Renuka Ramnath, 

When she quit as head of ICICI Venture, Ramnath was managing a $2 billion corpus. She went on to start Multiples Alternate Asset Management, a private equity firm, from her son’s bedroom. In a little over two years, the firm, which raised a $450 million sector-agnostic fund, has made investments in a drilling equipment company and a restaurant chain. What Ramnath values most is that she is her own boss and has handpicked her team. But it is her investors—including state pension funds from Canada and Kuwait, a Britain-based development finance institution, and a host of domestic banks and institutions—that demonstrate Ramnath’s standing in the industry.