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Price Rs. 110. february 19, 2016

30under30
Meet the disruptors of 2016 to get inspired
(and impressed)

(From left)
ritesh agarwal,
Founder, OYO Rooms;
richa chadha, Actor ;
upasana makati,
Founder & publisher,
www.forbesindia.com White Print
Welcome to the
I NDIA

Tablet Edition
 editor’s note
Razor-sharp youngsters under the age of 30 are challenging the old way of life

A Generation
of Dreamers
“You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one.”
- John Lennon, ‘Imagine’

A
s India’s demographic dividend—that much-talked-
about term—gets celebrated within the country
and the world over, it’s becoming evident that it is
going to be India’s Generation Z (generally known
as those born after 1993) and the under-30 population which
will determine the course the country will take over the next
few years. Nowhere is this demonstrated better than in our
30 Under 30 lists. These youngsters—razor-sharp and eager
to carve out their own paths—are increasingly coming to the
fore, challenging the old way of life. They are an impatient
Best,
lot: Many of them even start in their teens and have already
become forces to reckon with in their chosen areas. How,
then, do we choose 30 of these from a nation where around 65
percent of the population is under 35 years of age? That itself
Sourav MajuMdar should give you a peek into the enormity of the task at hand.
Editor, Forbes India As Forbes India embarked on the third 30 Under 30 issue,
choosing the final set from a number of hugely talented
sourav.majumdar@network18publishing.com
youngsters tested both our own editorial judgement and the
@TheSouravM
expertise of our very eminent set of experts. However, as
Executive Editor Abhilasha Khaitan, who helms this project so
efficiently every year, puts it, “this time we were quietly confident
from the outset”. The reasons were the names we chose in 2014
and 2015, and the way they have been shaping up thereafter.
In fact, as Khaitan adds, in today’s India, it’s perhaps going to
be tougher finding 30 over-30s, such is the power and passion
which drive today’s young Indians. That, in essence, is what
this issue is about: The tremendous creative energy across all
spheres—from the entrepreneurial to sport to art and culture—is
real enough for the rest of the world to be awed and inspired by.
From 28-year-old Arunima Sinha, an amputee who dared to
challenge herself and turned ace mountaineer, to the 22-year-old
Ritesh Agarwal, founder of the popular budget hotel company
OYO Rooms, to the 23-year-old immensely gifted ghazal singer
Ranjeet Rajwada, the 30 we bring you this year are game-
changers who are disrupting the way we think, work and act.
It is this generation of dreamers that Forbes India celebrates
year after year. Here’s to many, many more like them!

4 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016

 Contents / February 19, 2016 ● Volume 8 Issue 4

ON THE COVER

Under

from left: ritesh agarwal,

richa chadha and
upasana Makati

28 | THE KIDS ARE

ALL RIGHT
They win some, they
sometimes lose some, but
they never stop trying

36 | FINDING ROOM
FOR GROWTH
OYO Rooms’ Ritesh Agarwal
sells an experience, and
lives it too

40 | HER SOUL’S
CALLING
How actor Richa Chadha
kicked the cookie cutter

52 | THE GIFT OF
WORDS
Upasana Makati helps
the visually-challenged
see the world

We value your feedback

Write to us at: forbes.india@network18online.com letters may be edited for brevity. read us online at www.forbesindia.com
on the cover & this page: Photograph by Prasad Gori for Forbes India digital Imaging by: sushil mhatre

30 | A FRESH VOICE
At 23, Ranjeet Rajwada measures
up to the likes of Ghulam Ali and
Pankaj Udhas
32 | A NEW ACT
Thespian Prashant Prakash brings
theatre to the audience, and vice-versa
33 | THE STORYTELLER
Amshu Chukki tells stories with his
artworks
34 | CAB CONVERSATIONS
Sanket Avlani has designed a creative
platform to take art to the masses
35 | CRAFTING SOLUTIONS
Innovator Anirudh Sharma takes the
boring and turns it on its head
37 | ON THE MOVE
Arpit Dave and Mohit Kumar have
decoded the logistics of successful
entrepreneurship
38 | LOANS @ EXPRESS
SPEED
Mayank Kachhwaha connects
borrowers to lenders and beats
banks to it
41 | GETTING REAL ON REEL
Raam Reddy has turned a fusion of
hobbies into his profession
42 | THE JOKE’S ON HIM
How to have the last laugh, the
Abish Mathew way
43 | DESI BY DESIGN
Karishma Shahani Khan turns
heritage into her colour palette
44 ALL THAT SPARKLES
From mum’s heirlooms to decking up
Bollywood stars, the Grewal sisters
have come a long way
45 | MASTER MOVES
From chess to derivatives, it’s all in a
day’s work for Nikhil Kamath
46 | THE STARTUP
WHISPERER
At 26, Ashish Agrawal helps the
startups start up
47 | FACILITATING GOOD
FOOD
Yash Bhanage gives childhood
memories a global twist and serves
them on a platter
Under
48 | TRACKING GROWTH
How Harsh Songra turned his handicap 41
into a life-changing opportunity
for others
49 | CONNECT AND HEAL
Shaken up by his mum’s illness,
Rahul Narang helps take health care
to remote areas
50 | MAKING A STRONG CASE
Raman Jit Singh Chima is using legal
expertise to free the world wide web
filmmaker raam reddy
51 | FREEDOM’S ADVOCATE
Meet Shreya Singhal, the 60
astrophysicist-turned-free speech
activist
53 | KICKING THE CARBON
HABIT
Himanshu Gupta and Shrey Goyal are
helping top corporates lower their
carbon footprint
54 | MAKING TRASH TALK
Mathew Jose is changing the world
with scrap Mountaineer arunima Sinha
55 | SHORT AND SWEET 45
Inshorts co-founders have mastered
the art of curating news that you
can use
56 | A MAN ON COURSE
Anirban Lahiri is on a par with
world-class golfers
57 | LEAPS OF FAITH
How Dipa Karmakar vaulted from
obscurity to international success
41, 45: bmaxImaGe; 56: amIt Verma; 54: sHaHeeN tHaHa For Forbes INDIa
60 | CLIMB EVERY
MOUNTAIN
Zerodha co-founder Nikhil kamath
Just two years after her right leg was
amputated, Arunima Sinha reached
the summit of Mount Everest
54
61 | CRACKING THE CODE
The Postman co-founders are
breaking new ground in software
as well as friendship
62 | DUE VIGILANCE
Toshendra Sharma is poised to disrupt
the world of cyber security
63 | HACK AND SECURE
Saket Modi: Geek, nerd and India’s
brightest name in cyber security
64 | THE CLASS OF 2015
A report card of our last year’s winners Paperman founder Mathew Jose
FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 7
 February 19, 2016
U PFRONT
80
INTERV IEW
16 | ‘WE GO BEYOND WAITING FOR CAPITAL
MARKETS FOR EXITS’
ICICI Venture Funds chief Prashant Purker says his firm tapped
secondary deals and strategic sales to deliver high returns

COLU MN
18 | CONFUSION OF CONFUSIONS: INTEREST RATE
POLICY UNCERTAINTIES
Low rates reflect slower economic activity and weakness

FEAT U R ES

CROSS BOR DER

22 | THE NEW HEDGE FUND KING
A surfer dude is redefining the terms of quant trading

74 | FIT FOR WORK

Fitbit is losing market share to Apple, but corporate wellness
is saving it

76 | THE FUTURE IS THE PAST

The auto industry is betting on self-driving cars—except
Mazda’s Masamichi Kogai

POLICY
69 | GLASS HALF-FULL, YET HALF-EMPTY chinese New year celebrations at Tiretti bazaar in kolkata
The Start-up India Action Plan lacks bold moves to help young
businesses cut through red tape
86
FOR BES INDI A TROPH Y
72 | RIDING ON GLORY AND GLAMOUR
A glitzy weekend at the races, with a dash of style

LIFE
80: tulu sINHa For Forbes INDIa; 86: NeIlsoN barNarD / Getty ImaGes

R ECLINER
80 WILL THE DRAGON DANCE AGAIN?
India’s oldest Chinatown in Kolkata is in a shambles. But a
revival plan is in the works

86 | ‘THERE ARE A LOT OF INSTANCES WHERE oscar-winning actor Geena davis

A MALE CHARACTER COULD HAVE BEEN
REPLACED BY A FEMALE ONE’
Actor Geena Davis pushes for equality for women in Hollywood 92
89 | THE REVIVALIST
Hip hotelier Ben Weprin has a new vision for New Orleans

A PPR A ISA L
91 | MOTORCYCLE: TRIUMPH BONNEVILLE
STREET TWIN
The ideal modern avatar for the Bonneville

R EGU L A RS 09 | LETTERS 11 | LEADERBOARD 92 | NUGGETS 94 | THOUGHTS

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8 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016


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Magazine Upfront
Daily Sabbatical
Can a team have too much talent?
Attracting top talent is a key priority for competitive organisations.
But can ‘more’ become ‘too much’?
letters to the editor
End of a musical era
Refer to ‘RIP Rhythm’ (Issue dated
January 22, 2016). As the author points
out, a trip to South Bombay in my
childhood years was incomplete
without a visit to Rhythm House. I
fondly remember sifting through their
stacks of cassettes, then CDs and later
DVDs. The knowledgeable and friendly
staff [of the store] will be sorely missed.
Goodbye, Rhythm House. As the lyrics
of the song ‘American pie’ go, February
28 will be “the day the music died”.
Vikram Koppikar, on the web
Refer to ‘RIP Rhythm’ (Issue dated
January 22, 2016). In the army,
during the ’70s, it was customary for
those going on leave to get LP records for
the officers’ mess. Whenever I went on
leave to Mumbai, I would visit Rhythm
House to buy records for the mess. Later,
Podcast
Life Daily Sabbatical Multimedia
Finding the next Einstein
Jonathan Wai, a psychologist and talent-identification expert,
describes what it takes to become a member of the global elite
I would pick up a number of cassettes.
I have had a long association with
Rhythm House. It was not just a shop
but a tourist attraction like the
Gateway of India, Girgaum Chowpatty,
Marine Drive and Hanging Gardens.
It’s painful to hear about its closure.
Vipan Kohli, on the web
The weak link
Refer to ‘You Weaken Your Brand When
You Expand It’ (Issue dated February 5,
2016). Laura Ries says expansion
weakens the brand, and especially its
focus and positioning. But it is not
universal. It depends on the phase
of a business existence and how an
organisation wants to transform itself.
Diversification cannot be attributed to
the weakening of a brand; there could
be other factors associated as well.
Karthikeyan Ovuraj, on the web
FITBIT’S SURVIVAL KIT  THE NEW HEDGE FUND KING
PRICE RS. 100. FEBRUARY 19, 2016
30 Under 30
By Abhilasha Khaitan
30UNDER30
Click Here
MEET THE DISRUPTORS OF 2016 TO GET INSPIRED
(AND IMPRESSED)
(From left)
RITESH AGARWAL,
Founder, OYO Rooms;
RICHA CHADHA, Actor ;
UPASANA MAKATI,
Founder & publisher,
www.forbesindia.com White Print
Blogs News Lists
Follow us on
George Foster: Are startups really
job engines?
Entrepreneurship can be personally
rewarding and good for the economy, if we
wipe the stardust from our eyes
Externalities and minding other
people’s business
When externalities are present, decisions
optimal for the person making them are not
necessarily optimal for society. So what can
be done about them?
february 19, 2016 forbes india |  9
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LeaderBoard aperture

