Oraliga Healthcare India: Retaining and Empowering Women in Field Sales

In 2024, Sonal Gupta, director of sales and marketing, human resources, at Oraliga Healthcare (India) Ltd. (OHIL), faced a critical challenge. Over the previous two years, she and her team had driven women's representation in field sales from 10 per cent to 17 per cent through a series of targeted initiatives, including industry benchmarking, internal studies, and new organizational practices. However, a slowdown in the fast-moving consumer goods industry and persistent sales force attrition threatened to erode these gains as leadership attention shifted toward core business resilience. Field sales, OHIL's largest employee base, remained a predominantly male environment, where retaining women was particularly difficult due to personal, societal, and structural barriers. Gupta needed to determine how to sustain, and ideally advance, the progress made in gender representation and inclusion within field sales, even as external pressures mounted and organizational priorities competed for resources and attention. Renuka Kamath is affiliated with SP Jain Institute of Management & Research;Bindu Kulkarni is affiliated with SP Jain Institute of Management & Research;Upasna A Agarwal is affiliated with Ivey Publishing