Healthcare's missing women: Why female leaders remain rare on medicine's road less travelled

IN 1978, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw began her entrepreneurial journey with three employees in a rented shed in Koramangala, suburban Bengaluru, to build what is almost half a century later, India’s leading biotechnology firm Biocon Ltd with annual revenues worth ₹15,621 crore, 16,300 employees and a presence in over 100 countries, including the U.S., Europe and emerging markets.

In 1989, when Suneeta Reddy started working with Apollo Hospitals, the corporate hospital group founded by her father Dr Prathap C. Reddy was a fledgeling enterprise, which had started off as a 150-bed hospital in Chennai six years ago. Today, Apollo is India’s largest private healthcare provider with cumulative bed strength of over 10,000 across 73 hospitals and runs over 6,000 pharmacies, 2,500 clinics and diagnostic centres and over 500 telemedicine centres.

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is the founder and executive chairperson of Biocon Ltd; Suneeta Reddy the managing director of Apollo Hospitals. Both are shining examples of women in leadership positions in India’s healthcare sector.

Dozens of women leaders such as Shaw and Reddy are spearheading Indian healthcare enterprises across segments such as pharmaceuticals and biotech manufacturing, hospitals, diagnostic services, healthtech startups, etc. However, there is a glaring gender gap if one takes a closer look at the workforce of 9.3 million employed in various capacities — leadership to unskilled jobs — across private and public sectors in the country’s healthcare ecosystem. Women are well represented in some areas, but not everywhere. Undoubtedly, India needs more women leaders and professionals to make the country’s healthcare sector more gender balanced.

Success is gender neutral

Apollo Hospitals registered a consolidated revenue of over ₹22,000 crore and Ebitda of over ₹3,000 crore in FY24. In the past seven years, the company delivered a revenue CAGR of 20%, profit-after-tax CAGR of 33%, and saw its enterprise value grow at a CAGR of 35% with a 70% reduction in net debt. Suneeta Reddy says Apollo will add 3,512 beds across 11 locations in the next three to four years (beginning FY26). “By leveraging cutting-edge technology, digital transformation, and patient-centric innovation, Apollo Hospitals is setting benchmarks in healthcare delivery,” she says.

“As I reflect on Apollo’s progress and my own evolution, the biggest insight is that the only limitation to what we can do is set by ourselves. Women can do anything that they determine to do,” says Reddy. “I started with hospitality, moved into broking and financial services, and then got into healthcare — and learnt many new things along the way. The common denominator was conviction in the work we were doing, and belief in my own capability to get the job done. And that’s the only belief that women need.” But the path to success is not smooth. Women leaders, especially, have the perception hurdle to overcome as well.