Indian IT's Most powerful women

The definition of power can be rather confounding. Power is relative and
every individual has a personal notion of power. Therefore, it became almost
mandatory to quantify and define power before we could set out to identify the
10 most powerful women in the Indian IT industry.

The criteria we used to identify the most powerful women was simply women in
senior management positions in the IT industry.

Our selection criterion was equally straightforward. We considered parameters
that were slightly beyond the obvious ones. To qualify for the listing, one
needed to have satisfied one or all of the following parameters: leadership
qualities and strategic thinking; networking within the government machinery;
business relationships; public profile; charisma; significant contribution to
the industry and society at large, and last but not the least, based out of
India (a parameter that relegated very eligible achievers like Priya Hiranandani
of Zenta to the Women To Watch category). She had to have achieved something
really of note such as becoming the managing director of a global organization
like Microsoft India, like Neelam Dhawan did. She should have foreseen an
opportunity before anyone else did much like Meena Ganesh. She must have set
benchmarks in business practices, like Rekha Menon of Accenture. She could have
treaded difficult pastures and created an identity for the company, like Radha
Shelat. She should have pioneered people management practices like Hema
Ravichander. Or she could be a young achiever like Jessie Paul.

We consulted industry experts, analysts and companies, to get the right
perspective of power.