Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

Chairman and Managing Director, Biocon Limited

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw joined Biocon Biochemicals Limited, of Cork, Ireland as a Trainee Manager in 1978. In the same year, at the young age of 25; she started Biocon in the garage of her rented house in Bangalore with a small capital investment of 10,000. Since then Biocon has become only the second Indian firm to record a one billion dollar Initial Public Offering (IPO) on its first day of trading and is currently the country's 11th largest pharmaceutical company with a market capitalization of $66.8 billion.

Naina Lal Kidwai

Group General Manager and Country Head, HSBC, India

Naina Lal Kidwai, 54, currently country head of HSBC, was the first women to enter the formerly male bastion of investment banking and rise spectacularly. The list of Kidwai's firsts is undoubtedly incredible: She was the first Indian woman to graduate from Harvard Business School. She was the first woman to be hired by was with Price Waterhouse (now PricewaterhouseCoopers or PWC) and it was her first job too. Now, she is the first woman to lead a foreign bank in India.

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