Isha, Akash Ambani, Byju's

Raveendran debut in Fortune's list

Source: PTI

This year's list includes 40 influential people under 40 years of

age in five categories -- finance, technology, healthcare,
government and politics, and media and entertainment.

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's twins Isha and Akash, and edtech startup
Byju's founder Byju Raveendran are among the Indians who have debuted
in Fortune's '40 Under 40' list of influential people around the globe.

Stating that the coronavirus pandemic has fundamentally altered the way
people work and socialise, Fortune magazine said executives have moved
quickly to support and empower employees while grappling with daunting
challenges to the way their businesses operate.

"To reflect this wave of transformation, we decided that we needed to

embrace change in this year's 40 Under 40. We needed to go bigger -- and
search more widely," it said.

This year's list includes 40 influential people under 40 years of age in five
categories -- finance, technology, healthcare, government and politics, and
media and entertainment.

In the technology list, Isha and Akash Ambani feature with Byju
Raveendran.

"They say data is the new oil -- and when it comes to Reliance Industries,
India's largest company, that's literally the case," Fortune said, adding the
47-year-old conglomerate amassed a fortune in petrochemicals before
dominating the country's mobile connectivity market with Jio, a low-cost
wireless carrier which debuted in 2016.

Reliance is a family business.

Akash joined the company in 2014 after receiving an economics degree

from Brown University.

Isha joined a year later, following stints at Yale, Stanford and McKinsey.
"As Jio board members, they helped seal the company's recent megadeal
with Facebook -- $5.7 billion for a 9.99 per cent stake -- plus major follow-
on investments from marquee tech titans like Google, Qualcomm, and
Intel.

“The flurry of investments lent the business an eye-popping $65 billion

private valuation," it said.

The Ambani scions, it said, lead enviable lives, "attending private concerts
featuring Beyonce, partying with buddies Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas,
living it up in a 27-story residential skyscraping pleasure palace in
Mumbai."

"When the glam siblings are not basking in unfathomable luxury, they're
training -- along with their younger brother, Anant, 25, a more recent
addition to Jio's board -- to take on their father's empire. A major proving
ground will be e-commerce," it said.

Recently, Akash and Isha helped launch JioMart, a venture that aims to
challenge Amazon and Walmart's Flipkart for command of India's massive
and fast-growing online shopping market. "Hey, even heirs have to earn
their keep."

Regarding Raveendran, Fortune said he has shown the world that it really

is possible to build a massively successful online education company.

"Byju's, as the company is known, has become India's biggest education

technology company, helping millions of students prep and study for the
most important exams of their lives while teaching them a thing or two
about core topics like mathematics and science," it said.

Since its founding in 2011, the red-hot education start-up has raised over $1
billion and is now worth more than $10 billion.

"Raveendran will need that cash as he aims to expand Byju's into new
countries like the United States and the United Kingdom," Fortune said.

Though the education business tends to slow down in the summer,

Raveendran has been keeping busy.

In August, Byju's bought the education technology start-up WhiteHat Jr for

$300 million.
Manu Kumar Jain, managing director of Xiaomi India, also features on the
list.

"Jain knew nothing about smartphones when Chinese giant Xiaomi tapped
him in 2014 to build its India operations from the ground up. But he did
know a thing or two about startups," Fortune said.

The last company he founded, Jabong, was a fashion e-commerce player

that was sold to Flipkart.

In his quest for knowledge at the start of his new gig, the executive regularly
carried between 30 to 40 smartphones in his bag, testing out features and
checking out competitors.

"His (literal) heavy lifting paid off: Under Jain, Xiaomi overtook Korean
colossus Samsung to become the smartphone leader in India in just three
years, bolstered by a strategy to act more like an Indian company," it added.
Source: PTI