Acing
Ahead
Martina Hingis
and Sania Mirza
won their third
Grand Slam
on the trot by
clinching the
Australian Open
doubles title at
Melbourne Park
on January 29

Michael DoDge / getty iMages


LeaderBoard
HOME EQUITY
Paradise’s Price
Three untouched Panamanian islands are yours
for the taking—as long as you promise not to
unduly spoil them
have $100 million
by chance? For that sum,
you can get not one, not
two, but three private
islands situated some 50
miles off the Pacific coast
of Panama. The catch?
IVAR WIGAN; HERBERT HOLZER; TOp: TOBY MELVILLE / REUTERs
By Panamanian law, you
have to leave 70 percent
of the land untouched.
The Cayonetas
Islands encompass some
1,800 acres, including 50
beaches stretching across
19 miles of coastland.
(Similar islands worldwide
have sold for far more
than the Cayonetas’s
asking price of $55,000 an
acre.) Undeveloped and
uninhabited, they’re rich
12 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016
$1.75 mln
The amount Leonardo
DiCaprio paid to buy the
Blackadore Caye island
in Belize in 2005
A Cayonetas
inlet; Panamanian
fauna, both avian
and reptilian
in wildlife—in particular
rare sea turtles, which
breed here. The father of
the current owner, Claus
Mittermayer, purchased
the islands in 1979; Claus,
57, who runs an investment
holding company
called Endeavor Group
International, later bought
out the original partners.
He considered developing
a traditional resort but
decided against it. “I did
some soul-searching,” he
says. “I love nature. I love
conservation.” Mittermayer
has vowed to greatly
prioritise any buyer willing end ecotourism destination legacy behind? A nine-
to help turn a small portion to fund scientific research. figure cheque could be all
of the islands into a high- Care to leave a naturalist’s it takes. —LAUREN GENsLER

LeaderBoard
trAvelerS’ CHOICe AwArdS
A Royal Affair
on january 22, a small
ceremony was underway
on the grounds of the
Umaid Bhawan Palace in
Jodhpur to celebrate its
top rank on TripAdvisor’s
Travelers’ Choice awards.
The Jodhpur royal
palace unseated the Gili
Lankanfushi Maldives
resort for the top spot.
Although Gaj Singh, the
erstwhile Maharaja of
Marwar-Jodhpur, for
whom a section of the
palace still serves as
a residence, owns the
property, the hotel is
vIrtuAl reAlIty
Cybercrime Biggest Fraud Risk
risks from cybercrime
are rising in India, and are
seen as the biggest threat
by businesses operating
in the country. These are
the findings of a survey
conducted by tax and
financial consultancy Ernst
& Young (EY) among 665
respondents in 17 countries.
Forty of the respondents
were from India.
The India findings
showed that 75 percent
managed by Taj Hotels,
Resorts and Palaces.
The Travelers’ Choice
awards featured 113 Indian
hotels on the list. The
Oberoi Vanyavilas, Sawai
Madhopur, and the Taj
Rambagh Palace, Jaipur,
were at rank 6 and 15
respectively in the luxury
category. The Bougainvillea
Guest House in Goa
featured at rank 23 in the
bargain category. With
58, Rajasthan topped the
list of the most number of
awardees from a state.
Best known for hosting
of those polled agreed to
using data analysis tools
to investigate bribery
and corruption risks; 65
percent said yes to using
such tools to tackle cyber
breaches. They were
interested in both early
detection of fraud and
increasing transparency
in business operations.
The survey, conducted
between June and
September 2015, found
$14.7 bln
Current size of the Indian
luxury market, according to an
ASSOCHAM report. It is set to
cross $18.3 billion in 2016
glamorous celebrity
nuptials, Umaid Bhawan
Palace, with its 64 rooms,
was built between 1928
and 1943. It was perhaps
the last great palace to
be built in India. The
architect, Henry Vaughan
Lanchester, designed
the hotel in the art-deco
style, but also included
stylistic elements inspired
by the Angkor Wat
temple in Cambodia.
The transition from
a royal home to a hotel
came shortly after the
privy purses of the Indian
princely states were
abolished in 1971. “We
formed the company
in 1972. Then, we ran
it ourselves as a guest
house and developed it
gradually,” said Singh.
Umaid Bhawan Palace’s
general manager Vincent
Ramos believes that what
sets the hotel apart, along
with the “royalty factor”,
are the people. A large
number of the hotel’s
350-strong staff are third
that “organisational
reluctance to invest
significantly in forensic
data analysis is partly due
to lack of management
buy-in around its potential
return on investment,”
Arpinder Singh, a partner
in EY India, said. However,
“companies need to
proactively intertwine it
within their anti-fraud
programs”, Singh said.
About 55 percent of
FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 13
generation employees of
the erstwhile Maharaja.
He added, “When I first
arrived here, I said: ‘I’ve
come to this hotel’. But
Bapji (Singh) corrected
me saying, ‘No, you have
arrived at the palace’.”
The TripAdvisor
Travelers’ Choice awards,
now in their 14th year, are
particularly significant
because of the methodology
used to rank the hotels.
“For a 12-month period,
we take into account the
opinions and reviews that
have come in for all the
hotels and an algorithm
determines the rankings,”
says Nikhil Ganju, country
manager, TripAdvisor
India. The list that is
divided into six categories—
top hotels, luxury, best
service, bargain, B&Bs
and inns, and small
hotels—included 7,028
hotels, globally, this year.
(The writer was in Jodhpur
at the invitation of TripAdvisor
and Taj Hotels)
— AnGAd SInGH tHAkur
the respondents said their
forensic data analysis
spending was sufficient, a
drop from 64 percent in COurteSy: uMAId BHAwAn PAlACe / JOdHPur; tOP: Getty IMAGeS
2014. Three out of five say
they plan to spend more
in the next two years.
In India, 66 percent of
respondents are spending
at least half their forensic
data analysis budget
proactively, compared with
63 percent at the global
level. Overall, the use of
such tools is becoming
more mainstream,
the report said.
— HArICHAndAn ArAkAlI

LeaderBoard
oPPorTuniTy amiD The Crisis
Stay With the Markets,
Despite Global Challenges
Experts say the current phase of correction is ideal for asset accumulation
The Sensex fell below its psychologically key level of 24,000 points on January 20. The index has lost
about 20 percent from the lifetime high of 30,024.74 points it touched on March 4, 2015
the early days of 2016
hold a message for
most Indian and global
investors—that the worst is
not yet over for the financial
markets. This point was
shailesh anDraDe / reuTers; ToP: DarCy holDorf / reuTers
underscored at the recent
World Economic Forum
at Davos: That the global
challenges, including a
still weakening Chinese
economy and low oil
prices, will persist for a
while longer. At the same
time, investment advisors
are saying that not all is
gloom and doom. Investors
need not completely
shun the equity markets
and should, in fact, start
to invest in funds with
14 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016
a long-term horizon.
In India, the latest
earnings data for the
December quarter has
proved to be a mixed
bag and corporate India
may start to witness
improved revenues and
profit growth only by the
second quarter of FY2017.
“When we get a sense of
what is going wrong, we are
in a better situation. China
is a big issue, there is too
much happening. This is a
period of uncertainty,” says
Kamlesh Rao, CEO of Kotak
Securities. Rao believes
that volatility in oil prices
and China’s economic
concerns are factors “which
6.9%
China’s GDP growth in 2015.
The nation’s economy
expanded at its slowest pace
in the last 25 years
will still play out”. In this
scenario, he expects the
Nifty to slip to 7,200-7,000
levels, which could be a real
bottom for the markets.
Nimesh Shah, managing
director and CEO, ICICI
Prudential AMC, has a
more positive outlook. He
says, “the markets may
witness some volatility this
year, driven by news, both
external and domestic”
but, overall, 2016 should
be a promising year for
financial assets. “We do
feel that a gradual upswing
in the Indian domestic
market would make it
a compounding market
over the next three years,”
Shah told Forbes India.
The benchmark
Sensex fell below the
psychologically key 24,000
points level on January 20,
pressured by a sustained
sell-off from overseas
funds. The intraday low
of 23,839.76 points, hit on
January 20, is 20.59 percent
below the Sensex’s lifetime
high of 30,024.74 points
touched on March 4, 2015.
Despite that, Prateek
Agrawal, business head and
chief investment officer
with ASK Investment
Advisors, holds that the
Indian markets are still in a
bull phase, but undergoing
a correction. “Valuations
are cheap and India is
the fastest growing major
economy,” Agrawal says,
adding that investors with
a long-term investment
horizon should use this
opportunity to return to
the market. Shah says 2016
should be used for asset-
accumulation. “At the
moment, opportunities are
unfolding and investors
could take the conservative
route of investing in
low-risk balanced funds
and dynamic asset
allocation funds.”
India is being singled
out [positively] from
other emerging market
destinations, points out
Rao of Kotak Securities.
“From a traffic signal
perspective, we are in the
orange light stage; it is time
to start the ignition and
get into the markets,” he
says. “We know of a lot of
HNIs sitting with cash and
trying to time the markets.”
— salil PanChal
 special
iNterview

‘We Go Beyond Waiting

for Capital Markets for Exits’
ICICI Venture Funds chief Prashant Purker says his firm has tapped secondary deals and
strategic sales to deliver high returns to investors in a tough market for PE exits

By Deepti ChauDhary

E
ven as many private equity
(PE) funds are struggling
to find exit routes for their
investments, ICICI Venture
Funds Management Company stands
apart. India’s largest homegrown
PE firm, which has verticals like
real estate and special situations,
has made 51 exits (including partial
exits)—cumulatively worth $1.3 billion
(around Rs 8,793 crore)—since 2009.
The bulk of the deals clocked an
internal rate of return (IRR) of about
20 percent. The firm, which has nearly
$3 billion in assets under management
(AUM), is now creating a platform for
the power sector, in partnership with
a strategic player. It is also looking
to raise a fourth PE fund and a third
real estate fund. Forbes India met
Prashant Purker, who was promoted
as managing director and chief
executive of ICICI Venture Funds in
December 2015, to understand the
firm’s strategy. Edited excerpts:

Q With you at the helm of ICICI
Venture Funds, can we expect
any changes in strategy?
There will be a good amount of
continuity as I was on the board and
I have been part of the setting up of a
few new practices. The broad strategy
will not change. We will carry our
firm to greater heights. What we have
Joshua Navalkar
On the PE side, we have three
funds and we are raising the fourth
now. We are getting good traction for
it. We have the real estate vertical,
where our second fund has been
fully invested; we will now look to
do a successor fund. The special
situations fund is something we
started with Apollo and it did very
is nearly $1 billion. We have also
made solid progress on the power
platform, and soon you will hear
some concluding things around that.
The core practices have grown
well. Our endeavour is to add more
dry powder [cash reserves].
Q Can you tell us more about

done in the last few years is create a well. The maiden fund attracted a the power platform? And what is
vibrant platform, multiple practices; record subscription. It’s $825 million the need for such a platform?
today we have four clear verticals [PE, (around Rs 5,580 crore) and if you Essentially a platform is a vehicle that
realty, power and special situations]. consider the co-investments, its AUM can be structured as a company that

