Nansi Mishra 01:24
Hi Roopa, welcome to Neon Show.

Roopa Kudva 01:26
Hi Nansi, it’s such a pleasure to be here. I’ve been following your journey and your incredible story and I finally get to meet you and do this in person.

Nansi Mishra 01:37
I’m super excited. When we started the podcast, you were one of the dream guests on my list. It actually took me 5-6 years to get you on show.

Roopa Kudva 01:47
Well, finally we are here, so that’s great.

Nansi Mishra 01:51
So Roopa, you had an amazing journey. For women like me, that’s the ideal journey, right? So this is December 2025.

Together, me and Roopa will go back in time and see our country. We will try to relive our country’s progress over the years, right?

Roopa Kudva 02:12
Right. I think I was very fortunate to have started my career the way I did. So after I graduated from IIM Ahmedabad, my first role was in IDBI, which was then not a bank, but a development finance institution.

And I was working in the project finance area, appraising large industrial projects. So what that meant is I spent most of my time on visiting factory floors…

Nansi Mishra 02:44
Which year was this?

Roopa Kudva 02:45
1986.

Nansi Mishra 02:45
Okay.

Roopa Kudva 02:47
Just a few years before the economy..

Nansi Mishra 02:49
Opened up.

Roopa Kudva 02:49
Opened up. And so whether it was steel, cement, sugar plants, I spent a lot of time getting to understand how the manufacturing process works and also how large projects are set up.

And then, of course, when you came back to the office, you were analysing the balance sheets, looking at the numbers, looking at the projections. I couldn’t have asked for a better foundation in terms of just the basics, right? But that was also the pre-liberalisation era, which meant that everything was controlled and determined by the government.

Whether you could manufacture something depended on a licence. The production capacity was determined by the government. Interest rates at which you could borrow were determined by the government.

How you could price an IPO was determined by the government. And I could see, therefore, that there were people who had ambition, they had talents, they had aspirations. But obviously, when you’re working in an environment like this, you do feel shackled.

And therefore, when liberalisation happened, I was able to really connect the dots and see how much it mattered. And at that point in time, this was the 80s, right? It was a very different work environment as well.

I was one of the very, very few women in project finance. And most of the places that I went to did not even have a washroom for women. So that was the second distinguishing feature of that era.

And finally, I would say the workspace and the work environment was very different. So consider this, you know, we very rarely, if ever, saw a CEO in those days. If at all you met a CEO, it could be somewhere in the staircase or near the lift.

Nobody spoke to junior employees at that point about what is the strategy of the company? Where are we headed? You know, all changes in company policies were communicated to you by a circular or a document.

If you had to contact someone or send a message outstation, outside of the city you worked in, you actually walked up to someone called a telex operator who typed out your message and sent it out on a tape on this machine. And even if you had to make an outstation call because they were so expensive, you needed permission from your manager. So, you know, this was the environment at that point in time.

And today, in the course of just one career, if you see how much the world has changed, how much the workspace has changed, how much leadership has changed. But I think the big takeaway from this is that I think if you’re exposed to this diversity, it teaches you resilience, it gives you strong foundations and it also teaches you to prepare for the future because the way I think about it, Nansi, is that if in the 38 years there’s been so much change, and the pace of change is only accelerating, think about how much further change there’s going to be in just the next one decade.

Nansi Mishra 06:10
What changed after the economy opened up? This is just one example. What are the other things you would see in office, on, off-site?

Roopa Kudva 06:19
So, the changes happened over time. So, the first thing that happened with the pre-liberalization era, in the post-liberalization era, was that suddenly the controls eased up, which meant that entrepreneurship could thrive. You know, the shackles you felt were greatly diminished.

So, that was a huge positive. But there was also a challenge because for the first time, Indian companies were exposed to global competition. So, you had to really compete with the best in the world.

And then, what that meant is that we saw a lot of turbulence in the economy. It started with the non-banking finance company, NBFC sector, which went through a tremendous stress, but that gradually spread to other parts. So, that led to a churn.

And those who could withstand that competition, who could raise their standards, survived. And those who didn’t, kind of folded up and vanished. So, that was one big change.

The other big change was that there was a whole new breed of companies that came up. Think Infosys. Think CRISIL.

You know, these were companies that could have only been born, Infosys was born a little earlier, and so was CRISIL, one or two years before 1991. But, you know, the flourishing and thriving of these organizations happened in the post-liberalization era. Until then, I would say, most companies were about the promoter, by the promoter, for the promoter.

What these new age companies brought in was a culture of openness, a culture where people were more equal, a culture where stock options were more widely distributed. So, everybody became a partner in the success of these organizations. These were big, big changes.

And then, of course, much later, which I’m sure we’ll talk about, was the even more dramatic change that happened, at least for me. The single moment that it came home to me very strongly was, I think, in the year 2014. I was still at CRISIL, and I walked into an event where I saw Ritesh of OYO speaking.

And, you know, it was almost like a flashlight moment where I realized that, aha, this is what the new leadership is going to look like. Because, you know, look at what I saw in front of me, was someone who had a very informal demeanor, someone who had an audacious vision. I realized then that vision didn’t just come from him, it came from people around him.

Ideas were flowing in all directions. It was a leadership, a lot more about energy, it was about inclusivity, it was about vision. It was not the command and control style that one had been used to in the past, where ideas flowed only one way, top-down.

And I think that, to me, was just one instance, but often it is single instances that shift your thinking.

Nansi Mishra 09:30
By that time, you had already joined Omidyar?

Roopa Kudva 09:32
No, I was still in CRISIL, still the CEO of CRISIL, I left a year later.

And so I think it showed me the face of the new entrepreneur, it showed me the face of the new kind of organization, very tech-led, asset-led kind of approach to building businesses, which one had not been used to before. And so I would say these distinct phases, pre-lib, then the whole post-lib era, leading to the whole era of the startup culture and the tech-led businesses that we see today. So very distinct moments in the journey.

Nansi Mishra 10:14
Can we say that maybe meeting or listening to Ritesh influenced you when you decided to join Omidyar? Like, for Neon, we are part of 60 companies, you get to work with some of the founders very closely. So, you know, you kind of live those years with them.

So can we say that maybe listening to Ritesh influenced your decision to join Omidyar and where you would be working with these entrepreneurs?

Roopa Kudva 10:45
I didn’t make so much of a direct connection at that time. And the decision to leave CRISIL came from something else because I had already turned 50, I had spent 23 years in the firm, 8 years as the CEO, and it was a fantastic journey. But then I felt, look, if I stay on longer, I have another 10 years to go, which means that I would be the CEO of this company for 17 years, which, quite frankly, I think is not good, both for the company and even for me.

I think CEOs should have long tenures, but not unusually long, right? And I think 17 was somewhat excessive. And so I said, okay, it’s time to do something different.

And I didn’t know what I wanted to do. And it was a process disengaging from CRISIL. I spoke to my board, told them that this is what I would like to do, and they were very supportive.

