The women of India's money machine

Summary: 'We need to get it out of our heads that we are expected to be superwomen.' Six senior women in India's mutual fund industry on what they actually learned—about work, and about themselves. This Women’s Day, Value Research asked six senior women from India’s mutual fund industry a different question, not what they have achieved, but what they have actually learned. About the work. About themselves. About what it truly takes to last. The answers were not rehearsed. They were the kind of lessons that only come after years of doing the work. The story you tell about yourself Usha Raman has spent three decades in finance, from JPMorgan to heading internal audit at India’s largest mutual fund, and today serves as Chief Compliance Officer and Company Secretary at quant Mutual Fund. The advice she most wants younger women to hear has little to do with technical skills. “Before you enter the room, people already know who you are,” she says. “Whether we want that story to be the way Google tells it, or whether we want to create that story entirely ourselves, that choice is ours.” Women, she observes, often do the work, collect the wins, and then stay quiet about it. Personal branding is not vanity, she argues. In a competitive industry, it is survival. Her professional conviction runs just as deep. “We always follow the path of ethics and principle-based regulations,” she says. In her experience, that path and the right busines