Portraits of power: A look at FILA winners of the past 15 years

A walk through our photo archives, featuring industry stalwarts and business leaders who have received the Forbes India Leadership Awards since its inception

Mar 27, 2026, 18:41 IST2 min

1/13

Ratan Tata (73)
Chairman, Tata Sons
Entrepreneur for the year, 2011
“In him, is a mix of tremendous humility and great ambition. After all, he single-handedly transformed the Tata group over the last two decades.” Lord Kumar Bhattacharyya, founder and chairman, Warwick Manufacturing Group; Photo by Vikas Khot
(Note: In brackets is their age when they won the award)

2/13

William Bissell (46) Managing director, Fabindia
Entrepreneur with Social Impact, 2012
“Business can be the biggest force of social change and can bring about that change for good.”
Photo by Amit Verma

3/13

Anand Mahindra (56)
Chairman, Mahindra Group
Entrepreneur for The Year, 2013
“Measured risk-taking is at the heart of entrepreneurship. Whenever I have been unhappy about myself in my career, it has been because I have not taken an adequate but measured risk.”
Photo by Vikas Khot

4/13

Kumarmangalam Birla (45)
Chairman, Aditya Birla Group
Entrepreneur for the Year, 2012
“I’ve learnt culture cannot be a binding factor because all of us come from different cultures… I had to change my perspective.”
Photo by Dinesh Krishnan

5/13

Adi Godrej (75)
Chairman, Godrej Group
Lifetime Achievement, 2017
“In India, it was generally felt that ethics aren’t important and being corrupt pays. We don’t believe in that. We also intentionally stayed out of areas where involvement with the government was very high, like infrastructure, and where capital requirements were high.”
Photo by Vikas Khot

6/13

Shikha Sharma (55)
MD & CEO, Axis Bank
Best CEO-Private sector, 2014
“One of the things about being a woman leader is that the world is dominated by male leaders, so you’re constantly being compared. You have to shut out certain things and not worry about them so that you’re effective at the job.”
Photo by Vikas Khot

7/13

Anant Goenka (35)
Managing director, Ceat Ltd
GenNext Entrepreneur, 2017
“The mindsets of people were still towards incremental growth. We were just making sure that we don’t make losses or were able to grow by 10 percent every year. But that wasn’t ambitious enough.”
Photo by Mexy Xavier

8/13

Shiv Nadar (74)
Founder and chairman, HCL Technologies
Lifetime Achievement Award, 2019
“I have a strong instinct, but most of the time it will be backed by some solid work.”

9/13

VC Sehgal (62)
Chairman, Samvardhana Motherson Group
Entrepreneur For The Year, 2018
“Historically, Motherson has over-delivered when the conditions have been tough. When things are bad, it means there are many more opportunities where stressed companies are available cheaper, so it is a positive for us.”
Photo by Amit Verma

10/13

Ghazal and Varun Alagh (35, 40)
Co-founders, Honasa Consumer
Tycoons of tomorrow, 2021
“There are still a few white spaces we see where we feel the need to craft a new brand. We’ll continue to come up with newer brands wherever we find those opportunities.”
Varun Alagh
Photo by Amit Verma