And I said, look, I have no idea where I’m going, I have no idea what I want to do next, so I’m not in any hurry to leave. We can do the transition and I can leave after that. But because we were a public company, listed company, this knowledge that I would be leaving had to be made public.

And in the 7 or 8 months that it took me to move out of CRISIL after that, different people contact you to have conversations. And one Christmas Eve, I got a call from a California number, which I didn’t recognize. And there was this person at the other end of the line saying, hey, I’m so-and-so from Omidyar Network.

And he said, we are looking for someone to lead our business in India and we’d like to have a conversation with you. And we’re closing now for the Christmas holidays, but once we open, we’d love to chat. And I had never heard of Omidyar Network.

I had never, I said, why are you calling me? I don’t even know what impact investing is. And then, because the holidays ensued after that, I went and I did some research on the firm and looked at their website.

And Nansi, two things struck me on that website. Number one was that everyone in the firm was incredibly accomplished. And I said to myself, if all these folks have chosen to be here, that means that this place is pretty special, number one.

And number two, I saw that everyone’s profiles on the website, whether it was the person who made tea in our office in Mumbai, or the CEO or the managing partner of the firm, or the founder, peer, et cetera, everybody had the same 150 word description of their profile on the website. And I said, wow, this tells you something. It tells you something about the values.

It tells you something about the culture. It was not something I had ever seen on any other website before. And so it was a decision, and then there was the whole excitement of the startup world and being a part of something which was completely different from what I had experienced before.

And that was part of the charm as well. So I would say it was a decision, if you look at the entire package, it was a decision made more from the heart than the head. Because when I moved in there, it was a wholly different story.

When I moved to Omidyar, there were adjustments at many levels. The first level was, in CRISIL, you looked at companies which had a very long track record. You had data, you had information.

They tended typically to, people on the other side were CEOs and CFOs who had two, three decades of work experience. To ONI, where a typical conversation was with a 25 to 30 year old who barely had more than an idea on paper and who was pivoting their business models through a lot of change and uncertainty. That was also the time when Jio had come in and data costs had come down considerably.

I could also learn about the power of technology to uplift and improve lives and also learn about what are the barriers in the digital journey that a person from the next half billion, because that was our target customer, what are the digital barriers that they face and how do you build an investment thesis that really attacks each of these barriers and solves real problems for them. So that was a huge learning. So that was, I would say, the learning at the technical level.

There was also a learning at the human and leadership style level. Because, you know, I had moved from a setup which had thousands and thousands of people. You sit in the so-called CEO’s office, there were five people in my office just kind of working with me to a setup which had only…

Nansi Mishra 15:54
You move with a crew.

Roopa Kudva 15:56
Correct. Only 30 people.

Yeah. I did not even have a full assistant to myself. You sit in an open office, no office, no separate office for you.

You sit in an open office and above all, I was older than the parents of most of my colleagues. Right? And so what does that mean, really?

It means that, you know, nobody cares about what you’ve done in the past.

Nansi Mishra 16:19
Yeah.

Roopa Kudva 16:19
The founders don’t care, the team don’t care. You have to build credibility, you have to build trust. Right?

And so for me, that was a very exciting part. Part of the personal changes and, you know, adjustments to my own style and adjustments, more importantly, Nansi, to my own mindset. Because see, if you’re in credit and if you’re in ratings, you’re very focused on the risks.

You know, what can go wrong? Because a job of a rating agency is to look at, you know, what the potential risks are and what is the probability that the company will default.

Nansi Mishra 17:00
Yeah.

Roopa Kudva 17:00
When you move to the startup side, your mindset has to shift and you have to think about, hey, what are the possibilities? So even that, what is the potential upside as opposed to, you know, what could go wrong? Of course, you have to think of both in both cases.

But the mindset shift towards being much more open to new things has to happen. So all of that was quite an experience.

Nansi Mishra 17:26
Because I think in VC, we all are prepared. We know that not all of our companies would achieve similar type of output, right? Similar type of success.

There would be some failures. There would be some M&As. But then there would be few outliers.

Roopa Kudva 17:46
Correct.

Nansi Mishra 17:46
So we’re prepared for that. And people who are part of these journeys, especially the LPs and even founders also, they’re also prepared.

Roopa Kudva 17:54
Correct.

Nansi Mishra 17:54
And I think India still has a long way to go. But I think we have done pretty well in the last few years.

So I think that makes the environment more forgiving, more, you know, risk-taking.

Roopa Kudva 18:10
I couldn’t agree more. I think there’s a big change even in the last 20 years in India, right? Earlier, if you came from a middle-class family, the expectation is that you would find a nice stable job.

Nansi Mishra 18:22
Yeah.

Roopa Kudva 18:23
The parents willing to back children, and when I say back, I mean the emotional and moral and psychological support for your children who are becoming entrepreneurs were not all that great. Today, thanks to the great work that the startup ecosystem has done, they’ve seen the success stories. They’ve seen the ability of companies to grow from nothing to huge scale.

They’ve also seen that it doesn’t matter if you fail. You know, you fail, you pick yourself up and you go on to do something else. The amount of risk capital available in the country has dramatically shifted.

So there is money available, which wasn’t the case earlier. So I think the ability to take risk, the attitudes towards risk, the money available to finance, risk-taking, all of that has shifted considerably. And so therefore, attitudes and people are like you said, they’re very comfortable with it.

In fact, I’ve attended so many events which are called fail-fests. You know, where you actually celebrate failure and talk about, okay, what did we learn? And you were telling me your own podcast you started that way because you wanted to learn from founders and you wanted to learn from LPs how they run their business and what you could have done differently.

Nansi Mishra 19:35
It wasn’t a million dollar exit for us, but at least we knew, we got to know about our strengths and our weaknesses and then after the acquisition happened, we had time where we could only focus on our weaknesses, right? Like this is, these are two three areas we should be, you know, where we should be improving and like these are our people and imagine when we started the podcast, we went back to our own set of investors. So we didn’t find new people to talk to.

Roopa Kudva 20:02
Absolutely.

Nansi Mishra 20:02
We went back to our own and they were kind enough to not just with their time, but they also allowed us to record those conversations and like imagine tier two founders like us, like Siddhartha is from Meerut, I’m from a village in UP, studied in Shahjahanpur those type of people who could, you know, who wanted to do something, but they thought that maybe they are not in tier one cities, so they should not even be thinking about it. They listened to those conversations and started coming back and there was one more category, people who wanted to be part of VC funds.

There was no such, you know, podcast. So I still meet few folks who are part of bloom team and they would tell me that it’s been years for them that they are part of Blume and we recorded one podcast with Karthik Reddy. It was episode number 14 for us back in, I think, 2018 and those people listened to Karthik’s podcast before appearing on interview.

So we could also see the impact that we were creating.

Roopa Kudva 21:03
And what a story, right? I mean, the story you have just told, I think, is a classic example of risk-taking. It’s a classic example of resilience and learning.

So, you know, I think that is been very much the story of India in the last 20 to 30 years. These are great examples of the mindset shift, the acceptance and also, I would not underestimate the fact that there is capital available to fund all this. If you did not have the risk capital, all this wouldn’t happen.

