Non-profit accelerator FourthWave has selected 14 US women founders for its eighth annual cohort, spanning health and life sciences, AI and enterprise tools, and sustainability and agriculture technology, as alumni companies have gone on to raise more than $180 million in venture funding.
Glu, an AI commerce startup helping brands navigate agentic buying journeys, has named digital media veteran Neha Sharma Katyal as Head of Growth – India, tasking her with commercial expansion as AI reshapes brand discovery.
Logistics major Delhivery has promoted Chief Business Officer Vani Venkatesh to Deputy CEO with an expanded mandate over revenue, marketing and customer experience, as founding COO Ajith Pai departs after 14 years.
Sarika Pathak Kulkarni left a career abroad to co-found Cresa, a biodegradable sanitary-pad startup, with her father Mohan Kulkarni, funding the company's earliest years through personal savings and a patchwork of government and CSR grants including a dedicated women-entrepreneurship scheme.
Indian American business leader Revathi Advaithi, CEO of Fortune 500 manufacturer Flex, and her husband Jeevan Mulgund have pledged a $1 million permanent scholarship endowment for economically disadvantaged women students at BITS Pilani, Advaithi's alma mater.
The 2026 Candere Hurun India Women Leaders List recognises 117 women worth a combined ₹39 lakh crore across 12 categories — and its most striking finding is that 84% of them, outnumbering inheritors five to one, built their influence independently.
Tushara Shankar, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at Lupin and the Lupin Human Welfare and Research Foundation, tops the Social Change Makers category on the 2026 Hurun India Women Leaders List for CSR work spanning more than 5,000 Indian villages.
Sudha Murty, Founder-Chairperson of the Infosys Foundation and India's most widely read living author in English and Kannada, tops the Authors category on the 2026 Hurun India Women Leaders List, recognising a career that spans engineering, philanthropy, literature and, since 2024, Parliament.
Meena Bindra founded BIBA from her Delhi home in 1988 with a bank loan of just ₹8,000; nearly four decades later, it is one of India's largest ethnic wear brands and Bindra tops the Indian Fashion and Lifestyle category on the 2026 Hurun India Women Leaders List.
Rajni Bector, now 86 and the oldest woman on the 2026 Hurun India Women Leaders List, turned a ₹20,000 backyard ice-cream venture into Mrs. Bector's Food Specialities and the Cremica Group, a publicly listed food business now valued in the thousands of crores.