Chanda Kochhar first woman to get ET Biz Leader Award

The list of recipients of India's biggest, most anticipated business awards --- The Economic Times Awards for Corporate Excellence 2011 -- is finally out. Chanda Kochhar, managing director of ICICI Bank, the country's largest private sector lender, has been named Business Leader of the Year while the 75-year young Bajaj Auto has raced ahead of other nominees to bag the Company of the Year Award.
The selection of Chanda Kochhar is significant as she is the first woman to win the award. The jury recognized her achievement in stabilising ICICI Bank, which had accumulated an undesirably high proportion of non-performing assets during a period of rapid growth in the first decade of the century.
Sweet success in the form of the Emerging Company of the Year Award has gone to Shree Renuka Sugars, whose managing director, Narendra Murkhumbi, won the Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2010. The new Entrepreneur of the Year is Rahul Bhatia, Group Managing Director, InterGlobe Enterprises, best known as the owner of IndiGo, an airline that has managed to maintain its upward trajectory even in the roughest of weather.
Over the years, ET's Global Indian Award has come to be recognised worldwide as a prestigious accolade, one that its recipients gladly fly across the world for. This year, the recipient is Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup Inc, who has successfully steered his organization back from the brink after the crises that hit the American financial sector.
In the Corporate Citizen of the Year award category, ET pulled a surprise by naming, not a corporate trust, but a successful business organization. The Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation, owner of the Amul brand, has received much deserved recognition for its role in turning India into the largest milk producer in the world.
As citizens across the country are having their retinas scanned for their Aadhaar card, ET has recognized the contributions of its prime mover, Nandan Nilekani, Chairman, UIDAI, with the Policy Change Agent of the Year Award.
And finally, the most poignant of ET's Awards is arguably the Lifetime Achievement Award. This year's recipient, former RBI governor Y V Reddy, joins a list of doyens that includes Dhirubhai Ambani, Verghese Kurien, Rahul Bajaj and Deepak Parekh.
The jury for the ET Awards For Corporate Excellence was led by Jamie Dimon, CEO and chairman of JP Morgan Chase & Co, and included HDFC chairman Deepak Parekh, ICICI Bank chairman emeritus K V Kamath, Mahindra & Mahindra CEO Anand Mahindra, Aditya Birla Group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla, Unilever COO Harish Manwani and Zia Mody, senior partner, AZB & Partners.