And, you know, the whole VC industry, the availability of risk capital in the quantities that you see today was something that happened in the early 2000s or mid-2000s, right? The first decade of the century. And I think that lets also not underestimate the power because you can take risk, but you can take risk the second time only if you have capital to back you.

And that dynamic has considerably changed.

Nansi Mishra 22:02
Yeah. And I think in the last answer, we had two parts. Like one, where you shared how you took the decision to join Omidyar and the second part, what happened in Omidyar, right?

I would want to go back to the first part where you said that for any CEO, for any company, it’s not great to have a situation where CEO is, you know, going on for many, many years. So this is company’s perspective. Your perspective from company’s lens, right?

Roopa Kudva 22:32
Right.

Nansi Mishra 22:32
But what were you thinking? Because this is a career-altering decision.

Roopa Kudva 22:36
Right.

Nansi Mishra 22:36
You were already 50.

Roopa Kudva 22:37
Right. So I was not…

Nansi Mishra 22:39
How would someone take that kind of decision?

Roopa Kudva 22:41
I decided that I want to move on. But even arriving at that decision was not an easy decision.

Nansi Mishra 22:49
Of course.

Roopa Kudva 22:50
Because CRISIL was an organization I had been a part of for 23 years.

The organization had grown. I had grown with the company. It shaped me.

It formed me. It gave me so much. And it was a joyous and exhilarating journey.

You know, and even as CEO, I really enjoyed my time because it was a time of great challenges but also great success you know. Our turnover grew three times. Our market cap grew four times.

It was all fun and interesting and so arriving at the decision that okay, it’s time to move on itself took me some wrestling in my head. And I said, now time for new experiences in life. And I actually first announced my decision before even having the faintest idea of what I wanted to do.

You know, I always felt that I would figure it out. And I was quite comfortable you know, not doing anything either in my head. I said, let’s see.

You know, I think one of the things that a long career gives you, it gives you a greater confidence in your own abilities. It gives you the confidence to deal with the ups and downs. Right?

And I think I said, let me see what happens. I was not in any hurry. I was not under any pressure.

And I think it helped me be very relaxed about my approach to what next. A very kind friend, she told me that, Roopa, just go and have conversations with people. And you have a particular image and you have a particular notion of yourself.

You think of you in a particular way. But when you go out and meet people, you would be surprised to know what people think of you. And you would be surprised to see what opportunities come up.

And she gave me a second piece of advice that you know, don’t take the first thing that comes along. And just have conversations. See what is out there.

You may decide to pick one of them. You may decide not to pick any of them. And I think that was also nice in a way because at least it helped me get clarity, Nansi, when I was talking to so many people about what I don’t want to be.

Which also, you know, so I, for example, you know, say, an operator in a private equity firm or some policy roles, for example, or risk-related roles, for example. So it spanned, and the options span an entire array from leading other companies to specialized areas to being part of the private equity business to being part of a regulatory government policymaking setup kind of thing. So it was a very wide range of options and conversations.

I shouldn’t call them options. Conversations. And then, along the way, comes this phone call from California.

Nansi Mishra 25:51
And then, what are the observations you had? Like as your friend suggested, that talk to folks and then you’ll get to know.

Roopa Kudva 25:58
I think people, I think what I realized was that at least for me personally, the kind of person I am and the kind of mental makeup I had, I, with every conversation I had, I felt, if I were to be doing this, I would much rather have stayed on in CRISIL. Because I really felt that CRISIL gave you the platform. It gave us a ringside view of the Indian economy and Indian companies.

And by then, we had gone global. So a larger part of our business…

Nansi Mishra 26:31
And what an exciting time you have lived with the company.

Roopa Kudva 26:34
Correct. Correct. So I kept thinking as I was talking to all these people who were asking what’s going on in my mind.

With every conversation I was thinking, there’s nothing new in this. You know, and then CRISIL gave me this platform and much, much more. But when the…

Nansi Mishra 26:51
Omidyar.

Roopa Kudva 26:51
Omidyar opportunity came along and I saw these two things. And honestly, I think it is these two things seeing on the website, the kind of team they had.

And that whole…

Nansi Mishra 27:04
Inclusion.

Roopa Kudva 27:05
Inclusion.

Value of inclusion. I think they really walked the talk. So I think that very viscerally touched me and helped me make up my mind.

Nansi Mishra 27:18
I think the second thing is amazing. I think I would want to do that with Neon also. So maybe you would see that on Neon’s website also.

Roopa Kudva 27:25
Right. No, it is. It is very…

It’s a mindset. Right? It’s a mindset.

And I think that came through very clearly.

Nansi Mishra 27:31
Okay.
And there is one… I think this is the most famous story of your career that you walked up to Pradeep Shah and how you…

Roopa Kudva 27:43
Got the job.

Nansi Mishra 27:44
Got the job.

Roopa Kudva 27:45
Yeah.

Nansi Mishra 27:46
So we will hear that story again from you.

Roopa Kudva 27:50
Yeah.

Yeah. So this was the year 1992. I was 29 years old.

I had already worked for six and a half years in IDBI. And… I, for personal…

I was located in Mumbai and for personal reasons I wanted to relocate to Bangalore. I went and met my employer and they said, it’s just two years ago that we moved you from Calcutta to Mumbai and now you want to go to Bangalore. There are many, many people in the organization waiting or who have made requests for transfer.

So we’ll see what we can do. But the tone did not sound very promising.

Nansi Mishra 28:34
Yeah.

Roopa Kudva 28:35
And then one evening I was reading a magazine, Business World. And there I saw an interview of Pradeep Shah. Pradeep Shah was the first CEO of this company called CRISIL, which had just recently been set up with the mandate of introducing credit ratings in India for the first time.

He, you know, he had spent his career in HDFC, initial part of his career, then gone to Harvard Business School, then come back to India. And then a bunch, Mr. Waghul, who was heading ICICI at that point in time, brought him in to lead this organization. And those were the initial years of the organization.

And he was talking about his vision for the company. And it was really exciting to see, you know, this whole concept. How do you bring in the concept of credit ratings into a market which does not even require ratings?

Because if you remember, at that point, interest rates were regulated. So whether you got a triple A or whether you got a double B or a single A, you know, the ratings didn’t determine the cost of borrowings. And, you know, the tone, he was very inspiring.

He was very dynamic. You could feel the energy even in that written page of the conversation. And somewhere, tucked away in that interview was a little line which said, And we are planning to open an office in Bangalore.

And I said, Okay. And so I had gone for a business meeting somewhere near the CRISIL office in Worli. And after that meeting got over, I just walked down the street, walked into the CRISIL office, met the receptionist and gave her my business card and said, I’d like to meet Pradeep Shah.

Fortunately, he was in office. And even more fortunately for me, you know, she said, You don’t have an appointment? Never mind.

I’ll go and ask him. She walked in and gave my card to him. I was waiting, Nansi, for less than five minutes when the door opened.

