Meet 40 Young Business Leaders Selected by BW Businessworld for Its 2nd Edition of 40 Under 40 Awards and Summit

BW Businessworld has announced the final 40 winners of the 2nd Edition of 40 Under 40 Awards and Summit on September 27, 2018 at The Leela Ambience, Gurugram. All the selected Young Business Leaders below the age 40, have demonstrated exceptional contribution in their work and personal growth. They have built new businesses or are making a difference in the success of their companies. They are benefitting and influencing a large section of businesses, communities (in which they live), and the overall economy with their disruptive innovation in this world. 

The selected winners were facilitated by Mr. Ramanan Ramanathan, Mission Director, Atal Innovation Mission : Government of India; Mr. T.V. Mohandas Pai, Chairman, Manipal Global Education; Dr. Annurag Batra, Chairman & Editor-in-Chief, BW Businessworld; Mr. Alok Jalan, Managing Director, Laqshya Media Pvt. Ltd; and Mr. Vinesh Menon, CEO—Education and Skilling, VIBGYOR Group of Schools.

Below is the brief description about each of the winners:

Aakash Chaudhry is the Co-Promoter and CEO at Aakash Educational Services Ltd (AESL). The company is synonymous to being a leader in the test prep industry catering to the Education Sector. With an onboard employee strength of 4300+ it has created a landmark in Coaching industry.

Abhijeet Kumar is the co-founder of ah! Ventures, a Mumbai-based early stage fund raising platform with 55,000-plus entrepreneurs, 2,000 plus investors, Rs 130-plus crore invested in 35 startups and three profitable exits.

Abhishek Bansal is the co-founder and CEO of Shadowfax, a three-year old venture, already India’s market leader in the Online-2-Offline (O2O) logistics segment. Abhishek aims to make Shadowfax the largest last mile logistics provider in the country, not too far in the future.

Amit Wadhwani is founder of Sai Estates Consultants Chembur Pvt Ltd (SCCPL), a shining name on real estate’s sky. They hope to float public issue, grow to a 500-member team and have an office each in 30 countries.

As a sustainable livelihood lead Amruta Bahulekar is a prime pillar in the ‘Pune City Connect’.  She is head of a program which is Lighthouse project. It is a collaborative initiative of Pune City Connect and Pune Municipal Corporation for skills development and sustainable livelihood.

Ananya Birla is founder at Svatantra Microfin that was conceived out of a desire to help the unbanked, is the fastest growing mid size MFI today. She has always believed in giving back to people but in a sustainable way and micro-finance was perfect for it.

Anirudh Pandita is founder at Pocket Aces, one of India's fastest growing digital entertainment companies. The company is actively leveraging data and technology to create and distribute engaging content for the mobile-first consumer. 

Arjun Zacharia is the founder of Wooplr, India’s first and largest Social Commerce Company. Wooplr, a Social Commerce Company has about 100 employees with offices in Bangalore, India and Hangzhou, China. 

Azhar Iqubal is Co-founder and CEO at Inshorts that aims to become a global content unicorn out of India with a billion users in the next 5 years.

Chiranjiv Patel, MD of PC Snehal Group of companies which is well established in government infrastructure sector by rising big structures like sports complexes, hospitals, flyovers, underpasses, water distribution networks, drainage systems and power projects.

Dheeraj Jain is an Investor turned Entrepreneur. He initiated Redcliffe Capital which is a venture capital and special situation investment firm, with investments in more than 45 early-stage companies who directly employ more than 5000 talent. He expanded Redcliffe across consumer brands, B2B, Big data, healthcare, urban commute, F&B, Travel. 

Dhruv Lakra is the Founder & CEO at Mirakle Couriers, a for-profit enterprise with especially abled employees! It was founded in 2009 with an idea to support a social cause.

Divya Jain is a social entrepreneur who has worked to disrupt the supply chain & logistics industry through innovative and nationwide skill development programs. She is the Founder & CEO of Safeducate, India’s largest supply chain skilling company.

Harsh Shah is the Co-Founder of ‘Fynd’ an emerging name in Fashion trend setters over retails. ‘Affinity for fashion and high quality merchandise’ and this is what makes fynd, the online shopping experience different from other similar sites. 

Jatin Ahuja is the Founder of Big Boys Toyz (BBT) who dared to start a specialty site that deals in pre-owned super luxury automobiles in India. 

Karan Kumar Gupta is the Co-founder/Managing Director of Zirca Digital, a company that provides cutting-edge digital advertising and branded content solutions to several brands. Gupta also manages Aidem Ventures, a broadcast advertising solutions company and Inez Terra, a real-estate development company based in Mumbai and Pune.

Karan Mohla is Partner at IDG Ventures India as well as the Head of Consumer Technology & Media.  He is now responsible for getting investors and partners for the fund as the Lead or fundraising from Asia, as well as the Lead for developing relationships for the fund and portfolio companies. 

Kranti Gada is the COO at Shemaroo that has been a leader for the past five decades, to be precise 55 years and is disrupting the dynamics of the entertainment industry every day. More than 700 media and entertainment professionals are involved with Shemaroo’s vast media empire. 

