The Short Read
- The list of the top 10 women employers in India comes from the 2025 Burgundy Private Hurun India 500, released by Axis Bank Burgundy Private and Hurun India in June 2026.
- Tata Consultancy Services leads with 2,14,039 women employees, forming 35% of its workforce.
- Infosys ranks second with 1,31,470 women employees, followed by Reliance Industries with 87,678 and Wipro with 86,062.
- Shahi Exports has the highest share of women among the top 10, with 78,480 women employees accounting for 72% of its workforce.
- Tech Mahindra and Avenue Supermarts are new entrants to the top 10 women employers list.
- The larger inclusion lesson is that hiring women at scale is possible across technology, retail, banking, manufacturing, apparel and diversified businesses. The next questions are retention, pay, safety, promotion and leadership.
The top 10 women employers in India show where the scale is
The list of the top 10 women employers in India gives us a direct way to assess workplace inclusion. It moves the conversation from intent to headcount.
The 2025 Burgundy Private Hurun India 500, released by Axis Bank Burgundy Private and Hurun India, ranks India’s 500 most valuable non-state-run companies. The 2025 edition reports that these companies together employ 8.9 million people, with an average of 18,781 employees per company.
Inside that report, Table 21 lists the top 10 women employers. These are the companies with the highest number of women employees among the India 500.
The list is useful because it shows scale. It is not a complete inclusion ranking. Neither does it tell us everything about employee experience, pay equity, retention or leadership representation. But it does show which large companies are employing women in significant numbers.
That is a meaningful starting point.
The top 10 biggest women employers in India
| Rank | Company | Women employees | Women employees (%) | Value 2025 |
| 1 | Tata Consultancy Services | 2,14,039 | 35% | ₹8,95,080 crore |
| 2 | Infosys | 1,31,470 | 38% | ₹4,79,270 crore |
| 3 | Reliance Industries | 87,678 | 22% | ₹19,36,230 crore |
| 4 | Wipro | 86,062 | 37% | ₹2,10,450 crore |
| 5 | Shahi Exports | 78,480 | 72% | ₹21,630 crore |
| 6 | HCL Technologies | 67,217 | 29% | ₹3,25,400 crore |
| 7 | HDFC Bank | 56,079 | 26% | ₹11,87,800 crore |
| 8 | Tech Mahindra | 47,928 | 33% | ₹1,44,380 crore |
| 9 | ICICI Bank | 42,001 | 32% | ₹9,04,460 crore |
| 10 | Avenue Supermarts | 33,934 | 38% | ₹2,98,420 crore |
Source: 2025 Burgundy Private Hurun India 500, Table 21.
Two names are new to the top 10: Tech Mahindra and Avenue Supermarts. Reliance Industries, Shahi Exports, HCL Technologies and HDFC Bank moved up year-on-year, while TCS, Infosys, Wipro and ICICI Bank held their ranks.
The exits are also worth noting. Quess Corp and Samvardhana Motherson International appeared in the previous top 10 table but are absent from the 2025 top 10 women employers list shared in the latest report.
What the list shows at first glance
There are three broad patterns.
First, technology continues to dominate large-scale women’s employment. TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL Technologies and Tech Mahindra are all in the top 10.
Second, women’s employment at scale is not limited to technology. Reliance Industries, Shahi Exports, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, and Avenue Supermarts demonstrate the roles of diversified businesses, apparel, banking, and retail.
Third, headcount and percentage tell different stories. TCS has the largest number of women employees. Shahi Exports has the highest share of women in its workforce. Both numbers deserve attention. A large headcount shows how many women a company brings into formal work. A high percentage shows how central women are to the company’s workforce structure. The strongest inclusion conversation needs both.
That is where the current list connects with Change in Content’s earlier reporting on corporate hiring and inclusive workplaces in India. Hiring women is a measurable step, but the long-term workplace test begins after joining.
TCS: India’s largest women employer by headcount
Tata Consultancy Services leads the 2025 list with 2,14,039 women employees, making up 35% of its workforce.
TCS also leads the overall largest-employer table in the report, with 6,07,979 total employees.
That scale is important. A company of this size influences thousands of careers every year through hiring, campus pipelines, training, internal mobility and manager practices. Even a small shift in women’s representation at TCS can affect a very large number of professionals.
For India’s women’s employment story, TCS remains the clearest example of scale in formal white-collar employment.
Infosys: Second by headcount, strong on workforce share
Infosys ranks second with 1,31,470 women employees, forming 38% of its workforce.
That percentage is among the strongest in the top 10, especially for a company of its size. The report lists Infosys among the top 10 largest employers overall, with a total of 3,48,596 employees.
