India's unicorn ecosystem has to improve gender diversity as women held only 5.8% or 76 of the 1,314 board seats across 116 unicorns, data from private market intelligence platform PrivateCircle Research reveals.
At the company level, 56 out of 116 unicorns (48%) had at least one -woman director on their board, while just 13 (11%) of them had more than one woman director, according to the report.
In PrivateCircle’s analysis, with 16, the finance unicorns had the highest representation of women directors compared to software (8), retail (7), insurance (5), travel & hospitality (5), and emerging technology (4) unicorns.
Companies such as MapmyIndia, Incred, MobiKwik, PolicyBazaar, Nykaa, Zomato, and Fractal Analytics have the highest number of active women directors, with three each.
Murali Loganathan, Director of Research at PrivateCircle Research said, “It has been long established that companies with more diverse boards tend to perform better financially. McKinsey's 2023 Diversity Matters Even More report also found that companies with more diverse boards tend to achieve stronger financial performance. Specifically, those in the top quartile for gender diversity on their boards are 27% more likely to outperform financially compared to those in the bottom quartile.”
Interestingly, according to Deloitte’s Women in the Boardroom: A Global Perspective report, women occupied 18.3% of board seats across India Inc in 2023, while the global average stood at 23.3%.
The report points out that though India saw a decline in board chairs held by women in 2023, with only 4.1% of women chairing boards as compared to 4.5% in 2018, it witnessed an increase in the number of women taking up CEO roles − 5.1% female CEOs compared to 3.4% in 2018.