10 India Inc Leaders free Achievement
10 India Inc Leaders from the world of business were named for India’s top civilian honours ahead of Republic Day, going past more common fields.
Such as public affairs and social work for the first time in three and 12 years, respectively. Last year, ‘trade and industry’ was the least-represented major field, with just three names.
10 India Inc Leaders, this is only the fourth year in a decade that the share of businesspersons among all recipients crossed 5%, the others being 2016, 2020 and 2022. This share hit a peak of nearly 11% in 2010.
10 India Inc Leaders, A total of 139 awardees were named by the government on Saturday, of whom 51 were from the field of art, 30 from literature, education and journalism, 10 each from medicine and business, and eight from social work. Social work last had such a low tally in 2018.
Last year, three of the 132 Padma awardees were from the ‘trade and industry’ category. (The initial list released in 2024 had four names, but one name was later classified into a different category on the official dashboard run by the home ministry.)
The 10 recipients from India’s business fraternity this year are:
Padma Vibhushan
Osamu Suzuki (late former chief of Japan’s Suzuki Motor Corp.)
Padma Bhushan
Nalli Kuppuswami Chetti (chair of Nalli Silks)
Pankaj Patel (chair of Zydus Lifesciences)
Padma Shri
Arundhati Bhattacharya (chair and CEO of Salesforce India and former chair of State Bank of India)
Onkar Singh Pahwa (chairman and managing director, Avon Cycles)
Pawan Goenka (chair of IN-SPACe and former MD of Mahindra & Mahindra)
Prashanth Prakash (founding partner, Accel India)
R. G. Chandramogan (chair of Hatsun Agro Product)
Sajjan Bhajanka (chair of Century Plyboards and Star Cement)
Sally Holkar (founder-CEO, WomenWeave Charitable Trust)
Historically, art has been the biggest category among the four top honours in India (the Bharat Ratna and the three Padma awards), with 23% of all 5,379 recipients so far, followed by literature and education (20%).
‘Trade and industry’ has given 230 awardees, including 149 since 2000, indicating how businesspersons’ importance has increased in a post-liberalization India. Only one businessperson has ever been named Bharat Ratna: industrialist J.R.D. Tata in 1992.
The distribution of Padma awards in 2025 reflects a diverse pattern across India’s 36 states and union territories, with 33 of them represented at least once. Individuals from Maharashtra received the most Padma Awards (14), closely followed by those from Tamil Nadu (13), Uttar Pradesh (10), and West Bengal and Karnataka (nine each).
Six of the seven recipients of the second-highest civilian honour, Padma Vibhushan, this year were Indians, one each from Karnataka, Gujarat, Bihar, Kerala, Telangana and Chandigarh. Historically, Maharashtra has taken the centre stage with 858 winners (or 17% of total) across the four top honours, closely followed by the national capital, Delhi (843). The next state on the list is Tamil Nadu with 462 honours.
Foreign nationals are also given the honours. The US boasts of the biggest number of such awardees historically (121), followed by the UK (43), France (20), and Japan (15). This year, 10 winners were from other countries, with a Kuwaiti getting an honour for the first time: yoga practitioner and entrepreneur Sheikha Shaikha Ali Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, who met Prime Minister Narendra Modi last month, has got a Padma Shri under the ‘medicine’ category.
(with inputs from Manjul Paul)