Top Companies With Women Board Of Directors: What These 4 Companies Show About Boardroom Diversity

The Short Read

• The top companies with women on the Board of Directors list are from the 2025 Burgundy Private Hurun India 500, released by Axis Bank Burgundy Private and Hurun India.
• Companies in the 2025 list appointed 769 women directors to their boards, an increase of 27 from last year.
• Four companies had the highest representation of women on their boards, with five women directors each: HCL Technologies, Apollo Hospitals Enterprise, Godrej Consumer Products, and Ujjivan Small Finance Bank.
• These companies come from different sectors: technology, healthcare, consumer goods and financial services.
• The useful takeaway is simple: boardroom diversity should be read through both numbers and influence. Women directors should be part of committees, strategy, risk, audit, succession and long-term governance.

Top companies with women on the Board of Directors: A smaller list with a larger signal

The top companies with women on the Board of Directors list in the 2025 Burgundy Private Hurun India 500 are short. It names only four companies at the top. But that is exactly why it deserves attention.

HCL Technologies, Apollo Hospitals Enterprise, Godrej Consumer Products and Ujjivan Small Finance Bank each had 5 women directors on their boards, according to Hurun Research Institute’s Table 24. The same report shows that the listed companies appointed 769 women directors to their boards, up by 27 from the previous year.

It is not the same as the women-employer story we covered earlier in our article on India’s top women employers. That article looked at workforce scale: how many women companies employ. This story looks at power differently.

A board seat sits closer to governance, oversight and long-term decision-making. Boards approve strategy, evaluate leadership, oversee risk, ask questions of management and influence succession. When more women are present in those rooms, the conversation around inclusion moves beyond hiring and into control, judgement and accountability.

That does not mean every board with more women is automatically more inclusive. It means the structure is more open to a wider range of experiences. The real value depends on who the women directors are, which committees they serve on, how much independence they have, and whether their expertise is taken seriously.

The four companies at the top

Source: 2025 Burgundy Private Hurun India 500, Table 24.

The interesting part is the spread. It is not one industry producing all the examples. A technology company, a hospital group, a consumer goods company and a small finance bank appear together. That gives the list a wider lesson: boardroom diversity can emerge in companies with very different business models.

HCLTech: Technology governance with women across oversight roles

HCLTech’s appearance on the list is backed by a visible boardroom presence.

Its 2024-25 annual report lists Roshni Nadar Malhotra as Chairperson, Non-Executive and Non-Independent Director. It also lists women independent directors, including Bhavani Balasubramanian, Nishi Vasudeva and Vanitha Narayanan, with committee responsibilities across areas such as audit, risk management, CSR, stakeholders’ relationship, nomination and remuneration, and ESG and DEI.

In April 2026, HCLTech announced the appointment of Kimsuka Narsimhan as an Independent Director. The company said she brought over 35 years of experience across finance, risk management, strategy and transformation, with earlier senior roles at Kimberly-Clark, PepsiCo and Unilever. HCLTech also said the appointment strengthened the diversity ratio of its board to over 54%.

That is where HCLTech’s story becomes more than a number. The women directors are not placed in a decorative frame. They sit across core boardroom themes: audit, risk, ESG, nomination and remuneration.

That is where board diversity gains substance. The question is no longer only whether women are on the board. It is whether they are present where judgement is exercised.

Apollo Hospitals Enterprise: Women’s leadership inside a healthcare institution

Apollo Hospitals Enterprise offers a different kind of story. It has women in major leadership roles: Dr Preetha Reddy as Executive Vice Chairperson; Dr Suneeta Reddy as Managing Director; Ms Shobana Kamineni as Promoter Director and Executive Chairperson of Apollo Health Co. Ltd.; and Dr Sangita Reddy as Joint Managing Director. The company also has women independent directors such as V. Kavitha Dutt and Rama Bijapurkar. This gives Apollo’s boardroom diversity a healthcare-specific meaning.

Healthcare is one of the most labour-intensive, trust-heavy sectors in India. It deals with patients, doctors, nurses, caregivers, technology, insurance, access, affordability, and safety. Women are central to healthcare as patients, workers, caregivers, and decision-makers within families. Their presence in healthcare governance can bring sharper attention to service design, patient experience, workforce culture and long-term care delivery.

Apollo’s women leaders are also tied to operating roles, not only oversight roles. That makes the company’s case different from that of a board composed mainly of non-executive appointments.

Godrej Consumer Products: Consumer business, brand thinking and governance

Godrej Consumer Products brings the consumer goods lens to this list.

With Nisaba Godrej as Executive Chairperson, the company has a woman as the key architect of GCPL’s strategy and transformation over the last decade. It also has Ireena Vittal as Lead Independent Director. The company notes her work with global and local consumer-facing companies and her experience in growth portfolios, local leadership teams and business models.

Tanya Dubash serves as a Non-Executive Director and as Executive Director and Chief Brand Officer of the Godrej Group. She is responsible for reinventing the Godrej brand and guiding the group’s masterbrand and portfolio strategy. Pippa Tubman Armerding is also an Independent Director.

Consumer goods companies sit close to daily life. They sell into homes, families, shops and local markets. Women are often major consumers, household decision-makers and informal brand evaluators. A board with strong representation of women can bring commercial insight as well as governance value.

