5 Women Who Broke the Glass Ceiling

India is brewing tall tales & folklores of incredible women personas who reside at every corner of the sub-continent. Spoken of them, each shares a common patch, where they say that the journey was simple yet exemplary, tough yet winning or strenuous yet empowering, in overachieving their life goals. Many share the spotlight, while others shy-away. This Women’s Day lets raise a toast to all the brightest bearers of thousand accolades who wears the bravest smile in making India proud.

Frequent cross-talks among disciplines like technology, sociology, economy and other sects, has generated many new roles and categories to look for. But are there enough fertile grounds or resources or say, efforts in pushing new women talents to plummet the heights? The answer is yes. With an added surprise, the change has begun long back and is happening in real-time. Exploring the journey of many brave hearts, here we have enlisted five stories of five women, who chose a life apart.

Anita Dongre, Fashion Entrepreneur | Captain Tania Shergill, Woman Army Officer |
Vinita D.Gupta, Women Industrialist | Humpy Koneru, Rapid Chess Master |
K.V.Jeyasri, Teacher-Translator
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1.Anita Dongre, Fashion Entrepreneur



Anita Dogre is crowned to be the first fashion designer to introduce sustainable office wear for women in India. She addresses herself ‘Rebel’ who wanted to build an ‘empire’. Lightly but surely, she unraveled the true empress and her urge to change what doesn’t feel right had given birth to AND (western wear line), Global Desi (boho-chic line), Anita Dongre (bridal collection) & Grassroot( the youngest brand for organic clothing). After spending 30 years in the fashion industry, she now owns a Rs.50 crore businesses with over 250 exclusive outlets built on women’s wear daily and line of luxury apparels of Women.

Spearheading the leading fashion house of India, ‘House of Anita Dongre’ is an exception that owns a DNA to attract empowered women. She had a very simple yet humble beginning. Armed with few sewing machines, a fresh graduate with a whole lot of confidence, she started her first work at her home balcony. What started with just two tailors and herself, today is a big business house comprising of over 2000 employees.

Anita believes that economic independence is very important for any woman. Hence, she has completely indulged herself in working with the women of the Self Employed Women’s Association (Sewa), based in Ahmedabad. The dream to create beautiful clothes for a beautiful tomorrow is what fueled the start of Grassroot’s journey, her new line of organic & sustainable clothing line alongside creating an opportunity for self-employment of the SEWA women. Anita foresighted to provide regular work for local artisans and took an oath to bring back the glory of the long-undermined master craftspeople of India.

Captain Tania Shergill, Woman Army Officer | Vinita D. Gupta, Women Industrialist |
Humpy Koneru, Rapid Chess Master | K.V. Jeyasri, Teacher-Translator
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2.Captain Tania Shergill, Woman Army Officer



Meet Captain Tania Shergill, the first woman army officer and first woman parade adjutant to the Republic Day parade of the year 2020. Breaking through all gender constraints, she was also the lead for all-men contingent at the Army Day Parade. A 26-year old Captain Tania is an electronics and communications graduate and fourth-generation woman army officer, who was commissioned in March 2017, from the Officer Training Academy (OTA).

Her words are a boon for the female army aspirants and she affirms that there are plenty of avenues open for women even in a male-dominated force. She never limited her possibilities being a woman and always seen herself as equal to the male counterpart. Bailing off the misconception of gender discrimination, she said that OTA trains its male and female cadets equally. From her viewpoint, when someone is provided the opportunity to lead, one should never refuse a chance to excel. Rather one should own the right to rove the heights with best efforts.

Captain Tania bears an interesting family pedigree, where her father, grandfather and great grandfather were ex-servicemen of the Indian Army. Threading the line Tania is serving at 1-Signal Training Centre in Jabalpur. Since childhood Captain Tania, she dreamt of joining the Indian army and her zeal paid-off as she joined the OTA in 2016 and was commissioned as an officer the very next year. She is all tanked-up to become one of the women participants in the army’s combat arms and iron-willed to face any challenges on her way.