16 | FORBES INDIA FEbruary 19, 2016

controls and owns assets. This will not
be like a minority investment, which
PE firms typically resort to. These are
buyouts; there is a management team.
For the power platform, there will be
an operations and management team…
these are fully-grown companies that
own assets. These models work very
well when companies can generate
large streams of cash. You can do this
around power plants because utilities
can become large cash generators.
In utilities, you can do solar as well
as other things. It’s similar to Real
Estate Investment Trusts (REITs)
for commercial projects. REITs can
add and sell assets. Power companies
that can become large are ideal
for us. We will have a sponsor of
the platform and then there will
be other shareholders who will be
direct investors, which is where the
bulk of the capital will come from.
Q Power investments have not
lived up to expectations as far
as returns are concerned. Then
why the interest in the sector?
Greenfield [power] projects have
their own challenges. Typically, on
the platform, there would not be any
investments in greenfield [power]
projects. So, we will not start buying
land, setting up equipment, etc. For
us, investments will be in bought-
out assets that are up and running.
Hence, project risks will be lower
than in greenfield projects. Certain
projects that were started earlier
could become good opportunities.
We can provide exits to early
investors. For a platform, you can’t
have just one asset. It must have
multiple assets and substantial
capital. We will have a large strategic
player as our partner... between us
there will be enough expertise.
Q ICICI Venture Funds has
been consistent in exits.
We had 51 exits since 2009 and $1.3
billion returned across all platforms.
on firm ground
assets under Management: $3 billion
Funds across verticals:
pe: $1.5 billion
real estate: $0.63 billion
aiON: $0.93 billion
power platform: $800 million **
(not included in auM as of now)
investments: invested in 81 companies
across funds since 2003
Current portfolio: 28 companies
**not confirmed by the firm
The year 2015 was a good one; we
did eight or nine full exits and a
similar number of partial exits.
Our limited partners (investors in
funds) will realise that we have
performed strongly and that too
across practices. Even AION Capital
Partners (a strategic partnership
with Apollo Global Management)
had a $235 million exit. For our
third PE fund, which is of late 2009
vintage, we have already had two
exits with nearly 30 percent IRR.
The reason for that is that we relied
on the capital market for an exit in
only about 35 percent of the cases. We
have utilised multiple strategies; we
go beyond waiting for capital markets
for exits, we do secondary deals (PE
funds buying stakes from each other)
and strategic sales also. There is a
strong exits and investments pipeline.
In the last six years, we have delivered
robust exits. Some of our investments
are maturing now. AION may have
some more coming in; the real
estate fund, too, would have some.
As far as returns go, in AION,
the exit we made is with 35 percent
IRR. If you look at our second real
estate fund, where we have exited
over 50 percent of the portfolio,
we garnered a 23 percent IRR. We
are delivering along expected lines.
The next real estate fund is yet to
be launched; the product is being
designed. For the fourth PE fund, we
are looking to raise $400-500 million.
Q How is your mezzanine
fund working out?
Mezzanine is really a subset of our
special situations fund. We did it more
as a proof of the concept using debt
instruments. Today, it has emerged as
a full-fledged AION where we have
a world-class partner with the best
track record. The special situations
concept is now well proven for us.
When we started it three years ago,
people asked us if it would work.
Mezzanine has emerged as a large
special situations platform that has
carved a place for itself. Structured
investments with both debt and
equity angles are more prevalent
today; even regulators allow a lot
more flexibility with structured
deals. A lot of deals today have a good
amount of structuring and it happens
in both PE and special situations.
Q Why have we not seen you
investing in the so-called new
economy businesses [companies
whose business models are
heavily linked to the internet]?
It’s a very exciting thing that is
happening. The only thing is that if
you see the nature of some of these
new economy businesses, the pipeline
comes from the venture capitalists
(VCs). Today, a lot of these VCs have
the ability to fund in the later stages
as well. We fund growth, however, we
don’t have a ‘pick a winner’ strategy
because, for that, you need a really
diversified portfolio with multiple
bets and we don’t manage that type of
money. For such businesses, you can’t
say I will do just one deal. In a sector
with a high burn rate, one deal won’t
be good for your investors and will
not be true to your mandate. For us,
it makes sense to look at companies
that support these businesses… related
to technology, data mining, logistics
and warehouses. We have certainly
looked at many transactions and
as and when we see an interesting
deal, you will see us doing that.
FEbruary 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 17
 das capital
Volatility in the markets is a clear marker of the fear that central bank policies have run their course
CONFUSION OF CONFUSIONS:
INTEREST RATE
POLICY UNCERTAINTIES
Low rates reflect slower economic activity and weakness
rather than strength; they have also reduced the political appetite
for much needed policy changes
By Satyajit DaS
isaac newton believed that truth
is found in simplicity, not in multiplicity
and confusion. Based on current interest
rate policies, central bankers in developed
markets clearly believe in the opposite.
Since Lehman Brothers left the mortal
coil, there have been more than 600
rate cuts.
Over the same period, central banks
have injected over $12 trillion under
quantitative easing (QE) programmes
into money markets. Over $26 trillion
of government bonds are now trading
at yields below 1 percent with over $6 trillion currently
yielding less than zero percent.
These policies, according to policymakers, have been
crucial to the ‘recovery’.
Financial market valuations have increased but remain
reliant on low rates and abundant liquidity. The effect on
the real economy is less clear. Policymakers argue that
without these actions to support growth, employment and
investment would have been weaker It is a proposition that
is, of course, impossible to test.
Now there is increasing confusion about future interest
rate policy. For the last 12 months, US Fed Chair Janet
Yellen has prevaricated about increasing interest rates.
Until the 25 basis points increase in December 2015, the
Fed did not have a rate increase for 112 months—the longest
since World War II.
Markets expect that stronger US employment numbers
and an improving economy will drive rate rises in 2016.
Puzzlingly, the Fed chair has hinted that more QE or
negative interest rates are possible, should conditions
dictate. There is little agreement among the Fed governors
about the appropriate policy path. Yellen also has to
worry about non-terrestrial matters. Representative Brad
Sherman recently told Yellen that God does not want her to
18 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016
raise interest rates until May: “If you want
to be good with The Almighty, you might
want to delay until May. God’s plan is not
for things to rise in autumn, that is why it is
called Fall.”
The Fed’s OMC (open market
committee) is now referred to commonly
as the Open Mouthed Committee or, more
charitably, the Open Minded Committee.
Everyone else is cutting rates
In Europe, the European Central Bank
(ECB) President Mario Draghi has hinted
that he will consider lowering rates further. European
central banks are already operating negative deposit rate
policies. The ECB is at minus 0.3 percent, Swiss policy rate
is minus 0.75 percent and Sweden’s policy rate is minus
0.35 percent.
In October 2015, Italy sold two-year debt at a negative
yield for the first time. Investors are now paying to lend to
a country which has one of the highest debt-to-GDP ratios
in the world. It is also a country synonymous with pizza,
pasta, political gridlock and fiscal indiscipline.
The Bank of England has suggested that the UK’s
interest rates may not increase in 2016 or even in 2017.
The Bank of Japan (BoJ) has promised additional easing
if necessary “without hesitation”. The Japanese have even
rebranded QE as QQE (quantitative and qualitative easing).
The qualitative is central banks talking about easing.
The People’s Bank of China, China’s central bank, cut
benchmark interest rates six times in the course of a year
to a record low of 1.5 percent in a bid to support an
economy which is forecast to grow at its slowest annual
rate in 25 years.
Further interest rate cuts are forecast in Australia, New
Zealand and also many emerging countries.
Central bankers argue that the case for increasing rates
 increase prices.
Even in the US, where
the economy is performing
better than other
developed countries, wage
pressures are limited. Fed
Chair Yellen’s concerns
about tight labour markets
miss the point that the
market is now increasingly
global. There are
significant surplus labour
forces in other nations
which can be accessed
through global supply
chains.
Central bankers dismiss
criticism that the policies
are, at best, ineffective and,
at worst, damaging.
Low rates have created
problems for savers and
retirees around the world.
Pension funds are in
trouble with rising levels
of unfunded liabilities.
German Finance Minister
Wolfgang Schaeuble
has drawn attention to
the increasing solvency
problems of insurance
companies and retirement
funds in an environment of
low or negative rates.
Debt levels are
continuing to rise from
unsustainable to even
more unsustainable.
Low rates have distorted
financial markets and
created asset price bubbles
in shares, property and
other investments.
Whatever the initial
benefits, low rates and
unconventional monetary
chaitanya dinesh surpur

is limited. Despite record levels of monetary stimulus,
growth remains lacklustre. Forecasts of economic activity
have seen regular downgrades over the last 2-3 years.
Disinflation and deflationary pressures remain, with low
commodity, especially energy, prices likely to continue.
Overcapacity in many industries limits the ability to
policy are increasingly counterproductive.
Former Bank of England Governor Mervyn King spoke
for many when he questioned the continuation of these
policies: “We have had the biggest monetary stimulus that
the world must have ever seen, and we still have not solved
the problem of weak demand. The idea that monetary

FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 19

das capital // satyajit das

stimulus after six years... is the answer doesn’t seem [right] MOUNTING GlObal DebT
to me”. CAGR (%)
Japanese interest rates have been around zero for 2000-07 2007-14
almost a decade. The BoJ has undertaken nine rounds 199 Total Debt 7.3 5.3
of QE. The central bank balance sheet is approaching 70 40 Household 8.5 2.8
percent of GDP. It owns a significant proportion of the 142
outstanding stock of government bonds and equities. But 33
56 Corporate 5.7 5.9
the policies have not restored growth or addressed the 87
38
19 5.8 9.3
problems of demographics or need for changes in Japan’s 26
58 Government
33
economic model. 22 45
37 Financial 9.4 2.9
The effect of further rate cuts is also diminished by 20
Q4 2000 Q4 2007 Q2 2014
continuing trade and currency wars. Each individual cut is
increasingly offset by competing reductions elsewhere in 246% 269% 286% Total debt as a share of GDP
the world.
Despite denials by policymakers, countries are (All debt figures in $ trillion at constant 2013 exchange rates)
using monetary policy to devalue currencies to gain Source: Richard Dobbs, Susan Lund, Jonathan Woetzel and Mina Mutafchieva (2015)
competitiveness and capture a greater share of global Debt and (not much) deleveraging, McKinsey Global Institute

demand. Individual nations’ actions are now redundant

in a nugatory race to the bottom in interest rates and
currency values.
Maintaining interest rates at low ‘emergency’ levels for
an extended period also makes it increasingly difficult to
increase them to more normal levels.
Increase in debt levels is now a constraint on monetary
policy. Total public and private debt in major economies
has increased, not decreased. The table (above) sets out
the changes in debt levels in the global economy. Total
debt has continued to grow at a slower rate than before
the global financial crisis but remains well above the
corresponding rate of economic growth.
Households in the hardest hit countries have
deleveraged. But overall household debt has continued
to grow. Higher public borrowing has largely offset debt
reductions by businesses and households.
Between 2007 and 2014, the debt of households and
non-financial corporations in advanced economies has
declined modestly by around 2 percent of GDP. (In
comparison, global private sector debt grew by 19 percent
of GDP between 2000 and 2007.) However, the decrease
is largely driven by four economies (the US, UK, Germany
and Spain) where private sector debt has declined in
relation to GDP. In Sweden, France, Belgium, Singapore,
China, Malaysia and Thailand, private sector debt has
grown by more than 25 percent of GDP during this period.
Between 2007 and 2014, the ratio of public sector debt
to GDP in advanced economies increased by 35 percent of
GDP, compared to an increase of 3 percent between 2000
and 2007.
Higher debt levels mean that the financial impact of
higher rates is attenuated. This is evident in the concern
created by further rate hikes in the US.
In Australia, a 0.15-0.2 percent increase in mortgage
rates to reflect increased capital to be held against these
loans caused significant uncertainty in the domestic
housing market.
In the US, a 1 percent rise in rates would increase US
government interest costs by around $180 billion from
its present level of around $400 billion. Unless offset by
increased economic activity, it would increase the budget
deficit and government debt levels.
The normalisation of rates to, say, 2.5-3 percent may
prove financially and economically destabilising.
Low rates and QE have also reduced the political
appetite for much needed policy changes. Lower interest
costs have sapped the willingness for fiscal reforms, debt
reduction and structural reforms.
Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) Governor Glenn
Stevens recently admitted that cutting interest rates may
not be effective in restoring growth. But the governor
clarified the RBA policy: “The fact that it isn’t interest rates
that are holding things back isn’t the same thing as saying
that there’s no benefit from lowering them.” Apparently,
the RBA is using “a path-of-least-regret framework”.
Asset markets, especially equities, have rallied
repeatedly on the continuation of low rates. Like Charles
Dickens’s literary character Oliver Twist, investors have
lined up to demand “more”.
But low rates reflect slower economic activity and
economic weakness rather than strength. This means, at
some stage, a dramatic reassessment of asset prices is now
inevitable, either because interest rates increase or because
they do not. The volatility in financial markets in the early
days of 2016 is a clear marker of increased fear that central
bank policies have run their course. QE now connotes
quantitative exhaustion rather than quantitative easing.
As Albert Einstein observed: “Confusion of goals and
perfection of means seems, in my opinion, to characterise
our age”.
Satyajit Das is a former banker whose
latest book The Age of Stagnation, was released
in India in January 2016

20 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016

Peter Muller of
PDT Partners:
Stretching the
boundaries of
math and markets
 CrOss BOrder
Peter MUller

The
New
Hedge
Fund
King
Amid a sea of dismal performances,
a surfer dude with Einstein smarts
is redefining the terms of quant trading

By naThan varDi

O
n a recent rainy October
evening, Peter Muller, 52,
sits at a piano on the stage
of Manhattan’s City Winery,
playing with the band from his third
album, Two Truths and a Lie. In between
songs about love, heartbreak and
relationships, like his Bruce Hornsby-
reminiscent ‘Kindred Soul’, Muller
describes the long, strange trip he has
taken in and out of high finance.
The tieless suits in attendance,
from places like Goldman Sachs and
you all had your choice of hedge fund
manager CD-release parties,” quips
Muller. “Thank you for choosing ours.”
Pete Muller is the latest, greatest
member of a growing band of hedge
funds that use complex math and
computer-automated algorithmic
models to buy and sell stocks, futures
and currencies based on statistical
correlations and aberrations that can
be found in the market. During 2015,
when many hedge fund managers—
from mighty activists like Bill Ackman
PhOtOGraPhy By david yellen FOr FOrBes