Godrej Consumer’s story also shows that women directors need not come from one professional mould. Strategy, brand, emerging markets, governance and consumer understanding can all shape boardroom value.

Ujjivan Small Finance Bank: Women in financial inclusion governance

Ujjivan Small Finance Bank is perhaps the most distinctive company on the list because of the sector it operates in.

Small finance banks operate close to underserved borrowers, micro and small enterprises, low-income households and first-generation banking customers. Women are central to that economy, both as borrowers and as household financial managers.

Ujjivan’s official board page lists women directors, including Sudha Suresh, Rajni Mishra and Carol Furtado.

Sudha Suresh is an Independent Director with experience in finance and in public and private companies, and as a former MD & CEO and CFO of Ujjivan Financial Services. Rajni Mishra is described as a career banker with nearly four decades of experience across the State Bank of India and its associate banks. Carol Furtado is listed as a Whole-Time Executive Director with three decades of banking experience and a foundational role in the founding of Ujjivan.

The bank’s committee page also shows that women directors serve on key committees. Sudha Suresh chairs the Audit Committee; Rajni Mishra chairs the Nomination and Remuneration Committee; Mona Kachhwaha chairs the Business Strategy Committee; and women directors also serve on the risk, credit, IT strategy, customer service, and CSR committees.

That committee spread is important. It shows women directors participating in areas that influence how a bank governs risk, talent, business strategy, customers and accountability.

For a financial institution serving inclusion-linked markets, this kind of boardroom presence can shape how the bank reads borrowers, risk, community trust and long-term growth.

Why board diversity cannot stop at the minimum requirement

India’s corporate governance conversation has often treated women directors as a compliance requirement. That was an important starting point, but the conversation has to move further now.

A single woman director can meet the rule. 5 women directors change the composition of the room. Even then, numbers are only the first layer. The next layer is influence.

A stronger board diversity story should ask:

This connects naturally with our earlier article on more women in managerial roles and the leadership gap. Women’s representation can rise in one layer while thinning in another. A company can have women employees, women managers, women directors and still have a small number of women in CEO-track roles.

Our piece on women leadership in corporate India also raised a similar point: leadership inclusion has to be designed across the pipeline, not celebrated only at the visible end.

The Change in Content view

The 2025 Burgundy Private Hurun India 500 gives us a useful signal. HCLTech, Apollo Hospitals Enterprise, Godrej Consumer Products, and Ujjivan Small Finance Bank each rank at the top for women’s representation on boards.

That is worth recognising. But the stronger story is not that four companies reached the number five. The stronger story is what those boardrooms represent: technology, healthcare, consumer goods and financial inclusion all showing that women can occupy serious governance spaces across very different sectors.

The next phase of the debate should be sharper.

India needs more women on boards. It also needs more women chairing committees, influencing succession, overseeing risk, shaping business strategy and moving from senior management into CEO-track roles.

Boardroom diversity should not sit apart from the rest of the workplace. It should also ask what the organisation is doing below the board.

A company that appoints women directors should also be able to show women in management, women in business-critical roles, women in succession pipelines and women with real authority across the organisation.

That is when representation begins to change the operating culture.

FAQs

Q: Which are the top companies with women on the Board of Directors in the 2025 Burgundy Private Hurun India 500?

A: The top companies are HCL Technologies, Apollo Hospitals Enterprise, Godrej Consumer Products and Ujjivan Small Finance Bank. Each had five women directors, according to Table 24 of the 2025 Burgundy Private Hurun India 500.

Q: How many women directors were appointed by companies in the 2025 Burgundy Private Hurun India 500?

A: Companies in the 2025 Burgundy Private Hurun India 500 appointed 769 women directors to their boards, an increase of 27 from the previous year.

Q: Does having more women directors mean a company is fully inclusive?

A: No. More women directors show boardroom representation. A full inclusion picture also needs women in management and executive roles, fair pay, retention, succession planning, and a safe workplace culture.

Q: Why is women’s board representation important?

A: Boards influence strategy, risk, governance, leadership appointments and long-term accountability. Women’s representation at the board level can widen the experience and judgement brought into these decisions.

Q: How is this different from the biggest women employers list?

A: The biggest women employers list tracks workforce headcount. This board diversity list tracks women’s representation on boards. One looks at the employment scale; the other looks at governance presence.

Editorial Note and Sources

This Inclusive Companies article by Change in Content is based on the Companies Having Women Representation on the Board of Directors from the 2025 Burgundy Private Hurun India 500, released by Axis Bank Burgundy Private and Hurun India. The article also uses publicly available company board and leadership pages from HCLTech, Apollo Hospitals, Godrej Consumer Products and Ujjivan Small Finance Bank to add context on board composition and director profiles. The article does not independently verify the Hurun count and does not rank companies by overall governance quality, board independence, employee experience or inclusion maturity.

Sources used: 

• 2025 Burgundy Private Hurun India 500
• HCLTech Annual Report 2024-25 board page
• HCLTech announcement on Kimsuka Narsimhan’s appointment
• Apollo Hospitals management page
• Godrej Consumer Products board page
• Ujjivan Small Finance Bank board and committee pages.