India’s flagship hydrocarbon event, Petrotech, this time around has a dose of women power. It will start with a pre-event on women and the highlight of the show is a spiritual talk by widely acclaimed Brahma Kumari Shivani. The delegates who will attend her lecture include energy ministers from at least 17 countries and top executives of global hydrocarbon majors.
Shivani Verma, better known as sister Shivani, will be the first such spiritual leader to give inspirational speech at the international hydrocarbon summit. She will enter into an elite league of international leaders who have delivered special lectures at Petrotech over the last 12 years. These include global energy scholar Daniel Yergin and Abdallah S Jum'ah, former head of Saudi Aramco, the world's largest producer of crude oil.
Petrotech is being attended by 6,000 participants from 68 countries. Shivani is a Brahma Kumari teacher and a member of the Brahma Kumaris World Spiritual University. Her lecture will be on the third day of the Petrotech conference on Wednesday. An Electronics Engineering graduate from Pune University, Shivani's
TV series Happiness Unlimited, with Hindi cinema actor Suresh Oberoi, was adapted into a bestseller book recently.
“We believe that women are one of the greatest contributors to the economic development of India and it is extremely important to encourage women participation in every industry. Today, when the world is talking about women leadership and women being at the forefront, we would like to bring women officers, leaders,entrepreneurs, etc. under one roof to ensure strong engagement and insightful discussions,” said B Ashok, chairman of Indian Oil Corporation (IndianOil).
According to the organisers, a dedicated hashtag #womenatpetrotech has been created, which would be used across social media platforms, news and media, highlighting activities specifically for female attendees, papers presented by women during the conference and women speakers. The key global women speakers who will attend the event include Rebecca Liebert, president and chief executive officer of Honeywell and Audrey Mascarenhas, President and chief executive of Questor Technology.
Among the Indian women hydrocarbon leaders, who will be addressing the event include Former Chairman and MD of Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Nishi Vasudeva, Former Chairman and MD of Hindustan Organic Chemicals Reena Ramachandran, Chairman of State Bank of India Arundhati Bhattacharya and McKinsey Global Institute Fellow Mekala Krishnan. Vasudeva was the first women to become the chairman of a Navratna public sector company. Though India has the second largest woman population in the world, India Inc witnessed only a few women chiefs, which includes Chanda Kochhar of ICICI Bank, Shikha Sharma of Axis
Bank, Naina Lal Kidwai of HSBC India, Vinita Bali of Britannia Industries and Kalpana Morparia of JPMorgan India.
In public sector, the representation of women among the top honchos is even less, with people like Arundhati Bhattacharya of State Bank of India, Ranjana Kumari, who became the first woman head of a public sector bank when she took charge of Indian Bank, Allahabad Bank
chairman and managing director (CMD) S A Panse and former CMD of
Hindustan Organic Chemicals Reena Ramachandran becoming part of the
elite league.
Petrotech will also host special sessions dedicated to youth. “India
aspires to get $ 100 billion investment in the oil and gas sector by
2022 and events like PETROTECH provides synergies for all sub sectors.
The participants would get a global networking opportunity,” said
Dharmendra Pradhan, Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas.
In addition to this, the Petrotech Youth Forum will be held on
December 6-7, 2016 at the Hotel Pride Plaza, Aerocity.
