(FORTUNE Magazine) – Naina Lal Kidwai has ridden a flair for numbers to become India's most important investment banker in its most important investment bank in what may become its most important industry--information technology. Her odyssey began in 1977, when she graduated from Delhi University with an economics degree. "I decided that acquiring more degrees was my best safeguard against gender discrimination," she said. So she did a chartered accountancy course in India, then in 1982 became the first female Indian citizen to graduate from Harvard Business School. Back in India, she rose through the ranks at ANZ Grindlays during the 1980s and joined Morgan Stanley in 1994 as head of investment banking, just as the country's infotech industry began to blossom. Things got off to a rocky start. In 1995 the company suffered a black eye when a domestic mutual fund it launched turned into a fiasco. But by 1999, JM Morgan Stanley was the No. 1 investment bank in India in terms of M&A, with deals worth nearly $700 million.

What's behind the astonishing turnaround? In large part, Kidwai. She was the one who decided that Morgan should go full-speed ahead in IT, and it was her connections that helped the firm do so successfully. Though Kidwai is based in New Delhi, she spends much of her time shuttling to tech hotspots like Hyderabad and Bangalore to raise cash for Nasdaq-listed IT companies like Wipro and Infosys. Kidwai handles both accounts, drawing in lucrative deals like Wipro's forthcoming $200 million to $300 million ADR issue.

Morgan is now setting its sights on getting a piece of India's agonizingly slow, but potentially lucrative, privatization action. Again, Kidwai is leading the charge. Her current challenge: persuading foreign investors like British Airways to take a stake in state-owned Air India, perhaps the world's least-favorite airline.

--Neel Chowdhury