Infosys shows why technology remains central to women’s formal employment in India. The sector benefits from structured hiring, predictable career ladders, training systems, returnship possibilities and campus recruitment at scale.
The next step for technology companies is deeper representation across senior technical roles, delivery leadership, business units, product, sales and executive succession.
Reliance Industries: Large women headcount across a diversified group
Reliance Industries ranks third with 87,678 women employees, forming 22% of its workforce.
It is one of the most interesting movements in the 2025 table because Reliance moved up the women-employer ranking. It is also India’s most valuable company in the report, with a 2025 value of ₹19,36,230 crore.
Reliance is a diversified business group, so its women’s employment story is different from that of an IT company. Its workforce spans multiple operating environments, including retail, energy, telecom, consumer, and digital businesses.
A 22% share of women in the workforce shows significant scale. It also suggests room for deeper inclusion across business lines, frontline roles, technical roles and leadership tracks.
Wipro: Large women workforce in technology services
Wipro ranks fourth with 86,062 women employees, forming 37% of its workforce.
Wipro’s share places it close to Infosys and above TCS in percentage terms. Like the other large IT services companies on the list, Wipro shows how formal hiring systems can bring women into the workforce in large numbers.
For the wider market, the learning is practical. When hiring systems are structured, when entry pathways are clear, and when roles are not heavily dependent on informal networks, women’s participation can rise.
Shahi Exports: Highest women’s workforce share in the top 10
Shahi Exports ranks fifth by women headcount with 78,480 women employees. The more striking figure is its workforce composition: women account for 72% of the company’s employees. That is the highest share of women in the top 10.
Shahi Exports brings a very different sector into the story. Apparel and garment manufacturing have long employed large numbers of women, often in production roles. Its presence shows that women’s employment at scale is not only an office or technology story.
The important question for labour-intensive sectors is job quality. High women’s representation should be read alongside wages, safety, health, transport, worker voice, skilling and supervisor pathways.
A company can employ many women. The stronger benchmark is whether those jobs help women build income security and upward mobility.
HCL Technologies: Another major technology employer
HCL Technologies ranks sixth with 67,217 women employees, forming 29% of its workforce. It also appears in the report’s overall employment table, with a total of 2,34,496 employees.
HCL’s women workforce percentage is lower than that of TCS, Infosys, Wipro, and Tech Mahindra in this table, but its absolute headcount remains large. This is where companies need to read both scale and representation carefully.
For a large employer, 67,217 women employees are a substantial number. A 29% share also indicates the need to keep widening the pipeline.
HDFC Bank: Financial services at scale
HDFC Bank ranks seventh with 56,079 women employees, forming 26% of its workforce. The report lists HDFC Bank among India’s largest employers, with a total of 2,14,552 employees.
Banking can create formal career pathways for women across branches, operations, technology, risk, credit, customer service, wealth and corporate roles. At the same time, banking roles can involve targets, mobility, branch timings, safety concerns and relocation challenges.
So the inclusion conversation in banking has to go beyond hiring. It needs to track women in branch leadership, regional leadership, risk, credit, product, technology, operations and senior management.
Tech Mahindra: A new entrant to the top 10
Tech Mahindra enters the top 10 women employers list with 47,928 women employees, forming 33% of its workforce.
Its entry strengthens the technology-sector pattern. Five of the top 10 women employers in the 2025 table are technology services companies: TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL Technologies and Tech Mahindra. That raises an obvious question for the rest of corporate India: What can other sectors borrow from technology’s hiring machinery?
The answer could include campus outreach, standardised assessments, formal onboarding, skilling academies, return-to-work hiring, transparent internal mobility and manager accountability for retention.
ICICI Bank: Women form nearly one-third of the workforce
ICICI Bank ranks ninth with 42,001 women employees, forming 32% of its workforce.
Its percentage is higher than HDFC Bank’s, though HDFC Bank has a larger absolute women headcount. This is another reminder that rankings by number and rankings by representation can produce different readings.
For financial services, the long-term inclusion question is not only how many women enter. It is whether women move across high-impact roles and into senior decision-making.
Avenue Supermarts: Retail enters the women employer list
Avenue Supermarts, the company behind DMart, is a new entrant to the top 10 women employers list with 33,934 women employees. That forms 38% of its workforce. It is a significant inclusion signal from retail.
Retail can create jobs close to where people live, including store operations, supply chain, merchandising, customer service and corporate roles. For many women, especially outside the most elite labour markets, retail can be an accessible route into formal employment.
