New Delhi: The demand for top-level women executives at Indian companies is rising fast, as the firms have begun to realize the business benefits of having female executives in their organizations, experts say.

While India Inc continues to have a low percentage of top women executives, experts say that a slow realization has crept in that hiring women at the senior level is imperative and makes good business sense.

According to executive research firm MANCER Consultancy, the growth of demand for women at senior level is growing at the rate of 10 per cent every year.

Besides, studies prove that women at top positions can help increase the revenue potential of an organization by up to 600 per cent, MANCER Consultancy CEO Satya D Sinha said.

Echoing similar views, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India's Senior Director Latha Ramanathan said, "Those companies which rank higher when it comes to women's representation on their boards outperform those that rank lower by double-digit differences in terms of return on equity etc."

Ramanathan beleives that women are emerging as equal candidates to men for top posts as firms are slowly focusing more on competence of the candidate rather than the gender.

"The current transformation of thought from looking at women on the basis of equality to one that focuses on a correlation to business growth and profitability is a very recent and therefore small-scale phenomenon," she said.

As per Executive Access MD Ronesh Puri, the trend of hiring women for senior level started a few years back but has gathered speed in last six to nine months.

"Since organizations are lacking in women executive at senior level, they are keener to collect the diversity. 50 - 60 per cent of organizations specially multinationals are very keen to collect the diversity," Puri said.

Experts said demand for women is high in sectors like IT, retail, hospitality, media and entertainment, travel and tourism, and banking, among others.

However, labor intensive sectors like mining, oil and natural gas and aviation as India are yet to provide women oriented support and infrastructure.

"...FMCG, retail, IT are more adaptable to the change and products being more household centric women are the key decision makers, hence to understand the women psyche its always better to have a women executive that can connect to the requirements and the thought process," Puri said.

The proposed Companies Bill 2012 also mandates that there should be at least one woman director on board for certain classes of companies.

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