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Episode Description:

In the third episode of Women Leading Together, Julia speaks with Rema Subramanian and Ritu Verma, whose 14-year bond has transformed their India based investment fund into a globally recognised powerhouse, raising over $200 Mn while building a resilient team and brand.

Rema and Ritu share their secret of working together as women leaders: fostering trust, aligning upon core values, and embracing differences to complement each other’s strengths. Their collaboration thrives on open communication and a shared focus on organisational goals rather than personal agendas.

“You always need pace setters who keep the race moving forward,” Rema notes. “It’s not about passing the baton but ensuring you’re nudging each other forward and staying relaxed about who sets the pace at different times.”

Explore more such insights in this episode that exemplifies female partnerships that drive results in high-stake environments.

About the Guests

Rema Subramanian

Rema Subramanian is a Co-founder and serves as Managing Partner at Ankur Capital. She serves as a Board Member at BigHaat. Prior to Ankur, Rema has three decades of experience in building and scaling operations across various sectors like financial services, education, IT, packaging, etc. in India. She has headed several companies across various sectors, growing many from scratch to large-scale businesses. She has deep domain experience in the education and outsourcing sectors. She brings the unique capabilities of having been an entrepreneur and worked across sectors. She is a management accountant from AICWA, Inter-Company Secretary, and systems manager from ICFAI.

Ritu Verma

Ritu Verma is a Co-Founder and serves as Managing Partner at Ankur Capital. She also serves as Board Member at Daily Dump, BigHaat, String Bio and TESSOL. She has over a decade of investing and operational experience across various sectors. Prior to starting Ankur, Ritu was director at Truven, a boutique advisory company for venture funds looking at investments in India and SE Asia. She covered deal sourcing, due diligence, M&A target identification in renewable energy, health, agriculture, and materials. She also has over 10 yrs of industry experience working across different functional roles product development, supply chain, branding and marketing at Philips and Unilever. Her key focus as an intrapreneur was to take products from the bench to market. Ritu serves on the board of ICAAP (IKP Centre for Advancement of Agriculture), CropIn Technologies Pvt Ltd and PBK Waste Mangement Pvt Ltd. She holds an MBA from INSEAD with a focus on entrepreneurship and venture capital and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Pennsylvania.

About the Host

Julia Middleton

Julia Middleton is the host of the Women Emerging podcast and a best-selling author of “If that’s leading, I’m in” as well as two previous books: “Leading beyond Authority” and “Cultural Intelligence”. She is deeply committed to helping people from all backgrounds to find their own approach to leading.

In 2020, Julia launched Women Emerging and in 2022 she lead an expedition of 24 women to find ‘an approach to leading that resonates with women’. She now leads expeditions with women all over the world based on 4Es methodology, discovered in the first expedition.

Prior to that, Julia was founder and, for over thirty years, Chief Executive of Common Purpose, which grew to become one of the biggest leadership development organisations in the world.
Julia is also an Ambassador for the Aurora Prize based in Armenia, on the boards of Alfanar Venture Philanthropy in the Arab World and Equality Now, which operates globally, and on the Advisory Councils of Fundacao Dom Cabral in Brazil and Synapse in Pakistan.

Born in London and brought up in New York, Julia was educated at French Lycées and graduated from the London School of Economics. She is married, with five children and lots of grandchildren.