Exclusive! Ram Charan's Wife Upasana Kamineni Konidela Calls for a BRICS Women’s Economic Corridor: "Don’t Just Give A Woman A Seat At The Table"

Calling for women’s empowerment to move beyond representation and toward measurable economic power, Upasana Kamineni Konidela, Vice Chairperson, Apollo Foundation, and Founder, URLife, proposed creating a BRICS Women’s Economic Corridor to connect women entrepreneurs across BRICS nations with greater access to capital, markets, partnerships, and cross-border opportunities.

Delivering a special address at the BRICS Women’s Business Alliance (WBA) Women-Led Development Summit 2026, under India’s BRICS Presidency, Kamineni Konidela challenged policymakers and business leaders to rethink women's role in economic growth. “The conversation can no longer be only about how we include more women in business. The bigger question is: what would BRICS economies look like if women were at the centre of how growth itself is designed?” She argued that representation without influence, participation without economic power, employment without financial independence, and empowerment without ownership are incomplete. Echoing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of moving from women’s development to women-led development, Kamineni Konidela called for the next phase of the BRICS WBA to be measured by tangible economic outcomes.

She proposed three clear shifts: startup platforms that lead to capital, not just awards; networking that leads to contracts, not just exchanged cards; and financial inclusion that leads to assets and investments, not just bank accounts. At the heart of her address was a call to move the global women’s agenda from empowerment to ownership, defined by three fundamentals: a woman’s health, her wealth, and her freedom to choose. “Don’t just give a woman a seat at the table. Give her equity in the table because that is where real economic power lies.” The proposed BRICS Women’s Economic Corridor would seek to turn the strength of the BRICS network into an actionable economic platform, helping women-led businesses access investment, buyers, markets and partnerships across member nations. Kamineni Konidela also acknowledged Dr. Sangita Reddy, Joint Managing Director, Apollo Hospitals, who chaired the BRICS WBA India Chapter during India’s 2021 BRICS Chairship, and Avarna Jain, current Chairperson of the BRICS WBA India Chapter, for advancing the alliance’s women-led growth agenda.

The BRICS Women’s Business Alliance was established to strengthen women’s role as drivers of economic growth, expand business networks, deepen B2B cooperation and connect women-owned enterprises with global value chains and cross-border opportunities. Her message from New Delhi was unequivocal: the next chapter of women-led development must not simply count how many women participate; it must measure how many women own, invest, lead and create wealth.