Blackstone, paid as much as $1,000 a to noted short-sellers like David

ticket to raise nearly $55,000 for the
Robin Hood Foundation. And while
Muller tells them of his early discovery
of music, the existential crisis of his
30s, buddies he left behind in California
and his family, there is a sense that
many in the room just want to be in
the orbit of the hottest hedge fund
manager on Wall Street today. “I know
Einhorn—lost money, Muller spun
the market’s volatility into gold. The
largest fund of his three-year-old
PDT Partners firm, which oversees
$4.5 billion, was up 21.5 percent net
of fees in the first 11 months of 2015.
“We knew that Peter has a magic
touch,” says J Tomilson Hill, the bil-
lionaire who runs Blackstone’s $70
 CrOss BOrder Peter MUller
billion hedge fund investment unit.
“I happen to be a big fan of Cézanne,
and Peter is in his own way as
gifted as Cézanne was.” Paul Tudor
Jones, the billionaire hedge fund
manager, adds: “He is up there with
the best and brightest—bar none.”
Indeed, Muller’s fund is so coveted
that even Wall Street’s power elite
are willing to effectively grovel to
get in on PDT’s action. Many hedge
funds stipulate that limited partners
remain “locked up”, or prevented
from redeeming funds, for a pre-
determined period, usually one
year. PDT is the opposite. Its biggest
investor, Blackstone, actually agreed
to be locked up for no less than
seven years—in return for Muller’s
assurance that he would not kick it
out of his biggest fund for the same
24 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016
period of time. Others requested the
same lockup restrictions—and were
refused. Even more astonishing is
Muller’s 3 percent of assets under
management fee, and performance
fees that rise to 50 percent of profits
for benchmark-beating performance,
compared with the already maligned
industry standard of 2-and-20.
“Our goal is to be the best
quantitative investment firm on the
planet, but not in terms of number
of assets, in terms of quality of the
products,” says Muller. “To take
money out of the market with as little
risk as possible and build a place
people who are smart are drawn to.”
Muller’s niche formula has also let
him take plenty of money out of the
market personally: Forbes estimates
that in the last three years alone,
Muller and his
merry band
of quants
he’s made $200 million before taxes,
including gains on his own capital.
I
t’s mid-November 2015, the US
stock market has given back
all of its gains, and hedge fund
managers around the globe are
wringing their hands in anticipation
of sending out another batch of
disappointing investor letters. Muller
is sitting in his Manhattan office. His
research chief has just left his office
after telling Muller about a promising
finding that could lead to the
improvement of one of PDT’s main
models. “When people buy or sell in a
desperate or hurried fashion, it tends
to be helpful to us,” says Muller.
There are two screens in Muller’s
office: A flat-panel display on his
desk showing the movement of his
hedge fund’s positions and a much
larger screen on the wall that displays
a real-time high-definition stream
of the surfing beach at the foot of
his house just north of California.
When he’s at PDT’s headquarters
in New York City and the waves are
big, Muller sometimes yearns to be
hanging ten. Luckily this doesn’t
happen too often, because Muller
spends two-thirds of his time at his
California home, where responding
to “surf’s up” is a regular ritual.
Muller is obsessive about his
algorithms and problem solving,
and he can get lost in deep thoughts
for hours, days. His fear of burnout
is real—he already dropped out
of Wall Street once in 1999—
and diversions like music and
surfing are almost a necessity.
Muller grew up in suburban
Wayne, New Jersey. His father
was an electrical engineer and
his mother a psychiatrist. He was
good at numbers and loved music.
At Princeton, he studied math
and played in a jazz band. After
graduating, he headed to northern
California to play music for rhythmic
gymnasts and, figuring he had to pay
the bills, eventually went to work for
BARRA, a pioneering research firm
that catered to quantitative financial
firms. In 1992, he joined Morgan
Stanley in New York as a proprietary
trader to see if he could use math and
computers to trade himself. Some of
his colleagues were sceptical about
the new math guy in the office. He
called his group Process Driven
Trading, or PDT. “I wanted to win
and prove myself,” Muller says.
Nobody outside the bank knew
it, but for a long time, Muller was
Morgan Stanley’s super-secret
weapon, making big contributions
to its earnings each year, hidden
in the firm’s income statement
under “principal transactions”.
Muller was able to carve out his
own quiet area at Morgan Stanley’s
Manhattan headquarters. He became
intensely focussed on figuring out
patterns that could help him beat the
market. It was thrilling and exhaust-
ing. He thought and talked about it all
the time—couldn’t even sit through
a Broadway show without stressing
over it. “He is really smart, but a lot
of smart people get lost in theory,”
says Kim Elsesser, a computer
programmer and mathematician
from MIT, and Muller’s first key hire.
“He also has very high expectations
of himself and other people.”
As Muller gained success and
autonomy at Morgan Stanley, his
behaviour became erratic. He
detached from the office at a second
home in Westport, Connecticut,
in part because the pressures of
work were overwhelming. His
mind became so overloaded with
mathematical formulas that he could
no longer play music. Crossword
“PETER IS UP
THERE WITH THE
BRIGHTEST AND
BEST—BAR NONE.”
puzzles became an escapist obsession;
he even created them for the New
York Times. By 1999, Muller started
to feel like he could no longer
find happiness on Wall Street.
“I was out of balance personally,”
Muller says. He went on sabbatical,
rediscovering his love of music partly
by busking in New York subway
stations and sojourning in far-off
places like Bhutan. After returning in
2000, he spent the next several years
as an advisor to the fund he created,
PDT. Muller today likens it to a kind
of executive chairman position that
left him time to do other things, such
as practice yoga and produce two
music albums with titles like Just One
Lifetime. He also met his wife, Jillian.
The soul-searching lasted about
seven years, and Muller says it sent
his trading operation into a period
of stagnation. Muller then rolled up
his sleeves and came back full-time
to PDT in 2006. Unfortunately, his
return just about coincided with
the quant meltdown of 2007, when
the precipitate drop in subprime
mortgage securities triggered
deep losses for many firms. Under
pressure from Morgan Stanley,
Muller was forced to liquidate part
of his portfolio. “Morgan Stanley
Star Is Among Those Battered; No
Time for Music Now,” the Wall
Street Journal’s front page blared.
As with many on Wall Street, the
financial crisis changed the game for
Muller. He had produced the kind
of returns that would have made
him a billionaire had he been an
independent hedge fund manager. But
working for Morgan Stanley always
appealed because he didn’t have to
worry about raising cash, appeasing
clients or back-office details. It was
plug and play. He couldn’t invest
his own money in PDT, but he was
well-paid, receiving a cut of his
unit’s profits, and could singularly
focus on solving market puzzles.
There was also the tricky issue
of the intellectual property Muller
developed but Morgan Stanley
owned. But 2008 exposed the
danger of being dependent on one
client, namely Morgan Stanley.
It also gave birth to the Volcker
Rule, a piece of legislation designed to
make it impossible for a proprietary
trader like Muller to work at a
bank like Morgan Stanley. Over the
next few years, Muller engaged in
on-again, off-again negotiations
with the Wall Street firm about
their operating arrangement.
“We preferred to stay together,
but as the Volcker Rule emerged,
it became clear that would not be
permitted,” says Jim Rosenthal,
Morgan Stanley’s COO, who led
the last round of negotiations with
Muller. “Sadly, this was a business
that was a steady source of revenue
and profitability and did not pose
FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 25
 CrOss BOrder Peter MUller
significant risks to the firm.”
In the end, Muller would
manage Morgan Stanley
money until the end of 2012
and control the intellectual
property Morgan Stanley was
no longer permitted to use.
Under the terms of the deal,
Morgan Stanley would get a
cut of the fee revenue of the
new, independent PDT for an
undisclosed period of time.
O
n New Year’s
Eve 2012, Muller
transferred all of his
group’s investment positions
from Morgan Stanley to PDT
Partners. It wasn’t only the
positions and intellectual
property that came with
him—so did every single
member of his 80-person
staff. Invigorated, Muller
went to work, increasing
his new business and nearly
doubling his employees.
“It feels great to have your
own place,” says Muller.
“I never felt like I had to a screen on the wall of Muller’s Manhattan office allows him
to catch a wave while sitting on top of the market
have my name on the door,
but I didn’t own it before,
and in hindsight, I didn’t recognise
the psychological impact of that.”
In order to make his mathletes
more comfortable, Muller has had
special glass walls constructed that
are slightly curved to deflect sound
and maintain the quiet workplace
needed for concentration. Outside
those quiet areas there are Ping-Pong
and foosball tables near the kitchen
and meeting rooms with whiteboards
covered with mathematical formulas.
Employees never wear suits; they run
book clubs and organise poker nights
that Muller sometimes attends.
Not much is known about Muller’s
black box models. He traded using
two different strategies at Morgan
Stanley that have morphed into the
two hedge funds he now runs. The
PDT Partners Fund is a statistical
arbitrage fund built on models that
26 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016
have never had a down year. The
$3 billion fund was up 21.5 percent
in the first 11 months of 2015,
and given its high fees, its gross
returns were running at about 40
percent. Since inception in 2013,
PDT Partners Fund has produced
annualised net returns of 18.5 percent.
Another fund, $1.5 billion Mosaic,
has a longer time horizon and had
produced returns of 10.5 percent
net of fees through November of
last year and 8.5 percent annualised
in three years. PDT also has a
Fusion Fund, which allocates cash
between PDT Partners and Mosaic.
Returns like that are beginning to
rival the long-reigning king of quants,
Renaissance Technologies, known for
market-defying consistency and for
producing a net worth of $14 billion
for its professorial founder, James
Simons. While Muller is not
yet even a billionaire, some
say he is the new Simons.
Like Renaissance, PDT
is a PhD farm, with 35
researchers who spend most
of their days developing
trading algorithms. They are
organised into five teams
by the asset class and time
horizons they work on. Most
efforts to come up with new
models tend to start with
two-week-long deep dives
but can grow into research
projects that last a year.
And while most Wall
Street research analysts
expect their best ideas to find
their way into firm portfolios
within weeks or months,
PDT takes an academic
approach to portfolio
change. Researchers know
that their models may not
affect returns for two years
or more. In fact, PDT is still
using models today with
concepts that were initially
developed 15 years ago, but
models do decay over time
and need to evolve with
the market. “We are more intent in
building a group of Ferraris than
a bunch of Toyotas,” says Tushar
Shah, research chief at PDT.
Finding the right minds for
Muller’s model-making is almost
as hard as decoding statistical
arbitrages hidden in markets. Big
data and sheer computing power
have become a driving force in PDT’s
business model. Like other quants,
PDT routinely competes with tech
firms for leading programmers and
mathematicians. It is now hiring
more computer engineers than
mathematician-researchers. Experts
in machine learning are in high
demand, so poach- ing talent from
the likes of Google and Microsoft
has become popular of late.
It’s not always the eye-popping
first-year salaries of several hundreds
 puzzler’s
Backup Singers E\ Pete Muller
ACROSS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 puzzle
1. Goes white, perhaps each month, Muller creates a
14 15 16
5. Some live music venues music-themed crossword puzzle
10. "Bicycle ___" (Queen song) on his website. solving this one will
17 18 19
14. Rot reveal another involving a famous
15. Stale German bread? (Note: 20 21 22 23 guitarist. answers can be found on
Also the stage name of a his site, pmxwords.com
24 25 26 27 28
European trance music DJ)
16. Israir alternative
17. "By Your Side" singer
29 30 31 32
a modelling interview
18. Whitney Houston's Grammy- 33 34 35 and then collaborative
winning mom
19. "White Flag" singer 36 37 38 algorithmic-based problem-
20. Tom Lehrer song with the
39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46
solving games in which
repeated line "It's so simple, so
very simple, that only a child can candidates are separated
47 48 49
do it" into small teams that Muller
22. Word that gives a Shirley and
50
Company song title when tripled
51 52 53
watches closely. PDT has a
24. Word with session or band 54 55 56 57 3.5 percent turnover rate,
25. New Pornographers song, or the
start of a fitness phrase 58 59 60 61 62 and while the hours are
27. Rte. from Fort Kent to Key West
63 64 65
not gruelling, the work
29. Stalactite lookalike
31. Shag better than, say
is demanding—trying to
solve stock market puzzles
66 67 68
33. Coffeehouse concoction
34. Where the 5 hits the 10
35. Free rounds, in a way
©2014 often ends in failure.
36. Something stuck inside 2. Alpaca and llama relative 32. Twice pi, in geometry Ferreting out small
something else 3. Indigenous 34. "No One's ___" (Eminem rap) market inefficiencies is
39. Copycat 4. Distort 37. Bandleader Calloway who was
42. Jessica featured in the Lonely5. Jewel box in "The Blues Brothers" core to PDT’s strategy,
Island's "I Just Had Sex" video
6. Somewhat 38. "Walk Away ___" (Left Banke hit and what is also clear
43. Wee 7. Like Lady Gaga that's #222 on Rolling Stone's
47. Bares all 8. Places with lots of residents: list of greatest songs) is that, for Muller, the
49. Recorded, old-school-style Abbr. 39. Some pop-ups more trading going on in
50. Pan pal? 9. "The ___ the limit" 40. Instrument that can be played
51. British author Charles who wrote
10. Embarrassed, and then some without any musical talent markets the better. Trust
"It Is Never Too Late to Mend"
11. It follows ceremony, matrimony, 41. Baltic state once occupied by in Muller’s machines is
53. Balladeer Janis and acrimony, according to one Sweden
54. Prize 58-Across was nominated definition 44. Capital of Kenya paramount, and he rarely
for multiple times 12. Beat 45. Email address harvester intervenes manually.
56. Six-shooter, say 13. Band in which Roy Wood 46. Desire
58. Singer often close to The Edge sometimes played a 65-Across: 48. Settlers of Catan resource Spending seven months
59. British track town Abbr. 49. They're often eliminated of the year with a surfboard
61. "Extreme Ways" singer 21. Animated film whose soundtrack 52. Fancy French fry sauce
63. Fatboy ___ helped launch Christina 55. 1962 Roy Orbison song about a
at the ready or composing in
64. She said "I don't make music for Aguilera's career girl front of a keyboard, instead
eyes, I make music for ears"23. 1963 film about a father/son 57. One way to run
65. Instrument featured in "Kiss relationship 58. Some tech. degrees (or a
of obsessively staring at a
From a Rose" 24. Croce who did "Bad, Bad Leroy Gershwin title soprano role if CNBC ticker, probably gives
66. Advertiser that used a song Brown" you add a letter) Muller’s PDT an advantage.
performed by Frida Öhrn 26. Whence Garth Brooks and J.J. 60. Smooch in a square, say: Abbr.
67. Received at one's home Cale 62. "Ain't Back ___" (Kenny Instantaneous information
68. Eartha known for "C'est si bon"
28. Some tech. degree holders Chesney song) and constant volatility are
30. John Cougar Mellencamp song
DOWN with the lines "That's when a the new reality of global
1. Often-admired body part on sport was a sport / And groovin' markets. Whether it is
Gwen Stefani was groovin'"
index investing or robo-
advisors, the discipline and
brainpower of machines
of thousands of dollars that hook board games such as Settlers of Catan. are winning on Wall Street. The rise
new PhD recruits. PDT researcher Like most PDT job candidates, of the quants is just beginning. “It
John Sun, 30, was finishing up an Sun was flown to New York for a 36- will get harder, but we are prepared,
MIT PhD in electrical engineering hour interview at PDT headquarters, and as information becomes more
and computer science when he got where Muller and his partners tried widely available and computing
an email from Eunice Baek, Muller’s to determine if Sun had the smarts power increases, the strength of our
longtime partner who manages and was someone with whom they models will improve,” Muller says.
recruiting. It said people at PDT like could spend a lot of time. The guts “Quantitative investing is the best
Lord of the Rings, science fiction and of the recruiting weekend include way to manage money, period.”

FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 27

 Art & Culture heAlth CAre
Ranjeet Rajwada, 23 haRsh songRa, 19
Ghazal sinGer Founder, my Child app
PRashant PRakash, 29 Rahul naRang, 29
theatre aCtor Co-Founder and Cto, lybrate

Under
amshu Chukki, 25
Video artist lAw, poliCy & politiCs
Raman jit singh Chima, 29
Design Global poliCy direCtor at aCCess
now, an international non-proFit
sanket avlani, 28
adVoCaCy Group
Curator, taxiFabriC
aniRudh shaRma, 28 shReya singhal, 24
law student at delhi uniVersity
innoVator

eCommerCe ngos & soCiAl

entrepreneurship
Ritesh agaRwal, 22 uPasana makati, 26
Founder, oyo rooms
Founder and publisher, white print
aRPit dave, mohit kumaR, 23, 27 himanshu guPta, 29
Co-Founders, roadrunnr
shRey goyal, 27
mayank kaChhwaha, 29 Founders, sustainable Growth
Co-Founder, indialends initiatiVe
mathew jose, 28
entertAinment Founder, paperman
RiCha Chadha, 28
aCtor soCiAl meDiA, mobile teCh
Raam Reddy, 26 & CommuniCAtion
Filmmaker azhaR iqubal, 23
abish mathew, 28 deePit PuRkayastha, 23
standup ComiC anunay Pandey, 23
Co-Founders, inshorts

FAshion
sports
kaRishma shahani khan, 29
Creative DireCtor, Ka-Sha aniRban lahiRi, 28
GolFer
sasha gRewal, 28
kaabia gRewal, 29 diPa kaRmakaR, 22
DeSignerS anD ownerS, Gymnast
outhouSe Jewellery aRunima sinha, 28
mountaineer

FinAnCe
nikhil kamath, 29 teChnology
Co-Founder, zerodha ankit sobti, 28
ashish agRawal, 26 abhinav asthana, 28
inVestment adVisor, sequoia Capital
abhijit kane, 25
Co-Founders, postman
toshendRa shaRma, 26
FooD & hospitAlity Founder, weGilant net solutions
yash bhanage, 29 saket modi, 25
Founder & Coo, the bombay Canteen Co-Founder, luCideus
Chaitanya dinesh surpur

