Dr. Tanvi Gautam has created a crowd sourced list of “50 Indian women to follow on twitter“. To my pleasant surprise I am a part of this list.

Her blog post says -

Given my corporate leanings, and the interest in women and leadership, I decided to start there.  So I sent out a tweet:

“Searching for the Sheryl Sandbergs of Asia. Give me a name and reason”

The search lasted many weeks, tweeted and retweeted, reached Japan, China, India and US. Many liked my question, encouraged my efforts but no one knew of such a list.

In Asia my network is largely in India so that is where I got most responses from. The majority of the names were journalists and actors. Social media folks followed close. However, this list was not diverse enough and I searched some more.

By now I had moved past my interest in women leaders just from corporate India. Now it became about highlighting all women who represented a niche. Not about Klout scores, not about followers, not about time spent on twitter. So it became:

“Searching for the #top25 Indian women to follow on twitter.  Leaders of their niche, not just celebs and media folks”

I searched so long that the question may have faded from the memory of many who supported and encouraged this search. I raided twitter follower lists of famous people, tried popular twitter tools and tried to include as many unique niches as I could.

Today I send this list out and dedicate it to all women thought leaders from Asia, not just from media and film, not just the corporate world but all the ones that are making a difference in their own way.

It feels nice to be a on the list with the likes of Kiren Bedi, Gul Panag, Shabana Azmi and Sania Mirza. You should look up the list. I found some really interesting women that I would now like to know more about.