MUMBAI: Twenty-eight-year-old Ankita Sinha had worked as a production engineer in turbo generator manufacturing in the state-run engineering company, Bharat Heavy Electrical Ltd (Bhel) for four years before she signed up for an executive MBA course at the Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad, a year ago. Sinha, who was the only female assigned to the production department at Bhel in her batch, wanted to accelerate her career growth and take on more leadership challenges.Like Sinha, Akanksha Bishnoi, a former manager at Maruti Suzuki India , felt the need to reskill and leapfrog her career. Bishnoi, an electrical and instrumentation engineer who has been an active volunteer for the ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ campaign in Haryana, is part of ISB’s executive MBA class of 2017.The group, which graduates this weekend, has the highest number of women professionals with 280 women (31%) in a batch of 903, the biggest increase since the programme’s inception 15 years ago. ISB’s first class of Post Graduate Programme in Management in 2002 had 128 students, out of which 26 were women.“We have the largest pool of women students in India, and this has been increasing. On the one hand, there is more awareness and willingness among women to reskill and chart out a growth path. On the other, companies are realising the need to tap the well-qualified women talent,” said Dishan Kamdar, deputy dean, Academic Programmes, ISB. The institute is among the first to start a one-year full-time MBA programme for working executives.ISB is not alone. Companies are become increasingly aware of the unique skillsets that women bring to the table and a large number of female professionals are aspiring to reskill themselves and are making it to the one-year executive MBA programme at premier business schools, including the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) at Calcutta, Bangalore and Kozhikode, among others.“Firms are increasingly aware of the need for greater diversity. Also, with the new Companies Act on the mandated need to have at least one woman on board, firms are looking at promoting women in leadership roles that is leading to the need for upgradation of skills,” said Biju Paul Abraham, dean, IIM Calcutta.IIM Calcutta’s PGPEX programme (Post Graduate Programme for Executives) batch of 2016-17 had 10 women out of 68 students, up from 6 in 2015-16 and 3 in 2014-15. The average age of women is 30, and they come from diverse backgrounds like information technology, manufacturing, automobile, infrastructure, retail, FMCG, consulting, etc.The number of women applicants for the one-year MBA programme (EPGP) at IIM Bangalore has also risen. In 2014-15, there were five women candidates in the one-year full-time residential MBA programme at IIM-B. In the class of 2017-18, which begins on March 31, 23 women candidates have been admitted. “Yes, we expect the trend to continue. They see a great value the programme can provide to their career, especially for those looking for a change,” said U Dinesh Kumar, professor and chairperson, Executive Post Graduate Programme in Management at IIM-B.At ISB, companies such as Credit Suisse, AT Kearney, Google, Bain, Crisil , GE India, etc. have all absorbed female students for leadership roles from the latest batch.At IIM Kozhikode, the representation of women in its Executive Post Graduate Programme in Management increased from 6% in 2014 (6 women in a batch of 92) to 16% in 2016 (24 in a batch of 152).“This trend is fairly common in the US and is now catching up in India too,” said D Rajiv Krishnan, partner, Ernst and Young. There’s a growing trend of women taking a second MBA either from a global business school or a premier institute in the country. For instance, there are cases where an HR person has reinvented herself as a marketing or strategy professional. “Women are aggressively going for better and better quality. They are very conscious about their career and growth path,” he said.Even non-IIMs such as Institute of Management Technology, Ghaziabad , which had hardly two or three women in the executive MBA batch a couple of years ago, has about 20% women in its latest batch of 40. Juggling marriage, motherhood and other crucial stages in life, women are giving equal importance to their careers. This is reflected in the increasing representation of women in workforce and hence there is a growing trend of women enrolling in executive MBA,” said Atish Chattopadhyay, director, IMT Ghaziabad.