Somebody walked out very briskly, stuck out his hand and said, Hi, I’m Pradeep. And then we had a conversation. We went to his office and I told him quite naively that I saw you opening an office in Bangalore and that is why, you know, I’m interested in having a conversation with you.

And we talked for about 30-40 minutes. And I could sense that the conversation is coming to an end. So I asked him, Would you be interested in considering hiring a person like me?

And he said, Yes. And I was elated because I thought I had got the job. And he said, So I said, OK, great. So what happens now? And then he looked at me and he said, don’t you think a CV would be a good idea? And then of course, I sent across my CV and a few other people met me.

But that was that was really the beginning of the 23-year journey, you know. But you know, more seriously, you know, when I look back today, what do I take away from this? You know, what I take away from this, Nansi, is that sometimes it is important to be spontaneous and just take the risk without overanalyzing the situation.

I am otherwise extremely organized. I plan, I prepare very thoroughly and I still believe in that. But I think from time to time, you have to go with your gut, you have to be spontaneous and you also have to be open to the opportunities that come your way.

Because, you know, you may think that you have a career path and a vision for your career path, but if that makes you close to other opportunities that may just pop up, you know, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Who knows where that would lead you. I went to CRISIL, I didn’t didn’t even know too much about the company.

You know, I was quite unprepared, so to speak. But on the other hand, you know, what’s the worst that could have happened? I may not have got the job.

Right. But I think for people, for young people today, particularly, figuring out that mix between when to go with your gut, when to take that risk, when to do some more analysis. I think that’s a balance we all learn as we go along.

Nansi Mishra 32:56
Yeah. Now we’ll go back to the second time in 2000, when you went to CRISIL’s CEO, Ravi Mohan and with the PPT. This is also another famous story from Roopa’s journey.

I think people who know you would know these two stories.

Roopa Kudva 33:18
Right.

Nansi Mishra 33:19
And they might know, they may know the second one.

Roopa Kudva 33:22
Not everyone knows the first one.

Nansi Mishra 33:25
Yeah, but I’m sure now people who listen to this podcast, they would remember these two stories very clearly from your journey. So the second time was in 2000. And there was this offsite happening for the company.

And then Roopa went to then CEO, Ravi Mohan with the PPT, why CRISIL needs a CRO and why Roopa should be one of the choices, if I’m not wrong.

Roopa Kudva 33:47
Right. This one, unlike the first one, was not that spontaneous. And let me explain.

Nansi, I would say for the first 15, 16 years of my career, I would not call myself a very ambitious person. I love my work. I love learning about companies, sectors, industries, evaluating them.

And I focused on doing a very good job there. But I never thought about what, where am I headed in this organization? Or what are my long term career goals?

I never thought about that. Then I was seconded to Standard & Poor’s in Paris. And I spent a couple of years there.

When I came back to India in the year 2000, I came back and I found that the post of the Chief Ratings Officer, which is the head of the ratings business, which was the largest business of the company at that point in time was vacant. And that I would honestly say was a moment when I for the first time felt some stirring of ambition in me. And I felt very strongly about the fact that this company needs a Chief Rating Officer.

You know, the plan was to do away with that role. And all the sector heads of whom I was one, we would all report directly to the CEO. So the position of CRO was going to be eliminated.

And I felt that there was a lot of value that the CRO role could play in taking the company to the next level. So I thought about it. It was not that spontaneous.

I thought about it. And I said, I must raise this issue.

Nansi Mishra 35:28
This was a mix of planned and good decisions.

Roopa Kudva 35:33
Correct.
And I said, then one night, I remember it all kind of came together in my head. And I felt that many of the ideas I had for the role I felt were actually playing to my strengths. The ability to get people together, the ability to communicate a vision for the business, you know, the ability to make operations streamlined and efficient and all of that.

So then I actually put together a three slide presentation, which was horribly, horribly amateurish by today’s standards. I cringe when I look at it today. We had gone on an offsite to Goa, I buttoned hold my CEO.

And I said, I need 20 minutes of your time. And he was very nice. He gave me those 20 minutes.

I talked him through those three slides. He did not say a word. He just smiled.

He didn’t ask me any questions. And he said, OK, leave it with me. And then after that, I heard nothing for three or four months.

And I thought, OK, I tried. Maybe they don’t want to go ahead with this. Maybe they don’t want a CRO.

And I left it at that. Till one day, about three or four months later, he came, tapped me on the shoulder and said, remember that presentation you made to me at Goa? You know, we’ve had a chat at the board and we are really pleased to make you the offer of the CRO of the company.

That move, Nansi, changed my career trajectory completely. It really pushed me into the highest echelons of leadership and paved the way for me ultimately becoming CEO of CRISIL. And when I look back today on that presentation and I think back, you know, what strikes me?

And this is all benefit of hindsight. At that time, all this was not going on my head. When I look at that presentation, when I think back on that conversation, what are my takeaways?

I think the first takeaway was that I, in that presentation, I didn’t talk about the past. I didn’t talk about, you know, oh, I’ve got all my promotions, I’ve got high ratings in the company, I’ve done well in the past and therefore I deserve this role. I only talked about what my vision for the role is.

So it was not a conversation about I need a promotion because I’ve done well, but it is about the company needs this role and this is the value I can bring to this role. So I think flip a lot of conversations which I’ve had with younger people today is a lot about a promotion is not a reward, you know, at most for past performance. Past performance at the best gets you a chance to have that conversation.

It is what you bring to the table today or even not today, what you bring, what you are likely to bring to the table tomorrow that matters, you know, for these discussions. Of course, all this I’m saying now, when I look back at that point in time, none of this was very conscious. But I think again, it came from that same confidence which was much more spontaneous in the year 1992 that, you know, let me at least give it a shot.

Let me not, at most it may not happen. And frankly, when I didn’t hear back for three or four months, it wasn’t that I was upset. It wasn’t that I was sat every night wondering what happened to that conversation.

I just went about my life, right? So I think you have to swing for the fences. You know, you have to swing for the fences if you hope to make the big moves.

Nansi Mishra 38:59
And you have worked with so many leaders so far. Do you think anyone else has similar story or comes close to the story, like career altering or how they got the opportunity?

Roopa Kudva 39:13
I have a very different story, which actually I think has shaped my leadership philosophy. And this is a lady called Katharine Graham. And her life and her approach to business has had a deep impact on, subconsciously on how I, how I’ve, my thoughts about leadership.

Katharine Graham was the CEO of the Washington Post, an iconic global newspaper. For people today who may not know too much about her, let me tell you her story and let me tell you why it is so powerful. So Katharine Graham led the Washington Post through two major achievements.

The first achievement was the Watergate scandal, which exposed a government cover up of misuse of government machinery, which led to the resignation of President Nixon, just because of that reporting from the presidency of the United States. That was number one. Number two was a case of the Pentagon Papers, where she released, where the Washington Post released officially secret documents, which exposed the true extent of the political and military involvement of the United States in Vietnam.

And a lot of that had been kept hidden from the American public. And they won the court cases on the grounds that the public right to know is more important than government security, than government security, than security. And so therefore, this newspaper became iconic for its investigative journalism and for its journalism of courage and independence, right?