28 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016

 The Kids Are All righT
They dream and they do. Sometimes, they falter. But they never stop trying
F
orbes India’s 30 Under 30
project, now in its third
year, has typically been the
cause of some panic: Would it be
easy to find 30 standout under-30s
in India? But this time, we were
quietly confident from the outset.
For two reasons: One, the class
of 2014. Two, the class of 2015.
Let’s face it. Looking for
30 over-30s who are breaking
new ground seems like a
tougher assignment today.
This is the age of the big
dreamer, of the kid with a plan
and the chutzpah to action it.
The generational shift has never
been more palpable than now—
just watch the latest edition of
Star Wars for confirmation.
Okay, so Kylo Ren or Rey
didn’t make the cut (only Indian
and, more importantly, non-
fictional people are allowed).
But this year’s 30 Under 30
list is stellar nonetheless.
Take the founder and CEO
of OYO Rooms. Ritesh Agarwal
has become synonymous
with innovation in the Indian
ecommerce space, devising a
model that isn’t a mere me-too
of market disruptor Airbnb.
But, at 22, Agarwal isn’t even
the youngest. That tag goes to
19-year-old Harsh Songra, who
was afflicted by a neurological
by abhilasha khaitan
disorder at the age of 11, and used
his condition as the inspiration
for an app that allows parents
to track the growth of their
child in the early years.
His spunk is only rivalled by
that of Arunima Sinha, 28, who
took up mountaineering as an
amputee, after losing a leg in 2011
when she was thrown out of a
train by thieves. Astoundingly,
she has not just summitted Mount
Everest, but also several other
tough peaks across five continents.
No less brave is Shreya
Singhal, just 24 and already a
vocal advocate for the freedom
of speech and expression,
especially on the internet.
These young men and
women not only fill us with
admiration but also, to borrow an
acronym from their generation,
major FOMO (fear of missing
out—yes, that’s a thing).
To compound this angst,
let’s remember this list is not
exhaustive. It is impossible to
cover the geographical expanse
of this country and reach every
potential candidate. But, as
always, our aim is to find the
best possible names that meet
our three criteria: The extent of
the impact of an achievement
in a short span of time and its
ability to disrupt the status quo;
scalability of the business or line
of work; and enough indication
of being a long-term player.
And, as with previous lists, well-
established names as well as those
who have access to an influential
lineage are not considered.
These limitations are not
constraints, however. Rather,
they ensure a rigour and
robustness that is reflected
in the alumni (page 76). More
notably, in the lack of nerves.
Yes, the under-30s are
making our jobs easy.
MethoDology
The research process was three-
fold: One, interviews by Forbes India
staffers with sources across relevant
categories as well as through studies
of databases and media coverage.
Two, on forbesindia.com, inviting
applications from, or nominations
of, entrepreneurs and professionals
who fit the criteria. Three, spreading
the word on social media.
This helped us arrive at a longlist
of over 300 names across 13 categories.
(We had to drop one category, science
and greentech, for lack of adequate
representation.) The next step was
narrowing down to a ‘short long’ list—
the names most likely to make it to the
top 30. This pool of around 100-odd
names was decided in consultation with
experts and observers. The last stage of
separating the final 30 from the other
contenders was a judgement call. But
armed with expert views, the Forbes
India editorial team debated, argued
and vetoed its way down to the final 30.
FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 29
 / art & culture
Under

A Fresh Voice
Ranjeet Rajwada 23 Ghazal singer

W hen you call Ranjeet Rajwada

on his mobile phone, you hear
him even before he receives the call. A
lilting melody greets you—his latest single
track, ‘Mast maula’, is his caller tune.
At 23, this ‘Prince of ghazal’ can
be granted his indulgence.
“Ranjeet pulls audiences as large as the
veterans do,” says Durga Jasraj, director
and founder of Arts And Artistes, an event
programming company. “Although he is very
young, an age when most singers are still in
‘student’ mode, Ranjeet has been able to develop
an individuality of his own. And he is also more
traditional than many of the older singers because
he sings mostly in Urdu and chaste Hindi.”
Rajwada shot into the limelight as the only
ghazal-singing participant in two television
shows, Idea Jalsa and SaReGaMaPa, in 2010,
winning mass adulation and recognition.
“There was a massive response from the
audience,” recalls Rajwada, who completed a
solo tour of the US last year; in 2011, he went on
his first world tour. “No one had heard a ghazal
singer on the show before, and it was apparent
that they were touched.” That a boy barely
out of his teens could command the respect
and love of his audiences was unusual, but
what was more remarkable was that he sings
ghazals, a genre associated with complex
meaning and detail, vocal finesse and maturity.
He has subsequently received several awards and
has shared the stage with the likes of Ghulam
Ali, Pankaj Udhas, Talat Aziz and Anup Jalota.
But the journey has been an arduous one.
Originally from Jaipur—where he grew up
listening to his ghazal-singer father Mahesh
Rajwada, and training under him—Rajwada
moved to Mumbai in 2005. “I had met Kishori
Amonkarji in Jaipur and she had advised me
to move to Mumbai to pursue singing,” says
Rajwada, who trained under Amonkar between
2005 and 2008. But getting a toehold in the
singing circuit was hardly easy. “I would go
to private mehfils [gatherings], taking my
harmonium along, and perform for no money,”
says Rajwada, recalling days of disappointment
and doubt. “Sometimes I would be at a loss
[to know] as to what the future held.”
But those days are now a thing of the past.
Joshua Navalkar

Rajwada remembers the affection he has got from

Whenever ranjeet rajwada
goes back to his hometown
Jaipur, he pads up for a
game with his friends
industry stalwarts such as Lata Mangeshkar and
Sonu Nigam—“he gifted me my tanpura”—and
is basking in the appreciation of his audience.
–jasodhara banerjee

30 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016

 / art & culture
Under

“i am always trying to learn

new skills,” says Prakash.
at present, he is trying
A new Act
his hand at juggling
PRashant PRakash 29

theatre actor

P rashant is someone who is willing

to fight his fears,” says theatre
director Arghya Lahiri. “If something
does not make sense, or the lines don’t
make sense, instead of falling back on
something familiar, he is willing to push
his own limits. That is something that
you rarely see in theatre, or even in life.”
That Prashant Prakash is someone
who works really hard at the roles he
enacts is something you get to hear again
and again. The actor, who took to stage
while in college in Mumbai, does not
have as many productions or shows to his
name as perhaps others in the industry,
but what sets him distinctly apart is
the fact that he is working towards
developing a new construct in theatre,
one that has not been explored in India.
Having started Crow, a theatre
company, along with his partner
Nayantara Kotian, Prakash aims to change
the way theatre is experienced. Immersive
theatre, as this new construct is called,
is staged in alternate venues and is one
in which the audience is invited to be a
part of the production. “We could, for
instance, stage the play in a subway, or in
an art gallery,” says Prakash, of Crow’s
maiden production The Bliss of Solitude,
which was staged in London in 2014,
and which he hopes to stage later this
year in India. “There has to be a sense of
improvisation, because you don’t know
how the audience is going to react.”
Prakash has never conformed to
a standard script: He worked with
Atul Kumar’s The Company Theatre
in Numbers in the Dark, an example
of ‘devised theatre’, for the Prithvi
Theatre Festival in 2006; another play,
Hair, started out as devised theatre
but finally took on a scripted form.
But Prakash, regardless of his talent
on stage, has not limited his work to
that of an actor alone. As co-founder
of Quaff Theatre—along with Kotian
and actress Kalki Koechlin—he has
co-written The Skeleton Woman, co-
directed The Real Inspector Hound,
and produced Satellite City. “It helps to
Mexy xavier

be involved in peripheral work,” says

Prashant. “But I like acting too much.”
–jasodhara banerjee

32 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016


the storyteller
A mshu Chukki loves reading
stories. And telling them as well.
Just that he chooses artworks, rather
than just words, to narrate his tales.
Take, for instance, his work called
‘Mountain Man’. Created while on his
residency with Khoj in Pune in 2015, which
had taken place in an art deco building,
the artwork tells the story of a man who
disappeared into the mountain. This site-
specific installation transforms the viewer
into someone peeping in through a hole in
the door of a Victorian bathroom, looking
onto mounds of grass in the bathtub.
“I like to work with fiction that
originates from spaces,” says Chukki.
“Sometimes, when a space has stopped
existing, or has changed entirely, it exists
only in the minds of people, or in fiction.”
CAtegory CoordinAtors: Jasodhara banerjee and kathakali chanda
exPerts: Art: shireen gandhy, gallerist, chemould Prescott road; Music: durga Jasraj, director and founder, arts and artistes; theatre: Vikram Phukan,
theatre critic and writer
amshu Chukki 25 Video artist
Chukki is exploring newer methods
of storytelling through video art. For,
even when his work is captured on
video, it is not restricted to video itself.
It incorporates other elements such as
installations, projections, text and time-
lapse images. He even uses tools, such
as filters on Instagram, to lend a specific
feel to his works. “Amshu is one of the
most interesting artists I have seen,”
says Mortimer Chatterjee, co-founder of
Chatterjee & Lal, a Mumbai gallery that
now officially represents Chukki. “He
has a very wide worldview, which is
something rare in someone so young.
I would think it has something to
do with the world he grew up in.”
A graduate of MS University, Baroda,
Chukki studied painting while in college.
Amshu Chukki’s
love for reading
manifests in
his artworks
But video was something that always
attracted him, perhaps that is why he
was also a member of the college film
club. “Video,” he says, “helps me move
between different mediums and spaces.”
Chukki’s journey as an artist has
taken him to the St Moritz Art Masters
Residency Programme in 2014 at St
Moritz, Switzerland, and the Darling
Foundry, India-Québec Residency in
2015, apart from winning him a host
of awards. His art has been exhibited
at India: Maximum City at ChesaPlanta,
Zuoz, St Moritz Art Masters 2014, in
kaMlesh surve for forbes iNdia
Switzerland, Art for Young Collectors
III at Galerie Mirchandani+Steinruecke
in Mumbai in 2014, and at Chatterjee
& Lal in Mumbai in 2015.
–jasodhara banerjee
FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 33
 / deSign
Under

