As the world celebrates International Women’s Day 2026, this year’s theme “Give to Gain” underscores a powerful principle: when organizations actively invest in empowering women through opportunities, mentorship, and leadership pathways, industries and societies gain stronger innovation, resilience, and long-term growth. In the context of the global clean energy transition, this message carries particular significance. The renewable energy sector is entering a phase defined not only by rapid technological advancement but also by the need for a highly capable and diverse workforce that can design, operate, and manage complex energy systems.
On International Women’s Day, women leaders highlighted their pivotal role in advancing innovation and building trust across India’s clean energy sector.
Reflecting on the importance of inclusive workforce development within the renewable energy industry, Ms. Beenal Raychura, Head HR, ENGIE India, shared her perspective:
“ India’s renewable energy transition will be shaped as much by talent as by technology or capital. As the country scales hybrid and storage infrastructure, success will increasingly depend on who is designing, operating, and leading these complex systems. Diversity strengthens judgement, sharpens risk management, and reinforces the disciplined operating cultures that large-scale infrastructure demands.
For our sector, inclusion must therefore be structural, not symbolic. It means creating visible leadership pathways, enabling active sponsorship, and embedding mentorship into the way teams are built and grown. At ENGIE, this intent translates into action through a combination of classroom learning, ENGIE University, and structured mentorship programmes. This focus on capability-building is anchored in a strong safety culture, reflected in more 33+ MN safe man-hours achieved over a decade of operations in India.
Infrastructure at national scale calls for both depth of expertise and diversity of perspective. Building teams that bring together both is central to how we execute projects, manage risk, and deliver long-term energy security for India.”
Shreya Mishra, Co-founder and CEO, SolarSquare
Shreya Mishra is leading SolarSquare with a clear consumer promise: rooftop solar should be as simple and trusted as a household appliance. A serial entrepreneur who previously founded Flyrobe, she pivoted to climate-tech to build a brand and operating model designed for scale across Indian homes, housing societies, and small businesses.
Under her leadership, SolarSquare has powered more than 20,000 homes and 200 housing societies, expanded to 20-plus cities, and raised $59.5 million to date from investors including Lightspeed, Elevation Capital, Lightrock, Lowercarbon Capital, and Rainmatter. She has also pushed product and process innovation, including WindPRO Mount, described as India’s first cyclone-proof rooftop solar structure, alongside easy financing and clearer ROI pathways to widen adoption. In 2025–26, she was featured on the Hurun India U40 list, as the youngest woman entrepreneur on the list.
What makes her a defining Women’s Day leader is not just scale, but intent: treating quality and trust as the real accelerators of clean energy.
Radhika Choudary, Co-founder and Director, Freyr Energy
Radhika Choudary’s work sits in the part of rooftop solar that decides whether the category becomes mainstream: execution. Rooftop solar is a high-friction purchase. Customers worry about design, service, warranties, maintenance, and whether the installer will pick up the phone six months later.
Choudary represents a leadership style built for this reality: removing confusion, strengthening delivery discipline, and making adoption easier for households and small businesses. In a sector where one bad installation can damage trust for an entire neighbourhood, this kind of operational leadership is climate impact in its most practical form.
Vaishali Nigam Sinha, Co-founder and Chairperson, Sustainability, ReNew
Big renewables win headlines with scale, but they earn legitimacy through governance. Vaishali Nigam Sinha’s work highlights why the energy transition is not only an engineering story, it is also a credibility story. As a sustainability leader in one of India’s best-known renewable platforms, she represents the push to embed climate responsibility into strategy, not just reporting.
Her Women’s Day relevance is direct: when women sit at the table where risk, ethics, and long-term accountability are decided, the transition becomes stronger, not softer.
Tanya Singhal, Founder, SolarArise; Founder, Mynzo Carbon
Tanya Singhal’s journey captures a shift in the clean energy world: building is not enough anymore. Measuring and proving impact is becoming just as important. With experience spanning solar and climate-tech, she represents the move from asset creation to climate intelligence, where companies are expected to track emissions, report credibly, and make decisions backed by data.
In the Women’s Day context, her work signals a bigger truth: women are not only leading deployment, they are also shaping the standards of accountability that will define the next decade of climate action.
Nidhi Gupta, Co-founder and Director, Rays Experts; Founder, Mighty Avengers Solar
Solar success is often judged by panels and payback, but the real test is time. Can the installation survive harsh summers, heavy rains, and high winds? That durability depends on the “unseen” layer: structures, materials, and engineering precision.
Nidhi Gupta’s work draws attention to this backbone of reliability. By operating in solar structures and manufacturing, she represents the part of the ecosystem that quietly raises standards across the industry. Her Women’s Day relevance is powerful because it reframes leadership: impact is not only what is visible, it is what holds.
If India wants rooftop solar to become truly mainstream, the market must behave like a consumer category: transparent, safe, service-led, and dependable. The women featured here are shaping exactly that future, where clean energy is not just installed, it is trusted.
As the renewable energy sector continues to evolve, the principle behind “Give to Gain” reinforces the importance of investing in people as much as technology. By creating environments where women can access leadership opportunities, mentorship, and skill development, the clean energy industry can strengthen its talent pipeline while accelerating the transition toward sustainable power systems.
In doing so, the sector not only advances gender inclusion but also builds the institutional capability required to deliver reliable, secure, and future-ready energy infrastructure for generations to come.
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