Power of Intent, Community & Purpose with Madhura Dasgupta Sinha

Madhura DasGupta Sinha is the Founder & CEO of Aspire For Her, a unique start-up to motivate women to enter and stay in the workforce. Madhura has been a banker for the last 25 years – holding leadership positions in IDFC, Standard Chartered and ANZ Grindlays Bank, after an MBA from XLRI and Electrical Engineering from Jadavpur University. Madhura was one of the 12 women across India to be awarded the British Chevening Scholarship in 2003.

Since its inception on Women’s Day in 2020, Aspire For Her has rapidly grown into a global movement. With a vibrant community of members, supporters, and mentors, this initiative is making headlines and earning accolades from UN Women, T-Hub, NDTV, the International Advertising Association, and more. Aspire For Her is also proudly part of the first-ever cohort of Women Founders launched by Google India.

Madhura grew up in a highly gender-equal household, with a feminist dad and a powerful, career-focussed mom. The idea of biases was wholly alien to her and she believed that women could do whatever they wanted to, if they were determined about it.

But then she started working. And she started having first-hand experiences with biases that only grew more prominent, the higher up the ladder she got. Eventually, she started hitting glass ceilings. Although she continued striving, she now realised that determination and grit were not enough to get a woman where she wanted to be. The world needed to change to keep up with women’s ambitions.

She decided to do something about it. And on her 50th birthday, she did. She left her high-flying banking career to start Aspire For Her, together with her mother and her daughter.

At Aspire for Her, Madhura and her team work with women of all strata to motivate them to enter and stay in the workforce – as job seekers and job creators. They strongly believe that financial independence is the cornerstone of all other forms of independence.