IT companies focus on elevating more women to the top deck

Indian information technology (IT) companies are increasingly focusing on elevating and retaining more women in leadership roles and ensuring there is diversity at the top.

According to the Companies Act, 2013, all listed companies need to have at least one woman as a director on their board. Further, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) has mandated that effective 1 April 2020, each of the top 1,000 listed companies by market capitalization must have a woman board member who is also an independent director.

“While that is better than not having any, research tells us that the real benefit of this diversity showing up will happen only when we have at least three woman directors or ideally one-third of the board being women.