Cab Conversations S anket Avlani was in his first year at KJ

Somaiya College, in Mumbai, when
he realised that engineering was not for
him. Creatively inclined since childhood,
Sanket avlani 28 Curator, taxiFabric he started dabbling in graphic design, web
design and animation projects instead.
After a short course in creative
communication from MICA, Ahmedabad,
followed by stints at a couple of advertising
agencies, Avlani moved to London in
August 2014, where he freelanced for ad
firms such as Mother and BBH, before
being hired by Wieden+Kennedy.
“How to work with people, how to
truly pursue what you want to do, invest
in your projects—not just in terms of
time and energy, but also financially—
and look at it as something that would
start a conversation or a trail of thought
in the minds of people is what I learnt
during my time in London,” says Avlani.
This was also how he conceived of
TaxiFabric, a startup that connects young
designers with taxi drivers. TaxiFabric
turns the taxi upholstery that goes on
the seats and ceilings into a canvas for
young designers to show off their design
talent and storytelling skills. This, in
turn, piques people’s interest and helps
initiate conversations between drivers
and passengers, and introduces design
to those who come in contact with it.
In a city with great divides between
the haves and have nots, inclusivity is
the most important subject for design
and Avlani has sought to address it.
Launched in April 2015, and funded
through Kickstarter, TaxiFabric has
designed 25 black-and-yellow taxis
in Mumbai and is now exploring the
three-wheeler segment. The project is
slowly gaining momentum and support
from various quarters. Designers such as
Sameer Kulavoor, Lokesh Karekar and
Shantanu Suman have had associations
with it; recently fashion label NorBlack
NorWhite designed the space inside a
three-wheeler. As the Kickstarter funding
comes to an end in February, TaxiFabric
is exploring options of collaborating
with brands or developing a product line
to help fund and scale up the project.
“I have worked with many designers
but few are able to start out on their
own. Sanket is one such designer.
The idea of TaxiFabric strikes me as
belonging to a unique space where a
design project has a long-term social
impact along with being commercially
viable,” says Vijay Nair, CEO, OML
mexy xavier

Sanket avlani Entertainment, an event management

has often sought
inspiration in music company with which Avlani is consulting.
–benu joshi routh

34 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016

 CraFting solutions
anirudh Sharma 28 innovator

a nirudh Sharma always found conventional

education boring. After finishing school, he
set up a small animation studio on the pretext of
preparing for the entrance exams to engineering
colleges. Two years later, he even enrolled
with an engineering college in Rajasthan, but
found himself building award-winning large
interactive displays instead of studying.
In 2009, Sharma dropped out of college
and began to build interactive displays on
a commercial scale, when he was invited
by the Imagine Group at Hewlett Packard
for an internship in Bengaluru. In 2010, he
thought up Lechal, a shoe fitted with the
vibrator of a mobile phone that would give
visually impaired people a haptic sense of
direction. The idea went viral. Sharma soon
saw possibilities for the general population
too, and he quit his internship to launch his
shoe company called Ducere Technologies in
Hyderabad with Krispian Lawrence, a friend
from Bengaluru. It won him the MIT TR35
‘Innovator of Year’ award in 2012. From a
team of two, Lechal now has 40 employees.
Lechal’s success also got Sharma an offer to
pursue a Master’s degree at MIT Media Lab in
2012. This gave him the opportunity to learn
to build next generation augmented reality
systems using futuristic technologies. After
graduating in 2015, instead of opting for a job
in San Francisco, he set up a research lab in
India. “In India, there are so many problems
around you. Either you crib about them or say
let’s solve them, let’s do something about it.
There’s a big opportunity here,” says Sharma.
Sharma’s initiative in India focuses on
anti-disciplinary research, bringing the best
of scientists, engineers, designers, artists on
the same platform to innovate. Currently they
are working on repurposing air pollution
into industrial grade printing ink.
Niyam Bhushan, a design consultant
who has been mentoring Sharma since
2009, says, “He is a special guy, and far
ahead of Steve Jobs; closer, in fact, to Bill
Atkinson, Elon Musk, and Nikola Tesla.
He has a million-fold more to offer.”
–benu joshi routh
Between his discoveries,
anirudh Sharma loves to
go on camping expeditions
Bmaximage

Category CoordinatorS: Benu Joshi routh and anjan das

expertS: Sonia Manchanda: Founding Partner, Spread design + Learning; pratap Bose: Head of design for Tata motors

FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 35

 / ecommerce
Under

Finding
Room FoR
gRowth
Ritesh AgARwAl 22

Founder, oYo Rooms

T he next time you stay in an OYO

Rooms branded hotel and notice a
tall, thin guy with tousled hair staying
in the room next to yours, chances are
you’ve spotted Ritesh Agarwal. The
founder of OYO Rooms believes in “living
the experience” he is selling. “Every
week, I go to an OYO Rooms hotel to get
first-hand experience,” says Agarwal.
This attention to detail is paying
off: OYO Rooms is the largest branded
network of budget hotels in India, with
over 4,000 hotels in more than 160 cities.
The OYO Rooms model is simple and
differentiated (this is no me-too Airbnb,
for instance): It partners with hotels to
standardise rooms under the OYO Rooms
brand so that the traveller experience
is the same across cities, including free
WiFi, breakfast and spotless white bed
linen, with a per-night cost between Rs
999 and Rs 5,400. The firm supports
hotel owners by training their staff in
house-keeping and services, uniformity
of supplies and technology integration.
OYO Rooms works on a commission
model, an average of 20 percent on the
total booking value facilitated by it.
Investors have bought into his story.
And into his approach. OYO Rooms has
raised over $125 million from SoftBank,
Greenoaks Capital, Sequoia Capital
and Lightspeed India and several angel
investors. “He is very receptive to
investor ask and in filling his own gaps.
We like his ability to communicate and
convince; he gives us confidence that
he can execute,” says Sanjay Mehta,
an angel investor in OYO Rooms and
founder of MAIA Intelligence.
The boy who once sold mobile SIM
cards has had a prodigious career so far,
even penning a book, The Encyclopaedia
of Indian Engineering Colleges, at 17.
A college dropout, he became the first
resident Indian at 19 to win the prestigious
Amit VermA

A cycling enthusiast, Thiel Fellowship, a two-year programme

ritesh Agarwal rides his
bike to work every day started by PayPal founder Peter Thiel.
–deepti chaudhary

36 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016


on the move
ARpit DAve, Mohit KuMAR 23
A simple observation by ex-
Flipkart employees Arpit Dave
and Mohit Kumar prompted them
to co-found Roadrunnr, a hyperlocal
on-demand delivery service, in
Bengaluru in February last year.
“We saw ecommerce growing multi-
fold during our tenure at Flipkart and
realised that the type of logistics needed
to support growth of ecommerce didn’t
exist,” says Kumar, who graduated from
PES Institute of Technology, Bengaluru
in 2010, and has previously worked with
companies like HolidayIQ and Olacabs.
Roadrunnr, he explains, addresses
this concern by tying up with online and
offline merchants and providing a quick
and efficient last mile delivery. Instead
of investing in logistics, merchants can
use Roadrunnr’s service through their
mobile app and pay per delivery. The
27 Co-founders, Roadrunnr
delivery executives, who are employed as
independent contractors, will do the rest.
[Dave named the service Roadrunnr as
the name resonates with runners (delivery
execs), who are core to the service.]
Despite teething problems like finding
smart people, convincing clients to try the
service and little financial security, the duo
was focussed on the task of building. “My
father made me realise how important
patience and perseverance are in achieving
something in life,” says Dave, who
graduated from IIT-Kharagpur in 2013.
Their perseverance has paid off.
From a restaurant in Bengaluru called
Kritunga which first used their service,
today, they have 6,500 clients, including
the likes of Faasos, McDonald’s, KFC,
Myntra and Snapdeal, and raised $11
million in their series A round led
by Sequoia Capital, Nexus Venture
Dave (left) and
Kumar love to play
pool to unwind
Partners and Blume Ventures in
July 2015. With over 200 employees,
the service is present in 11 cities across
India, has broken even in two markets,
is growing 20 percent month-on-month
and does 40,000 deliveries a day.
“We now want to expand to other
lines of business like intercity delivery,
scale the business to 200,000 deliveries
a day and reach 16 cities by the end of
2016,” says Kumar, who is also the CEO.
Experts believe that Roadrunnr has
made logistics responsive to the on-
demand economy and has the potential
to become one of India’s largest
hyperlocal players. As Sameer Brij Verma
from Nexus Venture Partners puts it: “The
agility of the founders, their ability to build
BmAximAge
a strong team and a steep learning curve is
what differentiates them from the rest.”
–shruti venkatesh
FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 37
 / ecommerce
Under

mayank Kachhwaha
plays the guitar and the
keyboard and can turn
the occasional DJ too

LoAnS @ eXPReSS SPeed

MAyAnK KAchhwAhA 29 Co-founder, indiaLends

P eople who apply online for loans

on Monday mornings are more
likely to have higher credit risk since
those with full-time jobs have little
time to apply on the first working day of
the week. Likewise, people who apply
for loans past midnight on Fridays
most often do it under the influence
of alcohol. These are some of the
deductions made by IndiaLends, a credit
underwriting and analytics platform.
The Delhi-based online platform is
the brainchild of Mayank Kachhwaha,
an IIT-Madras graduate, who along
with Gaurav Chopra, a London
Business School alumnus, started
the company in March 2015.
IndiaLends is one of India’s first
marketplaces that connects customers
Amit VermA
looking for low-rate loans with
institutional lenders looking for higher
risk-adjusted returns. Besides being
a first mover, the firm took lending to a
new level by going beyond mere Cibil
scores and bank statements, which can
often be inadequate. IndiaLends analyses
customers’ behaviour by scrutinising
spending and payment patterns to
measure their trustworthiness, based
on which it refers customers to lenders,
or vice versa. Currently, the startup has
tie-ups with 10 banks and NBFCs that
pay a commission for its services.
Customer behaviour can be an
information minefield, says Kachhwaha.
But banks rely heavily on Cibil scores for
loan-related decisions and approve only
a fraction of all applications. “We analyse
not just bank statements [of customers]
but also transaction activities and come
out with personalised EMIs. Utility bills
and phone bills can be used to build
credit-risk models,” says Kachhwaha.
IndiaLends disburses loans in
just two days, compared with 10-14
days at banks. So far, IndiaLends has
served over 3,000 borrowers and raised
$1 million from various investors.
“[IndiaLends’s] founders have the
energy and experience. They are level-
headed, young and willing to start slow.
This business can have high margins
and be highly profitable,” says Deepak
Shahdadpuri, founder and managing
director, DSG Consumer Partners,
which has invested in the company.
–deepti chaudhary

CATegory CoordinATors: Deepti chaudhary and Shruti Venkatesh

exPerTs: sanjith Kumar: Director, Ambit Holdings; Mukul singhal: Principal, SAiF Partners; Anil Joshi: managing partner, Unicorn india Ventures;
Praveen Chakravarty: Angel investor, public policy fellow and corporate advisor