Not only that, she led the company and she and her successor through an era of fantastic financial success. Warren Buffett was an early investor. He sat on the board of the Washington Post.

He has given numerous interviews where he has said the Washington Post was one of the best run companies that he has ever invested in. The stock price, which was $6 in the 70s, went up to $900 by the change of the century, 150x. Think about that.

This is in a business which was regulated, which was capital intensive, where there were no network effects that you have in the tech companies today, right? And this is the performance that this leader has delivered. Now, why was it so?

And she’s recounted all of this in one of my favorite books called Personal History by Katharine Graham, her autobiography, which won a Pulitzer Prize, by the way. Katharine Graham was not brought up to be a professional. She was not brought up to be a CEO.

She was not brought up to be a businesswoman. She was part of a very influential and high profile family in the US. She was brought up to be a society lady.

After her father, who was the owner of the Washington Post, passed away, or he handed over the reins to Katharine Graham’s husband, who killed himself by suicide. And suddenly, a lady who was brought up to be a part of, you know, just being a society lady, suddenly finds herself as the CEO of this company. And that really showed me that in order to be a good leader, you don’t have to be the smartest person in the room.

You don’t have to have all the answers. Leadership is about knowing how to ask the right questions. It is also about creating the space for other people to shine.

Her editors, her writers, her journalists, she knew when to back them, she knew when to challenge them. And you know, I read this book at a very young age. And now when I look back, I’m able to connect the dots between this learning that I took away from this autobiography and some of the ways I have approached my own career.

It’s not about being the best. It’s about knowing where your strengths lie. It’s creating the space for others to grow.

Because if you’re the best, then the will be limited by your capability.

Nansi Mishra 43:40
But what an amazing, amazing story, isn’t it? Yeah. I think this is going to be the highlight of this conversation.

Roopa, thank you so much for sharing this. And we took a small break. And I even apologized to Roopa that in this conversation, we’re not going to talk about you because you have such a high profile.

You are a public profile and people know about your journey. We have been like I said that when we started doing the podcast formally, Roopa was one of my dream list, a dream guest list, right? I even dropped a message on LinkedIn.

So people know about you. They even know the timeline of your career, like before CRISIL, what you were doing. For CRISIL, how many years, like 23 years you spent at CRISIL.

And then after that, you joined Omidyar. People know the timeline. But you worked with some amazing people and the audience would not know those people.

So maybe this time we can utilize to talk about those amazing folks who you have learned from and if we can learn from them.

Roopa Kudva 44:47
I would love to do that because, you know, there are so many people, some of whom I’ve met, some of whom I’ve worked with, others of whom I’ve only watched from a distance. And I think, you know, just just seeing how they handle things taught me so much. So I would love to love to share those stories.

Nansi Mishra 45:02
Thank you so much.

Roopa Kudva 45:03
Happy to shift to that lens.

Nansi Mishra 45:06
So in your book, you also talked about ICICI’s K.V. Kamath, how under his leadership, ICICI created an environment where women rose to the top. And we have a few women that you have mentioned in your book. So maybe we can talk about that and how K.V. Kamath Sir could do that.

Roopa Kudva 45:29
Right. I think what is remarkable about the leadership of Mr. Vaghul and Mr. K.V. Kamath is the number of women leaders who flourished and thrived and came into their own in the bank. And if you look at ICICI bank, it has been a veritable women CEO factory, whether it was the CEO of Standard Chartered Bank, J.P. Morgan, Multiples Asset Management, Axis Bank, all these were led by women who have come from the ICICI stable. So this is no mean achievement. You’ve created so many women leaders who’ve gone on to occupy CEO positions in the leading banks of the country. Right.

So it’s something to be very proud of, something to be to be understood in greater depth. But when you look at ICICI bank, they didn’t have any special programs for women. They didn’t have mentoring initiatives.

They didn’t have networking initiatives. All the things that we talk about, talk so much about today. What they did have, though, was they sponsored women for the top jobs.

They considered women candidates, women candidates were spoken about when they were not in the room. And that’s how they backed talented women. Right.

And I think, why does this become so important? It becomes so important because particularly today, if you see, the proportion of women in the workforce has increased significantly compared to even a few decades ago. In some sectors, it’s financial services, for example, one third of the team is women.

And yet you’re seeing, you know, women kind of hitting a plateau. They’re not really making it to the very top. Look at the data.

Right. Less than 5 percent, 4.7 percent, to be precise, less than 5 percent of the NSE 500 companies are led by women. Less than 10 percent of the New York Stock Exchange, the Fortune 500 companies, I’m sorry, are led by women.

Less than 5 percent of VC money goes to women founders. You’re very familiar with the statistic. One third of the positions of boards only are occupied by women.

And women form less than 20 percent of the decision making roles across organizations. Right. So notwithstanding the strides that we have made, seen women make in the workplace, there is a paucity of women when it comes to the very top.

Now, of course, we all know it’s very difficult for anyone to go from middle management to top management, whether you’re a man or whether you’re a woman. But for a woman, there are additional factors that come into play. What are those factors?

The first one is what I often call the likability factor. Nansi, research has shown that successful women are typically much less liked than successful men for exhibiting the same leadership traits. And that is because, you know, traits like assertiveness, exercising authority, autonomy, all of these traits don’t quite gel with or actually conflict with the age old beliefs that women are supposed to be soft and nurturing.

So typically, a strong woman leader will be less liked. There are famous case studies that have been done in U.S. universities where they gave the same case. They divided the class into two.

They gave the same case to both groups of students about a CEO. The only difference was that in one, for one group, the CEO was called Harry, and for the other group, the CEO was called Harriet. So in one case, it was a man.

The other case, it was a woman. Everything else in the case remained the same. After the assignment, when the students got together, it was shown that the group that got the woman CEO actually used a lot more negative language to describe the CEO as compared to the group that got the male CEO.

So this likability is an important thing. I want to emphasize it because all of us are human. We all want to be liked.

But then if you feel that if I get the top jobs, will that mean I will not be liked? It leads to the second barrier. And the second barrier is a hesitancy to raise your hand for the top jobs.

You know, we’ve all read about the fact that if there are 10 requirements for a job and there’s a job advertisement that goes out, if a woman sees that she meets six out of the 10, doesn’t meet four requirements, she is less likely to apply for a job than a man. If a man sees the very same advertisement and says, I don’t meet four of the criteria, he’s more likely to say, well, I meet six of the criteria, let me apply. So I think that it’s a cascading effect.

You’re not likeable, you hesitate to raise your hand for the top jobs. And then it leads to the next thing, which is you don’t advocate for yourself because of all these reasons, which is why that ICICI bank sponsorship becomes so important. You need men to speak up for you, you need women to speak up for you.

And I want to make it very clear that none of this means, all this is happening not because of intention, it is happening because of centuries of unconscious bias that have steeped into our psyche. So, you know, solving this problem doesn’t mean you have to fix men. It doesn’t mean you have to fix women.