The sector’s inclusion test is practical: safe stores, secure commute options, fair shifts, sanitation, career growth, manager sensitivity and pathways from frontline roles into supervisory and managerial positions.
Why the list is more useful than a feel-good ranking
This list should not be treated as a trophy board. It is a data point.
The 2025 Burgundy Private Hurun India 500 itself is a value ranking of large non-state-run companies. It is not designed as a full gender audit. The list provides women’s employee numbers and women’s workforce share, but it does not tell us enough about pay equity, attrition, maternity retention, internal complaints, leadership representation, or workplace culture.
That limitation keeps the analysis honest.
- A company can be a large women employer and still have gaps to solve.
- A company can have a high women’s share and still need stronger promotion systems.
- A company can hire women at the entry level and still lose them before leadership.
That is why Change in Content’s earlier article on the top inclusive companies of 2025 remains relevant. Inclusion needs numbers, but it also needs systems. Hiring, retention, safety, flexibility, pay, growth, and leadership must be tracked together.
The future of inclusive leadership will depend on whether companies treat women’s employment as a business metric rather than an annual diversity line item.
What other companies can learn from the top 10 women employers in India
The top 10 list offers five practical lessons.
First, scale comes from systems. The companies on the list are large employers with structured hiring engines. Inclusion becomes easier to track when recruitment, training, deployment and retention are formalised.
Second, sector context matters. TCS and Infosys cannot be compared to Shahi Exports or Avenue Supermarts in a simplistic way. Technology, apparel, banking, retail and diversified businesses all hire differently.
Third, women’s share is as important as women’s headcount. TCS leads by number. Shahi Exports leads by share. Avenue Supermarts and Infosys also show strong workforce percentages.
Fourth, frontline inclusion deserves more attention. Apparel, retail, banking branches, and diversified operations often employ women in roles beyond corporate offices. These are the spaces where safety, transport, facilities and supervisor behaviour can decide whether women stay.
Fifth, the conversation must move upward. India needs more women entering companies. It also needs more women to become supervisors, plant leaders, branch heads, engineers, delivery heads, store leaders, product leaders, business heads and CEOs.
The Change in Content view
The top 10 women employers in India show that large-scale hiring of women is possible. The 2025 table is stronger than a generic inclusion claim because it gives company-level numbers.
TCS leads by headcount. Shahi Exports leads by women’s share. Infosys, Wipro, HCL Technologies and Tech Mahindra show the continued strength of technology as a formal employment route. Reliance Industries, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank and Avenue Supermarts widen the story across diversified business, banking and retail.
This is a useful snapshot of scale. The deeper question comes next.
- How many women stay?
- How many are promoted?
- How many are in business-critical roles?
- How many feel safe?
- How many return after caregiving breaks?
- How many move into leadership?
India needs more women in formal work. These companies show where scale is already visible. The next stage is building workplaces where women not only enter the workforce but also grow within it.
FAQs
Q: Which company is the biggest women employer in India?
A: Tata Consultancy Services is the biggest women employer in India in the 2025 Burgundy Private Hurun India 500, with 2,14,039 women employees, forming 35% of its workforce.
Q: Which are the top 10 women employers in India?
A: The top 10 are Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, Reliance Industries, Wipro, Shahi Exports, HCL Technologies, HDFC Bank, Tech Mahindra, ICICI Bank and Avenue Supermarts.
Q: Which company has the highest percentage of women employees in India?
A: Shahi Exports has the highest women’s workforce share among the top 10, with women forming 72% of its workforce.
Q: Which companies are new to the top 10 women employers list?
A: Tech Mahindra and Avenue Supermarts are marked as new entrants to the top 10 women employers list in the 2025 Burgundy Private Hurun India 500.
Q: Does a high number of female employees mean a company is fully inclusive?
A: No. A high number of female employees indicates scale. Inclusion also depends on retention, pay, safety, career mobility, maternity support, leadership representation and workplace culture.
Editorial Note and Sources
This Inclusive Companies article by Change in Content is based on the top 10 Women Employers in the 2025 Burgundy Private Hurun India 500, released by Axis Bank Burgundy Private and Hurun India on 24 June 2026. The report ranks India’s 500 most valuable non-state-run companies and uses a cut-off date of 30 April 2026 for valuation.
This article uses the number of women employees and workforce percentages as reported by Hurun Research Institute. It does not independently verify company headcounts and does not rank companies by workplace experience, employee satisfaction, pay equity or overall inclusion maturity.
Source used: Axis Bank Burgundy Private and Hurun India, 2025 Burgundy Private Hurun India 500.
