Ms. Tanya Chaitanya, Chief Content Officer of Digital & Diversity Initiatives at Reliance and CEO of Her Circle

On the 13th of December, 2022 the Leadership Series was honoured by the presence of Ms. Tanya Chaitanya. Ms. Chaitanya was appointed Chief Content Officer of Digital & Diversity Initiatives at Reliance and CEO of Her Circle in April 2020 after a 13-year-long service as Editor-in-Chief and CCO at Femina India where she transformed India’s largest selling women’s magazine into India’s largest women’s digital platform with 7X growth.

Ms. Chaitanya presented the students with an eye-opening, interactive speech about her journey to where she is today, including various changes in plans and signs that lead her to her job in media today. She enlightened the students on how her role at Her Circle has been revolutionary in that she has conceptualised, created and executed it as a digital community for women worldwide. Her Circle has acquired 290 million+ reach and has 2 lakh registered women entrepreneurs since its launch on March 8, 2021 and it is India’s largest women’s content and social networking platform.

She also covered how her desire to expand an already well-established media publication such as Femina, fuelled her to be instrumental in brand expansion regionally with three successful spin-offs: Femina Hindi, Femina Tamil and Femina Bangla, both in print and online. Likewise, under her editorship, Femina expanded its magazine portfolio and successfully launched Femina Salon & Spa.

A strong advocate for women empowerment, Ms. Chaitanya has won 5 UNFPA Laadli Media Awards for Gender Sensitive reportage as well as multiple awards ranging from Woman of the Decade in Media Leadership and Gender Journalism by Women Economic Forum, Women Super Achiever Award by World Women Leadership Congress and Awards among others. It was hence, no surprise that the representation of females, or for that matter any gender, in the media was a prominent topic of discussion as well.

Before an animated question and answer session with the students concluded the talk, Ms. Chaitanya was kind enough to show students an example of the influential power of Her Circle in proving to be an informative, impactful, and moving outlet discussing issues faced by women and their families in rural villages largely concerning water scarcity.