Krishna Kumar is founder & CEO at Cropin Technology, a funded startup that has made phenomenal contributions in cutting-edge technologies such as Big Data analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Geo-tagging and Satellite monitoring to interconnect all the stakeholders at different levels of the agriculture ecosystem. 

Kumar Abhishek, in 2013, conceptualized the idea of ToneTag, a unique concept that harnesses the power of sound to enable payments and proximity customer engagement, eliminating any hardware dependency. Kumar aspired to bridge the last mile in financial inclusion, thereby delivering a payment experience that envelopes the critical masses irrespective of geography, internet connectivity and hardware dependency. 

Manu Kumar Jain, a leading Indian entrepreneur who co-founded Jabong.com, a fashion and lifestyle e-commerce portal in India and served as its Managing Director from February 2012 to January 2014. Currently, he is the Global Vice President of Xiaomi as well as the Managing Director of Xiaomi India.

Nagendra Nagaraja, CEO and Founder at AlphaICs, actualised his dream by inventing an agent-based Real AI Processor (RAP), which is creating disruptions in AI applications. In other words, its product lines are used in Drones, Robots, Autonomous Vehicles, UAV, IOT Analytics, Cloud Computing and even supercomputers.

Neeraj Biyani is co-founder & COO at Paper Boat, India’s fastest growing consumer brand. The company currently employs over 530 people distributes their products in over 50,000 outlets and exports to over 10 countries. 

Nibhrant Shah is Founder and CEO of Isprava which represents the luxury real estate sector and has over 120 employees working within it.

Nitin Pandey, Founder and CEO of Parentune, a pro-parent community and a Technology start-up in the space of Babytech & Parenting. 

Nitin Saluja, Founder and CEO of Chaayos, India’s largest and most loved chai café chain. In a short span of five years he has created India’s most loved chai café chain with 53 cafes across seven cities Delhi, Mumbai, Noida, Gurgaon, Chandigarh, Ambala and Karnal, and 800-member team. 

Nitish Mittersain is the Founder and Managing Director of Nazara Technologies. Incubated in the year 2000, with its headquarter in Mumbai, Nazara Technologies is a global mobile gaming company that caters to large mobile consumer base in India and emerging markets including the Middle East and Africa. 

Paramdeep Singh is Co-founder and Executive Chairman of Saavn, India's leading digital music streaming service, transforming how people around the world access and experience music on a daily basis. 

Prashant Parameswaran is a founder and managing director of Kottaram Agro Foods Pvt Ltd, Brand owner of Soulfull. Soulfull is now present in categories of Breakfast Cereals, Muesli, Millet based Snacks & Millet Health Drinks. The range of products is presently in 5000 stores across 12 cities and will scale this year to 20,000 stores. 

Rana Daggubati, is an Indian actor, producer, visual effects co-ordinator and photographer. 

Raviteja Dodda is Founder & CEO at MoEngage, a next-generation marketing cloud, built for the Mobile-first world. MoEngage works with Consumer businesses across the world including Fortune 500 brands like Samsung, Deutsche Telekom (T Mobile), Vodafone, Hearst and Prudential.

Rishika Lulla is CEO at Eros Now is Eros International Plc’s On-Demand South Asian Entertainment Video Service accessible worldwide to viewers across internet enabled devices including mobile, web and TV. 

Rohit Chennamaneni is co-founder at Darwinbox, India’s Fastest growing HRMS is a new-age cloud-based HR Technology which takes care of all HR needs across the employee life-cycle like recruitment, onboarding, core HR, time & attendance, expense management, payroll, employee engagement, Talent management and HR. 

Rohit MA is the Co-founder and Managing Director of Cloudnine Group of Hospitals, India’s leading maternity and child care network of hospitals. Cloudnine as a group employs over 3000 people and as a primary employer obligation is responsible for over 4500 people across 20 locations in 7 cities. 

Sahil Vachani is the Managing Director and CEO of Max Ventures and Industries Limited (MaxVIL). He joined the Max Group in 2016 with a focus on creating a powerful Real Estate brand – Max Estates Limited, and steering MaxVIL’s other businesses towards growth. 

Satyam Darmora is an entrepreneur and founded i2e1 (Information To Every One). There are more than 60 employees that work at i2e1. i2e1 is working on a Free-Internet model for masses and is currently serving One million+ free internet sessions every month across multiple locations.

Tushar Mittal is Founder of Studiokon Ventures Pvt Ltd. In a rapidly advancing global marketplace, where businesses are focused on building empires, what sets StudioKon Ventures apart is its focus on defining relationships rather than contracts. StudioKon Ventures has grown into a $20 million corporate infrastructure company. 

Ujjwal Munjal is the Managing Director of Rockman Industries, a leading auto-components company in India, and the Founder of Hero Electronix, Hero Group’s venture into the technology space. He leads a team of over 7,000 employees at both the businesses.

Vivek Gupta is the co-founder of Licious, India’s fastest growing fresh meat and seafood brand with an employee strength of 650+ members across different disciplines and functions. 

Zishaan Hayath is the co-founder and CEO of Toppr.com, an edtech company on a mission to make learning personalised. The company has an employee strength of over 1400, with its headquarters in Mumbai, and regional offices in 25 Indian cities.