Best of 2025: India’s 10 Most Inspiring Women Who Broke Barriers in Cinema, Conservation, Sport & More

Someone restored a wetland that everyone thought was already lost. Someone broke a world record from a small room in Chandigarh. Someone brought home India’s first Grand Prix at Cannes. Someone carried a rhino calf to safety through waist-deep floodwater.

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Across India, women didn’t just make headlines this year — they shifted what we imagine is possible. Their courage showed up in classrooms, marshlands, literary festivals, farm fields, forest camps and global stages, often in the quietest, most determined ways.

Here are 10 women who redefined 2025 with the force of their conviction.

1. Payal Kapadia: Rewriting Indian cinema’s global story

Payal Kapadia’s Cannes win didn’t just make news; it shifted the way the world sees Indian cinema. When All We Imagine As Light became the first Indian film to win the Grand Prix, it closed a 30-year wait and opened a new chapter for homegrown storytelling.

Her journey started at FTII, where she picked up her camera to explore identity, longing, and the everyday lives that rarely make it to global screens. Today, her breakthrough has become a signal to young filmmakers across India — especially women — that their stories have a place on the world stage.

2. Varsha Deshpande: Fighting gender-biased sex selection

For over three decades, Advocate Varsha Deshpande has been India’s silent storm against gender-biased sex selection. Her fight began with a simple, uncomfortable question — why were girls disappearing from her community? That question became the foundation of Dalit Mahila Vikas Mandal and a movement that has exposed some of Maharashtra’s most entrenched illegal sex-determination rackets.

Varsha has led 50-plus decoy operations, including the landmark cases in Beed that sent rogue doctors to prison. In 2025, her work earned her the UN Population Award, but she sees it as recognition for the brave women who stood beside her in sting rooms, courtrooms, and village councils. Her mission remains clear: every girl deserves a chance at life, dignity and safety.

Read the full story here.

3. Dr Anjlee Agarwal: Building an accessible India for all

Dr Anjlee Agarwal knows the weight of an inaccessible world — she has lived it. Living with muscular dystrophy, she experienced firsthand how a missing ramp or an uneven footpath could shrink a person’s freedom. Instead of accepting it, she turned that frustration into a lifelong mission through Samarthyam.

Over the years, her team has helped redesign hundreds of public spaces — government buildings, bus stations, schools, toilets, even pilgrimage routes — so that people with disabilities can move with dignity, not dependence. Her work has shaped accessibility guidelines across India and built a new vocabulary of inclusion in places that once shut people out.

Her message is simple but powerful: accessibility is not charity; it’s a right.

4. Leena Nair: Leading Chanel on the world stage

From Kolhapur to the helm of Chanel, Leena Nair’s journey reads like a masterclass in leadership built on empathy. The engineer-turned-HR professional broke barrier after barrier at Hindustan Unilever before becoming its youngest and first woman CHRO. Then came the call that would change everything: an invitation to lead one of the world’s most influential luxury houses.

As Global CEO of Chanel, she now guides 36,000 employees across continents — bringing with her a leadership style rooted in inclusion, emotional intelligence, and the kind of people-first thinking that rarely makes headlines but shapes cultures.

Her rise signals something bigger: Indian leadership belongs on the world’s biggest stages.

5. Banu Mushtaq: Elevating Kannada literature globally

When Heart Lamp won the International Booker in 2025, Banu Mushtaq became the first Kannada writer to ever receive the honour — and the world suddenly turned its eyes to a literary tradition long overshadowed in global publishing. Her stories, shaped by coastal Karnataka’s memory, migration, and womanhood, travelled across borders through Daisy Rockwell’s translation.

For many readers, this was their first experience of Kannada literature. For Banu, it was a moment that reaffirmed what she has always believed: that regional stories hold universal worlds inside them.

Her win marks not just a personal milestone but a cultural breakthrough for Indian languages.

6. Janvi Jindal: India’s youngest Guinness powerhouse

At 18, most teenagers are thinking about college applications. Janvi Jindal was collecting Guinness World Records. Eleven of them.

The Chandigarh-based skater trained herself through YouTube videos — resilience instead of a coach, practice instead of a fancy gym. Her records include 32 full spins in 30 seconds and a staggering 72 one-wheeled spins in a minute. What began as a lockdown hobby to stay active became a path that placed her just behind Sachin Tendulkar in India’s all-time record list.

Janvi’s journey is a reminder that talent can come from anywhere — and discipline can take it everywhere.

7. Jayshree Vencatesan: Guardian of Chennai’s last great wetland

When people dismissed her as “just a maami in a saree”, Jayshree Vencatesan simply got to work. Armed with scientific clarity and unshakeable persistence, she stepped into Chennai’s collapsing wetlands and began restoring what many had already written off — starting with the Pallikaranai Marsh.

Through Care Earth Trust, she has revived 44 wetlands, mapped species, stopped encroachments, and protected ecosystems that millions depend on. In 2025, she became the first Indian to receive the Ramsar Wetland Conservation Award, a moment that recognised decades of grit, science, and community-driven conservation.

Her work shows that saving a city’s natural heritage sometimes starts with one person refusing to look away.

8. Dr Sonali Ghosh: Safeguarding Kaziranga’s wildlife legacy

Kaziranga’s landscape demands courage — from guards who patrol in floods to officers who must protect rhinos and tigers through crises. As Field Director, Dr Sonali Ghosh has become one of its strongest anchors. In 2025, she became the first Indian to win the IUCN Kenton Miller Award for innovation in protected-area management.

Her leadership blends science, community partnership, and steady crisis response. Whether preparing for monsoon floods, strengthening anti-poaching measures, or supporting frontline forest staff, she leads with uncommon empathy and clarity.

Her work reinforces a truth India is only beginning to honour: conservation thrives when people and nature are protected together.

Know more about her efforts here. 

9. Bibi Jaan and The Millets Collective: Making women farmers unstoppable

When Bibi Jan first tried to lead her local SHG, her family refused to let her step out alone. She pushed back — and won. Today, she fills out bank forms confidently and guides others who struggle. 

Under her leadership, a 14-member group has grown into a collective of more than 1,000 women running their own millet processing unit and farming across 30 villages using organic, climate-resilient methods. Many have moved from daily-wage labour to becoming agripreneurs.

This year, their work earned the UNDP Equator Prize — often called the ‘Nobel Prize of Biodiversity Conservation’ — placing their grassroots movement on the world stage.

10. Diana Pundole: Racing into motorsport history

Motorsport is a world of speed, precision, and intense competition — and for the longest time, almost no women. Diana Pundole changed that. In 2025, she became the first Indian woman to race a Ferrari internationally, competing in the Ferrari 296 Challenge across the Middle East.

Her journey began on local karting tracks in Pune and grew through years of disciplined training and persistence. Today, she stands on a racetrack that once felt unimaginably distant, proving that performance — not stereotypes — decides who belongs in the driver’s seat.