But it means that you have to go beyond, I think, what is traditionally considered in some of these conversations. We talk about mentorship, we talk about networking, all of that is important, it is good, but nothing as vital as sponsorship. And ICICI banks sponsored women for the top jobs without all these other programs, you know, and I think that is what made the difference.

I also want to make another important point that, you know, promoting women or encouraging women is not anti-merit. Sometimes you hear, I hear these things said, you know, but we want to go only by merit. But why are you saying that promoting women is anti-merit?

Think about it this way. If you had customers, you are running a business, you have customers. Don’t you analyze customers by segment?

Don’t you look at the fact that there is this particular segment, which is under-penetrated, and what strategy should I use to tap into that segment a little deeper? Similar with your talent pool. Think of inclusive efforts to promote women as efforts to discover where that merit lies and to create the best possible talent pool for your company.

And that is what merit is all about, right? That is what you as a CEO or a leader should be thinking about, where do I find that merit? And how do I give the opportunity for the merit to surface?

And I think that’s really the power of what these two leaders at ICICI bank did, the power of sponsorship. And I think that’s what made all the difference.

Nansi Mishra 52:52
Yeah, I think I can’t agree more. I think personally, what I feel is one thing that doesn’t work for women is that from women, 100 things are expected. From men, maybe 70, 80 things are expected.

So if out of those 70 things, 50 things are done, he’s appreciated. But from women, like they are judged at workplace also, they are judged at home also. So maybe they had a great day at work and the moment they hit home, there are some 30-40 expectations that are not fulfilled.

So they are criticized.

Roopa Kudva 53:33
Right. So I think you must have heard the story that Indra Nooyi tells in her book about when she became the CEO of Pepsi, there was obviously, it was a very big occasion for the company. It was a very big occasion for her.

And at the end of the day, after all of that happened, when she walked home, she walked into her house and met her mother and told her mother that I’ve become the CEO of Pepsi. And her mother said, that’s all very well. But when you enter, please leave your crown at the door and go out and get the milk.

Nansi Mishra 54:08
I’m sure she’s not alone.

Roopa Kudva 54:12
So that’s, I think.

Nansi Mishra 54:13
And it’s not even intentional. Like her mom, other folks would also not do that intentionally. But it so happens.

Roopa Kudva 54:22
True. That’s so true.

Nansi Mishra 54:24
So we’ll move to the next story. In the book, you have mentioned about Piyush Gupta from DBS. Very interesting story.

And I would want our audience to know this story also.

Roopa Kudva 54:34
Right. So just a little bit of context for people who may not be familiar. Piyush Gupta became the CEO of DBS Bank in Singapore, I think sometime around the year 2008-2009.

Now, DBS Bank had a reputation at that point in time for being a bureaucratic and an unresponsive institution. And yet, Piyush Gupta during his tenure transformed it into a dynamic digital bank. The case study has been referred to by Harvard Business Review as one of the top 10 transformations of the decade.

And DBS Bank, actually, from where it began, went on to win awards as the world’s best bank. They set themselves the most ambitious goal that every single person in the organization should be able to talk about digital technologies. And that really led to a massive innovation in products and services.

Right. So this is a well-known case study in transformation. And there are numerous magazine, newspaper articles, case studies in universities, etc., written about the DBS Bank transformation, which are easily accessible. What struck me about that transformation was how he managed to achieve alignment across everybody. Remember the goal? The goal was that every single person in the organization should be able to talk digital technologies.

That’s not an easy goal, right? And for that, you have to have an incredibly high level of alignment of the entire team, which is how did he manage to do that? He did a few things which I thought were very interesting.

First was a structural thing. He actually merged the customer experience and the innovation team. So what happened then was that the entire customer journey, normally, if the teams are separate, you’re looking at this in silo.

Somebody is coming up with a new product. Somebody is looking at what the customer experience is. When you’re merging it from the get-go, you are able to reimagine the whole customer journey.

And then by doing that, while doing that, they got inputs from audit, from compliance, from call centers, all of that, because all of that are not in front of the customer, but they impact the customer experience, right? So that was a very clever move. The second thing was how he used hackathons to infuse a startup culture into the bank.

So they created these teams of people, which were a mix of people from within the organization, even older people, including a lot of them who are not familiar with technology or not comfortable with technology. He grouped them with younger people across functions, and he paired each group with a startup. And the mandate given was that you have to develop a banking app within five days.

That was the task given to this group, out of which day one was devoted to explaining digital technologies and human-centered design. So in effect, day one was immersion, and then two, three, four, five, you sat and actually developed the app. What that did was quite dramatic.

It showed people what a startup culture looks like. It helped get buy-in for the digital strategy, but most importantly, it gave confidence to the people that we can do it. And the other interesting thing I felt that he did was he spent a lot of time talking to his management team to get that alignment in the topmost leadership.

Now, you may think it’s obvious, it’s very simple, but it’s not so simple. There’s actually a study which I saw by MIT, which interviewed 4,000 managers, and they found that less than one-third of them were able to identify what are the top three priorities of our company. So you think there’s alignment, but actually achieving that alignment is very difficult, and he spent a lot of time.

Nansi Mishra 58:54
And at such level.

Roopa Kudva 58:54
Correct. And so he spent a lot of time actually doing that.

So I think that combination of the structure, the combination of infusing a startup culture, and the time spent in senior management alignment, that was what the mixture of all of that created that magic which led to this transformation.

Nansi Mishra 59:13
Very amazing story. And we are sitting next to DBS Bangalore office. So our office is next to DBS Bangalore office.

And every time I pass by that building, I’ll revisit this story. So thank you for sharing this. And I just want to talk about one more thing.

So when you joined Omidyar, and Omidyar was focused on impact investing when you joined. And you talked about this and Omidyar invest in entrepreneurs who are building for half billion, next half billion. So let’s talk about that.

Like who are these next half billion people? So who are these people? And what are the successful companies we have now who are building for these folks?

Roopa Kudva 1:00:02
Right. So I think the way we looked at the next half billion was these broadly represented people who are not the first wave of internet users in India. The first wave of internet users were really people whose introduction to the internet came via the desktop.

Whereas the next wave, their introduction, they were a mobile first generation. And the entire landscape has had changed. They belonged to the bottom 60% of India’s income distribution.

So their social context, their cultural context, their education levels, all were very different from the first wave of internet users. And therefore, the entrepreneurs and the businesses that were catering to these people, this segment of the population, really had to practically reimagine the internet for them. And they had to create an interface, they had to create products and services, which understood their problems, tackle their problems and tackle them in a way that made sense to them.

And let me give you an example, which is no longer relevant today, but was very relevant at that point in time. You know, this little shopping cart symbol that you see at the checkout on any app or any website, right? Now, at that point in time, it represented a very Western shopping experience. You know, a Western shopping experience was you go to a supermarket, take things off the shelf, put them into the cart and go to the counter.

But that is not the shopping experience of the next half billion. They don’t go to a supermarket, they go to a kirana store, the person stands behind a counter, the person, she or he will take the products off the shelf and show them to the customer. And that’s their shopping experience.

