More women are coming into mainstream: Kishore Biyani

 Taking part in SBI’s economics conclave, Kishore Biyani, Group CEO, Future Group, tells SBI Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya that if consumption in clothing and food sector grows, the number of companies owned by Indians in manufacturing sector will grow. Edited excerpts

Arundhati Bhattacharya: Mr Biyani, you have retail chains. Labour force participation rate for working age women in India is still only 28.6% whereas in China it is actually as high as 70.4%. Even Bangladesh has twice our number. But when I visit your shops, I find a lot of women. Why is it that women are not a greater part of the workforce in India and do you think that we are really losing out as a country by not trying and getting more inclusion and gender diversity in the work places?

Kishore Biyani: Numbers in India are some times misleading and with every trend, there is a contra trend also. The trend which we are seeing, of a decline in women workforce is the decline in the farm labour because historically, farm labour has been a significant portion for women labourforce. But cultural shifts are happening. Girls are coming into the main stream. If you look at the number of charted accountants, designers, in the services sector, there is a remarkable shift happening.

Girl chidren are accepted more even in a state like Haryana and Rajasthan. There is a good amount of girls education going at a higher level. If you look at Bangladesh, there is one single industry which has got the maximum number of women working – the garment industry. The garment industry employs close to 4.2 million people, out of which 90% is women. One industry can change the skew ratio. As a company ourselves, we employ more than 45,000 people and 30% plus of our workforce are women. Our intension is to make it touch around 50%. Things are changing. As a society, we are changing, culturally we are changing and I think we will have to make efforts at the corporate level and there are certain businesses where woman workers can be perfect fits, especially the textile manufacturing industry. I believe if Indian consumption grows, especially on two sectors -- clothing and food, Indian companies will take lead. Look at Bangladesh, 92% of the companies which are into manufacturing are owned by Bangladeshis, probably only 5% are foreign owned. We have a statistics which says that if every Indian consumes Rs 2000 more every year, our GDP will grow by 2%.