: 12 Incredible Women Who Made 2021 Their Year, Making India Proud #IndiaNEWS #Empowerment Stories of successful women always inspire and empower others to follow suit. The year gone by was replete

12 Incredible Women Who Made 2021 Their Year, Making India Proud #IndiaNEWS #Empowerment
Stories of successful women always inspire and empower others to follow suit. The year gone by was replete with such stories of inspiring women achieving milestones in their respective fields like sports, business, activism, defence and so on.
Here’s a list of some incredible women who made themselves and the country proud in 2021:
Avani Lekhara
After meeting with an accident at the age of 11, Avani was trapped in a wheelchair as her lower body was paralysed. When everyone thought her life came to a standstill, Avani chose to start over. This 19-year-old girl from Jaipur became the first woman to win a gold medal in the Paralympics. In the category of R-2 women’s 10m Air Rifle, she set a new record in the 2020 Tokyo Paralympics. Training since 2015, this has been her first major international medal.

Falguni Nayar
By quitting a 20-year-long career in investment banking and starting a beauty startup from scratch at the age of 50, Falguni Nayar became one of the most successful women of the year. Founder of Nykaa, she is now India’s biggest self-made female billionaire as shares of the firm surged to a whopping 89 per cent in the last quarter of 2021. She owns half of the company worth . 5 billion. She left the managing director position of the Kotak Mahindra Group in 2012 to start Nykaa which gives Indians a unique mix of affordable, rare and luxury brands as well as cruelty-free products.

Harnaaz Sandhu
Harnaaz Sandhu is not only the girl who brought the Miss Universe crown to India after a long gap of 21 years but also someone who came over years of body shaming due to her thin figure. Hailing from Chandigarh, Harnaaz also advocates for normalising mental health issues. Her life with beauty pageants began when she was 17 and she participated in a national pageant representing her city. She went on to participate in Femina Miss India in 2019 and was crowned Femina Miss India Punjab the same year.

Mirabai Chanu
Winner of the silver medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics in the Womens 49 kg weightlifting category, Mirabai Chanu is the power lady of India. She made her debut at the 2016 Rio Olympics and became the second Indian in 22 years to grab gold at the World Weightlifting Championships after Karnam Malleswari. Mirabai was just 11 when she won her first-ever competitive gold medal. Born into a traditional family of Manipur, her strength was recognised by the family when she was made to collect firewood from a nearby hill.
Mirabai is the recipient of a Padma Shri (2018) and the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna Award (2018).

PV Sindhu
Ever since her victory in the 2013 Malaysian Open Grand Prix, PV Sindhu’s name has been synonymous with badminton in India.