So this may be a small thing. And of course, the next half billion are smart enough to figure out what a shopping cart symbol means. But add up hundreds and thousands of things like this.

And suddenly the internet seems like a very alien place. Most of the content was in English in those days, there was nothing available in Hindi, far less the other languages, right? Women were not comfortable going on the internet.

I remember meeting women, I had gone to the small villages and met women. And you know, our studies showed that, you know, there was a taboo because people didn’t give the phones to women in some places thinking that they’ll be exposed to bad influences. So you know, getting the women the confidence to know that it’s okay to have a smartphone, it’s okay to go to the internet, you can use the internet for useful purposes like improving your life and for your families.

All of that was a completely new breed of entrepreneur, there were a new breed of companies that came up. Let me give you a few examples. You know, there was this, and all these companies were driven by purpose.

You know, they were out to solve a problem that would meaningfully improve the lives of people who had either been excluded or underserved. So take the example of a company called Rail Yatri. Very interesting, you know, the founders were, the thing that was going on in the founders, and now the company is called Intercity.

What was going on the founders mind was, why should train travel be so difficult? Why should there be so much stress about whether my ticket is going to be confirmed? Why should there be so much tension about which platform my train is going to come on?

Where my bogie is going to come? The simple things.

Nansi Mishra 1:03:43
We would see our parents in stress, like if they have to travel in train.

Roopa Kudva 1:03:47
Absolutely, and so they came up with an app which told you how your waiting list was moving, where exactly which platform your train would come on, where your bogie would be, all of that. You could order food sitting in the train, you could book an auto rickshaw at the venue of your destination. They simplified a lot of that.

However, much of this was taken over, like food ordering and all of that was taken over by the railways later. So, they pivoted their business model and now they run their Intercity, which is these Intercity bus services which they run. But again, their core purpose and their core mission of making long distance transportation for the average Indian easier, that has remained the same.

The business model is the same. So, that’s a very interesting company. There was another very interesting company called Healofy.

27-28 year old founders, men, came to us one day and said, we are developing this app for pregnant women in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. You must be very familiar with them. So, you know, again, you would think that traditionally, you would think, what would a 28 year old young man, why is he the best place to solve problems of women’s pregnancy and the matters related to that?

But I think sometimes the best solutions come from people who are little removed because you get the perspective that comes with distance. And that again showed us that people, young girls and women, young women in the tier 2, tier 3 towns, they don’t want to learn from their mothers and grandmothers. They want to learn from their peers.

And that’s why Healofy managed to create this great community. Let me give you a third example and you tell me when to stop. There’s this company called iMerit, founded by this amazing woman called Radha Basu, spent her entire life in the Silicon Valley tech companies, came back to India to Kolkata and has started this organization with people from underprivileged communities, which does data annotation for driverless cars for major companies in Silicon Valley, you know, coming from the poorest of poor backgrounds, mostly women, and working with the world’s largest tech companies in the valley, thanks to Radha and her networks and all of that. Many of these women are first time, have stepped out of the house for the first time.

They are first time earners. They have learned now how to invest in mutual funds. Their families are now beginning to invest their savings more prudently.

They have a voice in their family. They have a voice in their community. So these are just some examples of businesses that we invested in.

We also invested in some very successful exits. 1MG, for example, which really democratized access to medical information. They exited to the Tata’s.

Nansi Mishra 1:06:48
We got acquisition offers from 1MG when we were building Babygogo.

Roopa Kudva 1:06:52
That’s right. That’s right. So it has been, it was a very different kind of entrepreneur.

The other thing, Nansi, I will say is that many of, even in the 10 years that I was in the business, I saw the profile of the Indian entrepreneur change. Earlier, the first wave of entrepreneurs were people who went to the IITs, came from the metros, went to the US, maybe came back, came from the higher income strata of society, mid to higher income, maybe. But today’s entrepreneurs are people who come from the non-so-called IITs and IIMs. They come from the smaller towns of India. They are solving, looking to solve problems that they themselves have experienced. So if you look at Ranjit Pathak Singh of Pratilipi, for example, you know, I mean, he was a voracious reader. And he said, why do I have to struggle so much to find books to read in Hindi?

Why should it be such a problem? And so he’s created this platform with, I think, 16 or 17 Indian languages, where people can write and people can read books. And initially, I would be surprised if that is still not the case.

70% of the people who came to write on that platform were women. So it really empowered women, you know, to come online and exercise their creativity. Today, many people make good income from being on the Pratilipi platform.

But you know, this was a problem that the founder himself had experienced. So it was a very different profile of founders. It was really nice to see, even in that 10-year period, how the business models that people come up with, the profile of entrepreneurs…

Nansi Mishra 1:08:36
And the problems founders were choosing. Choosing has completely changed. I’ll also share one example that we were building Babygogo.

And most of the team members were not even married. They were all bachelors. And most of them were male team members.

And they were building a software, like we were building a software for pediatricians, where pediatricians could register patient data. And all these patients can see their prescription, the growth of their child on the app. And the other side of the company was that we were building a community for mothers.

So all these mothers, young mothers, who are living in tier one cities, who are not living with their families, and when they have a baby, they suddenly have 10, 100 problems in a day. So they don’t want to, they don’t, they can’t, they’re not going back to their families with all those questions. And they’re also not going to doctors with those millions of queries.

So they just download the app and they can, you know, they can get hundreds of moms coming up with similar type of queries. So in this community side, our job was to get doctors on the app. So all these doctors who have just started practicing, they will be answering those queries.

And then second time moms, they would have similar experiences. So when my delivery happened, all these Babygogo team members visited me in the hospital. And they were still bachelors, because I was the, me and Siddhartha were the first set of parents.

And my mother was also, and considering the background I have, like my family comes from from village. My mother was also in the room. And all these Babygogo team members were asking me questions like, was this normal delivery?

Or was it C-section? And like, I think the baby has done feeding, you should give him burping. And then my mother was looking at them, the kind of questions they were asking.

So we talked about how founders are choosing the different type of problem.

Roopa Kudva 1:10:38
Absolutely, such a wonderful story.

Nansi Mishra 1:10:41
So we are coming close to the conversation.

So I think we should be discussing two things that are left on the question paper. One, I was going through your LinkedIn account. And I saw this beautiful story where you’re talking about Devina Mehra.

Like you both went to the same college and the kind of experience you guys had in college. And she’s founder of First Global. And she’s also a best-selling author.

So just want to hear that story from your, in your words.

Roopa Kudva 1:11:21
Right. So Devina and I…

Nansi Mishra 1:11:23
I think you got some massive traction on that post.

Roopa Kudva 1:11:26
I think, I think yes, I think there was it connected with a lot of people. Devina Mehra and I are from the same class at IIM Ahmedabad. And in fact, we were neighbors, our rooms in the hostel were next to each other.

And in some ways we were, she came from Lucknow, I came from Assam. So we were not from the metros. But in other ways, we were very different.

Devina was, I was a night owl. She was very much a morning person. She effortlessly topped our batch.

