she says.

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