Financial Express Leadership Awards 2026: Jury Led by Kumar Mangalam Birla to Select Winners

The search for the best of India Inc begins in Mumbai on Wednesday, when a high-powered jury led by Aditya Birla Group Chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla sits down to pick the winners of the inaugural FE Leadership Awards 2026. Joining Birla at the jury table is a formidable line-up drawn from banking, law, private equity and professional services: Arundhati Bhattacharya, former chairman of State Bank of India and now President & CEO, Salesforce , South Asia; Cyril Shroff, managing partner, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas; Sanjay Nayar, former CEO of Citigroup India and South Asia and former CEO of KKR India; Amit Chandra, chairman, Bain Capital; Rajiv Memani, chairman & CEO, EY India; and Manish Kejriwal, founder and managing partner, Kedaara Capital. Their task: to identify the leaders, companies and ideas that stood out in a year when disruption was relentless, markets were being reshaped and the demands on corporate leadership became tougher. The FE Leadership Awards will celebrate business leaders who are helping drive India’s growth story, companies that have successfully reinvented themselves, ideas that have disrupted established markets and innovations that could change the way business is done. They will also recognise the financial stewards who have protected corporate balance sheets in a challenging environment and smaller enterprises that have punched well above their weight. There is room, too, for the new generation of business builders. The awards will recognise young founders whose platforms have challenged legacy models, entrepreneurs who have created new markets and businesses, and companies and leaders making sustainability central to the way they operate. In its inaugural edition, the FE Leadership Awards will also single out a CEO whose performance in 2025-26 put him or her ahead of the pack. At the other end of the leadership journey, the Lifetime Achievement award will salute a business leader who has built an enduring institution — brick by brick, over decades. The jury’s deliberations will be backed by data collated by EY from company annual reports and authoritative sources including the Registrar of Companies and ratings agencies. But numbers will only take the process so far. The jury will bring its collective experience to bear in assessing performance, leadership, innovation and impact before arriving at the winners. The awards span 11 categories: CEO of the Year, Company of the Year, Start-up of the Year, Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year, Young Turks, CFO of the Year, MNC of the Year, Innovation of the Year, Sustainability Leader/Company, Lifetime Achievement and MSME of the Year. On Wednesday, the spreadsheets, shortlists and supporting dossiers will be on the table. Then comes the harder part: deciding who deserves to make the cut.