- India's unicorns are growing rapidly and attracting strong investor appetite
- Despite this progress, leadership teams remain predominantly male
- Fresh research by talent solutions company Xpheno shows an interesting gender disparity
India's unicorns might be growing at lightning speed and receiving plenty of attention from investors, but their management remains largely male, new information from talent Solutions Company Xpheno reveals. A study of 400 CXOs in 117 Indian-origin unicorns finds that women hold just 10 percent of high-level executive positions.
The gap is especially wide in tech and business core leadership roles. Though women occupy 54 percent of Chief Human Resources Officers (CHROs), they occupy only 2 percent of CEO roles and less than 1 percent of CTO or CIO roles. The position of Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) is slightly better with a representation of 18 percent females. Xpheno's report mentions that while diversity made its ground in HR, it is very low in core business and product-related functions.
The research also identifies stark gender-role clustering: 62 percent of female CXOs in HR, compared to 45 percent of male CXOs in CEO, CTO, or CFO positions. Although this mirrors industry trends, it is exceptional in India's startup ecosystem, which is commonly regarded as progressive.
The mean age of a CXO in these unicorns is 43.5 years. Interestingly, women get to senior leadership positions later in their careers. Whereas only 7 percent of CXOs who are between 33 and 37 years are women, this increases to 16 percent between the ages of 48 and 52. This indicates that while women eventually get into the top group, it takes longer.
Siddharth Verma, Xpheno's executive search head, draws attention to how issues like low representation of women in the pipeline of talent, difficulties with acceptance at the workplace, and breaks in career all feed into this delay in progression.
Women CXOs have an average of 24 years' experience—just a year more than men at 22 years—and stay longer in their existing positions. While 60 percent of female leaders have changed industries and 79 percent functional roles on their way to where they are today, just 31 percent have moved to a new location for work, as opposed to 33 percent of men.
Educational history also has a strong influence on shaping leaders. Approximately 58 percent of CXOs graduated with an undergraduate degree from top-tier institutions, rising to 90 percent at the graduate level—highlighting the power of top credentials in leadership pipelines.
119 of the CXOs surveyed are founders or co-founders—33 founders and 86 co-founders still serving C-suite positions at their companies. As India keeps building its position as the world's third-largest unicorn hub, the composition of its executive leadership shows a combination of advancement and ongoing disparities. This underrepresentation also applies to the nation's venture capital (VC) industry. A March TOI report discovered that most leading VC firms had few or no women in decision-making positions. For example, companies such as Z47, Stellaris Venture Partners, and Nexus Venture Partners didn't have any women among their investment teams. Peak XV Partners had 13 of 44 investors, the highest, with Blume Ventures (6 of 23) and Accel India (5 of 25) reporting a slightly better gender ratio.
