8 Indians Among Asia's Top 50 Businesswomen

The Indian women are enjoying the impact of globalization and making an influence not only on domestic but also on international sphere. They are passionate about their work, they are confident about what they do and the trend they have shaped has taken them to the top of their game. Read on to know these 8 “game-changers” who made it to the list of “50 dynamic women” by Forbes.

1. Shobhana Bhartia
Age: 56
Chairmen and Editorial Director HT Media

Media baroness hails from the storied Birla business clan. She joined her family's media empire in 1985 at the age of 28, eventually transforming it from a stodgy publisher into fast-growing listed outfit HT Media. It is one of the biggest newspapers in the nation and was started at the request of Mahatma Gandhi to her grand father Ghanshyam Das Birla. Other interests include the Hindi daily Hindustan; business daily Mint, in partnership with the Wall Street Journal; FM radio stations; and jobs portal shine.com. It is also expanding in the education space with a new 50-50 joint venture with U.S.-based Apollo Global.

2. Chanda Kochhar
Age:  51
Managing Director & CEO ICICI Bank

She is the first woman to run the country’s second largest lender and once its fastest growing bank, ICICI Bank. With around 25 million customers, the bank has assets of $91 billion, over 2,500 branches. Kochhar is credited with building ICICI's retail arm from scratch. She took charge of the bank in 2009, after a passionately contested the succession race, becoming its youngest ever CEO at 47.

3. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw
Age: 59
Founder, Chairman and Managing Director Biocon India

Kiran Mazumdar Shaw owns the tag of India's richest self-made woman. She established Biocon in 1978 at the age of 25 as a garage startup to make industrial enzymes and now the company is the country's largest listed biotech firm, with annual revenue of $572 million. It manufactures drugs for diabetes, cancer and autoimmune diseases. She has supported the Mazumdar-Shaw Cancer Center in Bangalore, where the poor are treated for free.

4. Chitra Ramkrishna
Age: 49
Joint Managing Director, National Stock Exchange

Ms. Chitra Ramkrishna serves as Joint Managing Director of National Stock Exchange of India Ltd. Chitra has been with the National Stock Exchange of India from its birth. Chitra Ramakrishna is a Chartered Accountant and she considers the opportunity to become a part of the team that set up the National Stock Exchange as the most important turning point of her career.

5. Renuka Ramnath
Age: 51
Founder, Managing Director and CEO, Multiples Alternate Asset Management India

The business tigress defines power as the ability to improve the economic condition of a large number of people. She is the founder, Managing Director and CEO, Multiples Alternate Asset Management India.
After work she prefers to spend time with her family and friend. Renuka considers raising $250 million for ICICI Venture between 2001 and 2003 just after the Internet bubble as the most important turning point of her career.

6. Preetha Reddy
Age: 55
Group Managing Director Apollo Hospitals

She has been an Executive Director of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd. since 1989 and became the managing director in the year 2011. The soft-spoken and self-effacing Managing Director of Apollo Hospitals firmly declares that she is not the first among equals among her siblings, and that it is age rather than ability that has given her that commanding designation. Dr. Reddy was awarded the Outstanding Personality Award by the Indian Medical Association in 1999 and received the Good Samaritan Award from the Rotary Club in 1999.

7.  Shikha Sharma
Age: 54
CEO and Managing Director Axis Bank, India

She is the CEO and Managing Director of the country's third-largest bank in the private sector, Axis Bank. Sharma worked for 29 years at ICICI Bank and was a contender for the CEO's post but surrendered the spot to Chanda Kochhar. Since Sharma joined Axis Bank its assets grew 30% last year to $55 billion. She has more than doubled the bank's network to 1,500 branches and 8,300-plus ATMs. She plans to continue expansion, notably of the corporate bank, while "balancing growth with risk."

8. Priya Paul
Age: 46
Chairman Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels

A graduate of Wellesley College in the U.S., Paul came back home in 1988 to join the hotel unit of the Apeejay Surrendra Group as marketing manager. Self-taught, hands-on hotelier today Paul runs the Park Hotels chain, a collection of 11 luxury boutique hotels in India known for their funky designs that attract a cheerful crowd. She plans to list the privately held company. Meantime, she’s spending more than $225 million to expand, with 4 hotels in the pipeline, becoming the first woman in her family to work in the family conglomerate.

Indians Among Top 4 Sources For Business Studies in U.S.

Business-related programmes are the most popular single field of study among international students in the US with China, India, South Korea and Saudi Arabia being the top four source countries, according to a new study.

However, among Indian and Saudi students business ranks third behind engineering and math, and engineering and English respectively, while it is the single-most popular field among Chinese and Korean students, according to World Education Services (WES).

This growth in the popularity of business programmes has paralleled, to a degree, the overall demand for undergraduate programmes at US institutions, the WES study on "International Student Mobility Trends 2013: Towards Responsive Recruitment Strategies" noted.

As a result, international undergraduate students in business studies grew by approximately 60 percent in the US between 2003 and 2011, with nearly three out of ten international undergraduates enrolled in business fields-a proportion that is now comparable to the UK and Canada.

The authors Rahul Choudaha, director of research and advisory services, and research associates Li Chang and Yoko Kono noted how student mobility patterns to the US have changed in the decade following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Due to visa policy changes and perceptions that the US had become a less welcoming host country for international students, enrolment growth stalled in the immediate aftermath of the attacks.

At that time, Indians represented the largest international student population, rising almost 12 percent in 2002/03 compared to just two percent among Chinese students-bucking an overall downward trend in enrolments that would last until the 2006/07 academic year.

Within a decade, that story has been turned on its head. Overall enrolments are again growing at a healthy level.

Chinese enrolments have been booming at an average annual growth rate of well above 20 percent since 2007/08, while Indian enrolments have stagnated and recently started a downward trajectory.

A look into the level of study reveals that India is a graduate market, but a combination of socioeconomic and demographic factors suggest an inflow of more Indian undergraduates in the coming years.

Three fourths of Indian students at the graduate level (77 percent) were enrolled in S&E fields, significantly higher than the concentration for international students overall (59 percent), according to WES.

In addition to aggressive outreach in traditional Asian markets, particularly China and India, the WES study highlighted the need for diversification of international student populations by place of origin.