And I mean, absolutely effortlessly. I struggled significantly to make sense of the coursework and the course material at IIM. And, you know, both of us went on to careers in finance.

She started off at Citibank. And I started off in IDBI. And over time, she started First Global.

And you know mine. Over the years, though, we did keep in regular touch. We would meet a couple of times a year.

And we all liked exploring restaurants and new food places in Mumbai. And we would do that. And so we’ve kept in touch over the years.

And we’ve been good friends. And of course, then she wrote her book, which I think came out about a year or so ago. And my book, Leadership Beyond the Playbook has just been published.

And Devina was a few weeks ago, she was at Mumbai airport taking a flight somewhere. And she walked into the bookstore at Terminal 2. And what should she see there?

Well, she sees a display with both our books displayed on the same counter. And she just clicked that picture and she sent it to me. And I looked at it.

And the first thing that may went through my head was, hey, we were neighbors at IIM. And 40 years later, we are neighbors on the bookshelf. So that’s how I put up that post.

Nansi Mishra 1:13:23
I love this story. I was going through all the posts. And I stopped at that post. And I thought I should have this story. And the last one is, I think, I have already taken a lot of your time. So you have worked with so many women leaders directly, indirectly, Indra Nooyi, Arundhati Bhattacharya, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, and Mary Barra. What’s that one thing that’s common in all these women, like who have, you know, reached to the top like you? And if you want to share some of the stories?

Roopa Kudva 1:13:57
Sure.
You know, I use those examples, Nansi, in my book, not so much because I’ve worked with all of them. Some of them I don’t even know. Some I know better than the others, right.

But I wouldn’t say the reason I put those examples in the book is that very often there is a belief that, you know, there is a women’s leadership style. Very often you would have heard statements like, oh, women have more empathy, women are better multitaskers. These are commonly thrown around statements.

And I don’t think that is true. I think there is just like there is no one male leadership style. There is no one women’s leadership style.

And I’ll tell you how, I’ll show you how with these five examples, right. Let’s take the case of Mary Barra, who people would know is the head of General Motors. Hers is what I would call a very strategic and a very inclusive style of leadership.

Take a look at Marillyn Hewson, who was the CEO of Lockheed Martin, the company that makes F-16, F-30 aircraft, defense aerospace company. She was very focused, very decisive leader, very focused on execution. So again, very different from Mary Barra.

Indra Nooyi, who we have talked about, is an example of what I would call a visionary and a transformative leader. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw from Bangalore, example of a highly entrepreneurial and risk-taking capability, a leader with a lot of entrepreneurship and risk-taking capability. And if you look at Arundhati Bhattacharya, again, someone who was transformative, who was visionary, who was empathetic.

So each of these five women, very, very different leadership styles, and yet all of them have reached the top, all of them have been hugely successful. And I think it is important for women to call it out. It is important for women not to be stuck with labels, like women leaders are X, Y, Z, because first of all, it is simply not true.

And secondly, if you get stuck with these labels, they work against you in the long term, because there are certain traits that are considered more leadership-friendly kind of, you know, and that is really not the case. You can be successful using any leadership style. The style has to be authentic to you, and the style has to be relevant to the context in which you operate.

And both men and women adapt to what is needed of the circumstances, and both men and women manifest what is true and authentic to them. So I really wanted to bring these stories to life, just to show that there is no one kind of leader. You have to be authentic, you have to craft your own path.

You know, you don’t follow anybody else’s path or playbook. And that, in a way, is the thesis of my book as well. But I think these five stories really, really exemplify it.

Nansi Mishra 1:17:05
And I think all these leadership styles came very naturally to all these leaders that we just have talked about, right? Because it’s a long term game, you can’t be, you can’t try to be someone like else, right?

Roopa Kudva 1:17:19
Absolutely, absolutely. And, you know, and I feel that a lot of the leadership conversations today, very quickly gravitate towards frameworks and formula, you know, six steps, seven habits, you know. And whereas leadership is not like that.

No two leaders are the same. No two leadership journeys are the same. They are all shaped by, you know, our own context, they are shaped by the choices each one of us has made, they are shaped by the values we stand by.

And therefore, I think the first question we have to answer before, you know, how do I not just how do I become a good leader, but it is what kind of a leader do I want to be? And you said it so well, you can’t be someone who you’re not, you have to develop your own authentic leadership style. Right?

And so I think that’s also the topic of a lot of discussion.

Nansi Mishra 1:18:13
Because you spend a lot of time with your team, right? And team look up to you. Correct.

And they can sense if you’re being natural, or if you’re just, you know, faking it out. And that’s how you build your community, your tribe. So even if like, if we’re running a VC fund, founders are choosing you, right?

Roopa Kudva 1:18:32
Correct.

Nansi Mishra 1:18:33
And they’re choosing you for a reason.

Roopa Kudva 1:18:34
Correct.

Nansi Mishra 1:18:35
The way you style, the way you communicate, the way you work, the way, like the folks you’re raising money from and what, what are the things you can do for them? And how you are as person because it’s a long term journey for founders also, right?

Roopa Kudva 1:18:49
Absolutely.
And on both sides, right? I think today capital is available, right? I mean, money is not the differentiator.

I think what is the differentiator is, what do you stand for? What are your values? What are your ways of working?

How do you support entrepreneurs in ways that are different from other funds? I think that’s what matters as far as founders are concerned, right? When they are picking who to work with.

And I think even for LPs, right? I think today, the way investors or LPs think, they’re, of course, looking at returns, which are important, but they’re looking at much more beyond return. They’re looking at, you know, what’s the impact you’re looking to create?

I mean, so many LPs that I’ve met, you know, a lot of them have impact as an important part of their mandate and an important part of their priorities. So I think, I think that’s good. And I think what that does, it allows for a diversity of funds to exist.

And I think each needs to play to its own playbook and not try and be like someone else, because in doing so, you actually lose what is unique and most valuable about you.

Nansi Mishra 1:20:00
And obviously, we can learn from each other, like how I am going to include the inclusion part from Omidyar. I totally loved it, how you mentioned that all the team members, big or small, whatever impact they are creating, are there, sharing their story on the website. So if new people, people who are going to join that fund, or LPs, or future founders can, you know, read those stories and see the real impact they are creating, not just in founders life, but in the, in people’s life for working with them day and night.

Roopa Kudva 1:20:31
And, you know, you get a very good sense of, you know, what does this organization stand for.

Nansi Mishra 1:20:38
I truly loved chatting with you, Roopa. Thank you so much for your time. And I think you’re here for three days.

So we caught you in the right time.

Roopa Kudva 1:20:48
Thank you so much, Nansi.
It was great. And I loved the conversation. We talked about so many different people, so many different leaders.

And it was great.

Nansi Mishra 1:20:58
Thank you so much for allowing me, you know, to ask about other folks who you have worked with directly, indirectly.

Roopa Kudva 1:21:05
No, thank you so much. I really enjoyed these.

Nansi Mishra 1:21:07
Thank you so much. Looking forward to host you again on the show.

Roopa Kudva 1:21:10
Look forward to it. Thanks.