Anita Dongre, Fashion Entrepreneur |Vinita D. Gupta, Women Industrialist |
Humpy Koneru, Rapid Chess Master|K.V. Jeyasri, Teacher-Translator
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3.Vinita D. Gupta, Women Industrialist



Vinita D. Gupta, the lady who first expanded the generic market for India’s pharmaceutical industry. When Vinita came to power to lead the operations of Lupin, the company growth changed gears. According to the company data, it paid off 75 percent of the company’s annual income, counting $1.7 billion in revenue which contributes nearly 75 percent of the company’s annual revenue. She holds prominence in the entire pharmaceutical industry, who opened the first window for the generics market, with Suprax, which was a big hit in the industry, which gained Lupin a strong foothold in both national and global market.

At the age of 25, Vinita graduated from Kellogg Graduate School of Management, US, and joined Lupin on her father’s request in 2003. She was asked to en-route Lupin’s road map to reach the global market and to execute it, young Vinita found it to be ‘a wonderful idea!’. She stepped up with a singular goal to research where Lupin could make a difference, and which products could be launched in the US market. After 2005, the company has grown nearly fivefold and profit about sixfold. Lupin also became the first FDA certified dealer of injectable products in India.

She is born with business acumen. With Lupin’s first launched generic product ‘Suprax’, she affixed the international market for Lupin. Vitina’s rolling success was exemplary and in 2013 she was officially declared the CEO of Lupin. She says lot is yet to be done and preparations are full swing to leverage the future growth opportunities and investing complex generics and commitment in building a specialty business and carry on Desh Bandhu Gupta’s founding culture of Lupin.

Anita Dongre,Fashion Entrepreneur | Captain Tania Shergill,Woman Army Officer |
Humpy Koneru,Rapid Chess Master | K.V.Jeyasri,Teacher-Translator
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4.Humpy Koneru, Rapid Chess Master



When we think Indian Chess, the first name that calls in our mind is Viswanathan Anand, the chess master of India. Today, we will bring the difference by speaking about Humpy Koneru who stood out in Indian Chess. Humpy is not only the top female chess-player from India but one of the best women players in the world. Her recent achievement is her win in 2019 women’s world rapid chess championship, which was held at Moscow 2019.

Humpy was first introduced to a chessboard at the age of five and she learned the game under her father’s mentorship. Her first win was the World Junior Girls Chess Championship in 2001; in parallel she received the Woman Grandmaster title as well. The very next year, she received her official grand master title in 2002 and is known as the youngest women in history to become a Grandmaster at that time. She continued to achieve more and won 20 matches at a stretch.

Humpy always targeted to be the top most and winning the first world title was a big challenge. Sportsmanship doest come easy; even after few ups-and –downs, she became the first female player in history to break the 2,600 rating barrier and is still one of the top women players in the chess history. Opponents were very strong, but she battled in each tournament with one motive – to ‘fight back’. India is proud of its women champions and expects more participants to join the league.

Anita Dongre, Fashion Entrepreneur | Captain Tania Shergill, Woman Army Officer |
Vinita D. Gupta, Women Industrialist | K.V. Jeyasri, Teacher-Translator
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5.K.V. Jeyasri, Teacher-Translator



Let’s greet K.V. Jeyasri, a fresh face in Indian literature & the first teacher-translator in the Indian history who received the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award of 2019. A Kerela-born, Jeyasri teaches Tamil in a school at Tiruvannamalai and works truly out of passion. The award was based on her translation work on the Malayalam novel Nilam Poothu Malarnna Naal into Tamil and the English translation of the title that goes by ‘The day the land bloomed and blossomed’. The novel was written by Malayalam author Manoj Kuroor, which uphold the socio-cultural history of one of the seven philanthropist of the Tamil chieftains.

Jeyasri, rooted from Kerala and who have settled in Thiruvananthapuram, learnt Malayalam from her mother while her mother learnt Tamil from them. She said in a media interview that knack of reading is inherited from her, as after her father’s demise, she (Jeyasri’s mother) immersed herself in books. She had translated many and it was her 12th translated work for which she has received the award. Her works were pure out of passion and was never with an objective to get awards in return.

Jeyasri works received many applauds from several leaders and political parties. Jeyasri also mentioned that she is currently translating IAS officer K.V. Mohankumar’s novel Ushnarasi, a story about how about the communist movement in Kerala which captured the power of 1957.

Anita Dongre,Fashion Entrepreneur | Captain Tania Shergill, Woman Army Officer |
Vinita D.Gupta,Women Industrialist | Humpy Koneru,Rapid Chess Master |