Avtar & Seramount’s flagship benchmarking study, Best Companies for Women in India, enters its 11th edition with 387 companies participating this year, of which 125 made it to the Best Companies list. The 11-year BCWI journey has brought significant progress, but this year’s data is a reminder that progress cannot be taken for granted. Women’s representation has dipped slightly, with a sharper decline at the leadership level.
Against this backdrop, and at a time when DEI is facing pushback in many parts of the world, Dr Saundarya Rajesh sits down for a detailed Q&A on what companies in India are getting right, what they need to do differently, which industries are leading, and what the decline in women’s representation means for women, businesses and the country. She also looks at why women are leaving and what companies can do to enable experienced women to climb the ladder. Read on (continued from Part 2).
If women are not progressing through traditional corporate leadership, what other career paths are becoming more attractive to them?
Dr Saundarya Rajesh: Better job opportunities are the No. 1 reason women report for leaving, cited by 89% of women. This tells us that women are increasingly willing to explore different options. Entrepreneurship, for instance, is becoming an attractive pathway. In India, 64.2% of employed women were self-employed in 2025, compared with 18.2% in regular salaried employment, according to the latest PLFS data. While this is not conclusive evidence of experienced corporate women moving into entrepreneurship (as the data also includes rural and informal self-employment), we can see entrepreneurship becoming popular with the advent of AI. The World Economic Forum estimates that AI could unlock more than $500 billion in economic value for India’s MSME sector.
Consulting is another pathway gaining traction. Female consultant sign-ups on Flexing It increased by more than 300% in FY24 compared with FY22, outpacing the growth in male registrations. We must acknowledge that it is becoming easier for women to explore these different paths because companies are becoming more open to non-linear careers. Formal second-career programs are now offered by 71% of Best Companies, compared with just 30% in 2016. This is important because it gives experienced women more than one route to build a career.
Could some women be choosing to leave corporate leadership because they want greater control over their time, careers and lives? How much is about choice, and how much is about organizations not creating conditions in which they can stay?
Dr Saundarya Rajesh Choice is certainly part of any career conversation. What we know is that 89% of women who leave cite better job opportunities. So women are making active choices about where they see better prospects for their careers. At the same time, organizations have an important role to play in making it possible for women to stay. We are seeing strong progress here: maternity retention is at 94%, and 78% of companies offer phase-back programs. But staying is not the same as progressing. A woman can remain with an organization and still find that the next leadership opportunity is not opening up. That is why flexibility and advancement have to go hand in hand.
What role do managers and senior leaders play in determining whether women actually progress, beyond formal diversity policies?
Dr Saundarya Rajesh: Managers do have a big role to play in women’s progression than simply implementing HR policies. They influence who gets noticed and promoted for leadership. The good news is that career support is becoming more structured. 92% of Avtar & Seramount ‘Best’ Companies conduct formal career conversations separately from performance reviews, while 96% have documented development plans and manager guides to support these conversations. Senior leaders are also becoming more accountable. In 94% of Best Companies, women’s advancement metrics are regularly reviewed with the executive responsible for women’s advancement. Among the Top 10, this rises to 100%. But the fact that women’s representation at the Corporate Executive level is still 16.7% shows that these structures need to be matched by manager training and accountability.
Could the way we currently define and structure leadership itself be part of the problem?
Dr Saundarya Rajesh: I think we need to examine this question closely. Part of the issue may be the way we have traditionally defined leadership potential/readiness. Those definitions can carry non-conscious biases about what a leader looks like or what kind of experience counts.
But there are also encouraging signs that companies are beginning to broaden these structures. For instance, 96% of Avtar & Seramount Best Companies for Workplace Wellness (BCWW) have dual career tracks, allowing employees to progress through technical as well as managerial pathways. This recognises that there is more than one way to build expertise, take on responsibility and progress in a career. 100% of BCWW companies also report having succession planning for critical roles. So I would not say that the traditional leadership model is the main problem. But we need to keep challenging the assumptions within it. This can happen through bias training, regular bias audits, diverse succession panels and stronger accountability for who gets promoted.
If this decline in women’s representation continues, what could it mean for the future pipeline of women CEOs and for the future of India?
Dr Saundarya Rajesh: If this pattern continues, it will eventually affect the pipeline of women who reach the very top. That is why I see 2026 as a prompt to protect the pipeline. Diversity and inclusion may be facing pushback in many parts of the world, but India Inc. has a very clear business case for inclusion. We should not let global shifts distract us from what our own data is telling us. This year, it is encouraging that companies themselves are seeing strong business value from inclusion. The percentage of Best Companies reporting increased operating profit as an outcome of their DEI focus has risen from 70% in 2025 to 79% this year. Similarly, 74% report increased innovation revenue, up from 65%, while 79% report increased customer satisfaction. This tells us that more companies are not just investing in inclusion; they are increasingly tracking its impact on business outcomes. That is important because when organizations can see a clear link between inclusion, innovation, customer satisfaction and profitability, the question of whether they should invest in inclusion becomes much harder to ignore. And if India is serious about its Viksit Bharat ambition, every company will have to perform at its very best, and we cannot do that without women. India’s growth story needs all its talent, and women must be at every level of it, including the very top.
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The message from this year’s data and from Dr Saundarya is clear. India Inc. has come a long way, but the journey is far from over. We must protect the progress already made and focus harder on helping women stay, grow and reach the top.
To know more about benchmarking and the work we do at Avtar, visit us at www.avtarcc.com.