38 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016

 / eNteRtaiNmeNt
Under

Her Soul’S
Calling
Richa chadha 28

actor

R icha Chadha did not have an inkling

that Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) would
go on to become a cult film when she
signed on for the movie. It also proved to
be the turning point in her career; Chadha’s
performance as Nagma Khatoon—a role
she describes as her most challenging—
propelled her into the limelight.
Following her career-defining
performance in Masaan (2015), the actress
was invited to be part of an elite jury at
the Marrakech International Film Festival
in Morocco last year. “It was one of the
best experiences of my life,” says Chadha.
Having completed her honours in
History from Delhi’s St Stephen’s College
in 2005, her parents thought: “Her acting
craze would go away”. But for Chadha, it
was her “soul’s calling”. She refused a full-
time job with a magazine, offered to her
while pursuing a media course from Sophia
College, Mumbai, in 2007. She even walked
away from a reporter’s job with a TV channel
after a day. She was perhaps destined to
make her mark in front of the camera.
As an actress, Chadha has been acclaimed
for her work in Gangs of Wasseypur, Fukrey
(2013) Main Aur Charles (2015) and Masaan
among others. “It was brave of Richa
to choose the role in Masaan knowing
that it’s not going to be an instantly
likeable character… that comes from
the intelligence she has as a person,”
says Masaan director Neeraj Ghaywan.
Confidence is another trait that’s
held her in good stead. “I am nervous in
my vanity van before a tough scene, but
not in front of the camera,” she says.
Success has started trickling in, but
Chadha says the struggle starts now.
“I don’t want to be like [the painter]
Vincent van Gogh where I die and people
say, ‘Oh, she was so good’. I don’t have
to die for that.” She’ll soon be seen in
Cabaret and as Sarabjit Singh’s wife in
JosHua NavalkaR

the biopic on the Indian convicted of

Reading is one of Richa Chadha’s
terrorism in Pakistan. She needn’t worry, hobbies. Here, she’s seen reading
the Van Gogh analogy won’t hold. Midnight’s Children, the book
that her father gifted her mother
–kunal purandare
during their courtship

40 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016

getting real on reel W hen Bengaluru boy Raam
Reddy was making his debut
feature film, Thithi, his goal was to
create something he believed in.
Raam Reddy 26 Filmmaker The result: The Kannada film became
the first Indian movie in eight years to
be screened at Switzerland’s prestigious
Locarno International Film Festival in
2015; it won the Golden Leopard in the
‘Filmmakers of the Present’ category and
the Swatch First Feature Award. Thithi
also won the Grand Jury prize at the
Mumbai film festival in 2015 and is slated
for a theatrical release this summer.
Reddy, who made Thithi after
completing a course in direction from
Prague Film School in 2012, calls this an
“incredible and unexpected” start. “The
European audience, which is removed
from our world, enjoyed the film, and
that was rewarding for us,” he says.
Although Reddy tasted success with
his eighth short film, Ika (2012), the
turning point, he believes, was when
eminent international producer Sunmin
Park decided to back Thithi during her
association with the Work-in-Progress
Lab of NFDC’s Film Bazaar in 2014.
“While most filmmakers have a great
passion, Reddy’s passion has clarity,
which ensures that he is going to
continue making better films,” says
film-programmer Deepti DCunha, who
sources and curates films for Indian
and international film festivals, apart
from NFDC’s Film Bazaar. “I never
think of the audience because it stains
the creative process,” he says. “It is no
longer honest, from the heart, as you
end up projecting an expectation.”
Last year’s 30U30 listee Chaitanya
Tamhane, whose Court was India’s entry
to the Academy Awards, says, “Thithi is
not just a delightful film but also a massive
social project. It’s nothing short of a
miracle for a 26-year-old filmmaker
to achieve this level of refinement
and elegance. I feel fortunate to have
a peer like Raam Reddy and I can’t
wait to see what he will do next.”
Filmmaking, though, was incidental for
Reddy, who dabbled with poetry-writing,
basketball, tabla and wildlife photography
in his school days. He also authored a
novel, It’s Raining in Maya, at the age of
19, while pursuing a degree in economics
in Delhi’s St Stephen’s College. It was only
when he accompanied a college friend to
a film set that he realised filmmaking was
For tabla aficionado Raam
Bmaximage

Reddy, rhythm is one a fusion of all his hobbies: A fortuitous

of the most important visit, for both him and cinema.
aspects of storytelling
–shruti venkatesh

FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 41

 / eNtertaiNMeNt
Under
the I n 2012, Abish Mathew left his three-year-
old job as a radio jockey with Delhi’s Hit
Joke’s
95 FM and came to Mumbai. He wanted to
explore avenues in stand-up comedy beyond
the occasional corporate gig. “Since then, my
on him career has been expanding in all directions.
Just like my waistline,” laughs Mathew.
In just three years, Mathew is among the
Abish MAthew 28 most sought-after comics in the industry. The
past year has been particularly rewarding
standup comic with the success of his live chat show, ‘Son of
Abish’, with leading comedians as his guests.
“Abish is one of those rare comedians
who has all the other comedians in splits
when he performs. Someone else can
try that same joke and it just won’t be
funny. He just ‘Abishes’ it,” says popular
stand-up comic and YouTuber Kanan Gill.
The reason why you see Mathew in
several collaborative videos, says Gill, is that
“he is one of the most talented actors around
Joshua Navalkar
Category CoordInators: kunal Purandare and shruti venkatesh
experts: sonali Kulkarni: National award-winning actress and theatre veteran; rajat Kapoor: a three-time National award winner and an acclaimed
actor, producer and director; Comics: Cyrus Broacha, host of The Week That Wasn’t on CNN IBN, popular columnist, author and podcaster
42 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016
and everyone wants to work with him”.
The core of his comedy is the energy he
puts into each joke. His strategy is to be well-
prepared but also improvise, because, “when
the spotlights are on you, the instincts kick in.
And instincts are funnier than your cerebral
predestined jokes,” Mathew explains.
Though Mathew always loved making
people laugh, it was only when he discovered
the likes of Russell Peters and Robin Williams
that he realised it could be a profession.
Recalling his first online series, Pun Liners,
Mathew says, “I wasn’t great, but if you do
something for long enough, you become good
at it and if you are good at something, don’t
do it for free.” Currently, he is working on
a bunch of songs and comedy videos, which
will be out by end-March, following which he
will start work on ‘Son of Abish’ season two.
Mathew is all set to have the last laugh.
–shruti venkatesh
on an off day, abish
Mathew is most likely to
sit at home and binge on
food and funny videos
 / fashion

Desi by
Design
karishma shahani khan 29

Creative Director, Ka-sha

W hen Karishma Shahani Khan was

putting together her graduation
collection at London College of Fashion
in 2010, she ditched all the pastel shades
and muted tones. She was asked by a
classmate if her tutor, who had supervised
her work, was behind her riotous colour
palette. “She chose those colours as she is
an Indian. It is inherent,” the tutor said.
Shahani Khan’s graduation
collection won the best surface
textiles collection award that year.
Six years later, as the creative director
of her Pune-based label Ka-Sha, Shahani
Khan continues to celebrate design
and handcraft with varying techniques
and material that meld as a whole. Her
playful, vibrant and layered designs
give the same piece varied looks.
With a strict no-waste policy, she
upcycles the waste from one line and
reinvents them as patchwork jackets,
footwear and rugs for her ‘Heart to Haat’
initiative as well as accessories for her
collection. “Even within our mainline
collection, we always have a few pieces
that are made out of completely recycled
products and second-hand clothing.
How do we use material in different
ways and are not wasteful are questions
that have always been on my mind,”
says Shahani Khan, who also tries to
include sustainable ethics in her designs
using natural fibres—primarily cotton
and silk—and some organic dyes.
During her internship with Judy
Frater at Kala Raksha, a grassroots social
enterprise dedicated to the preservation
of traditional arts, Shahani Khan
discovered her love for crafts, culture
and all things Indian. “She had an
intuitive understanding of aesthetics
and form. When I reconnected with
her a few years ago, I was delighted
to see her fresh take on Indian textile
heritage. Equally essential, she holds
joshua navalkar

genuine respect for the artisans with

whom she works,” says Frater, founder-
director of Somaiya Kala Vidya, an karishma shahani
khan dabbles with
institute for the education of artisans. colours in leisure too
–benu joshi routh

FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 43

 / FaShion
Under

All thAt spArkles sasha grewal and

kaabia grewal
28 29

Designers and owners,

Outhouse Jewellery

G rowing up, sisters Kaabia and

Sasha Grewal were fascinated by
their mother’s heirlooms: Beautiful,
sparkling jewellery belonging to the
landlord families of Karnal in Haryana.
Bitten by the gem bug, and armed with
training in industrial design from the
Indian Institute of Gems and Jewellery,
Delhi, in 2009, Kaabia and Sasha worked
single-mindedly. Sasha pursued designing
jewellery for leading brands like Topshop
and River Island while Kaabia studied
gemology at the Gemological Institute of
America, New York, in 2010. Kaabia even
interned with jewellery design maverick
Eddie Borgo between December 2010 and
February 2011. Eventually, and inevitably,
they started their own jewellery design
business, Outhouse Fashion, in 2012.
The sisters say they love to experiment
with material and textures, and their
designs are modern, eccentric and
bohemian. “When we ventured into
costume jewellery design, there were
few people in it,” says Sasha. “We
have almost built a new sector.”
Today, actresses like Deepika
Padukone, Priyanka Chopra,
Sonam Kapoor and Nargis Fakhri
count among their clients.
The Grewals, who claim to be
doing annual sales of about Rs 5 crore,
plan to expand their global operations.
“We want the brand to be visible
in international trade shows and
boutiques… and design will remain
Outhouse’s biggest USP,” says Kaabia.
Outhouse’s unique style and efforts to
popularise costume jewellery have earned
it recognition from consumers and peers.
“There are very few people doing the kind
of quality [work] they are doing,” says Sunil
Sethi, president, Fashion Design Council
of India. “Outhouse is a homegrown brand
Besides jewellery but follows international trends. They have
design Sasha (left) understood the pulse of the market.” And,
and Kaabia share an
interest in chess so far, it has been beating in their favour.
-shutapa paul
amit verma

CateGory Coordinators: Benu Joshi routh and Shutapa Paul

experts: rohit Bal: Fashion Designer; troy Costa: Creative Director, Costa Design Pvt. Ltd.; nonita Kalra: Fashion commentator and columnist

44 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016


Master Moves
Nikhil kamath
N ikhil Kamath started taking a keen
interest in trading derivatives when
he was 16. He had seen his elder brother,
Nithin, become a master derivatives trader
and had sought his help to get introduced
to the world of futures and options.
An avid chess player since the age
of eight, Nikhil took to derivatives like
a duck to water because the game had
forged in him an analytical mind.
After completing Class 10 in 2001,
he decided to take a break from studies
to focus on the Indian National Chess
Championships that year. When not
practicing chess, he was developing his
trading skills. This went on for the next
two years. The outcome: He abandoned
studies to become a full-time trader.
While working at a call centre in
29 Co-founder, Zerodha
2003, he got an offer from Indiabulls
Securities to manage their portfolio in
Bengaluru in 2006, which gave him the
skills to become a professional money
manager. Between 2007 and 2010,
Kamath was in charge of the Bengaluru
franchise of Way2wealth, a broking firm.
By 2010-end, he and his elder brother
had founded Zerodha, a discount
broking house that charged a flat rate
of Rs 20 per trade to derivatives
traders immaterial of the transaction
volume. The model was the first of
its kind in India, and a huge success.
Today, Bengaluru-based Zerodha
has 1 lakh clients who trade derivatives
worth a total of Rs 11,000 crore every day,
and has around 300 employees. Kamath
heads operations and risk management at
/ FiNaNce
if he’s not trying to
master chess moves,
Nikhil Kamath will be
biking around Bengaluru
on weekends
the company. Zerodha has also created a
proprietary software, Kite, that is gaining
popularity among professional traders.
“Zerodha has done a great job in
pushing the boundaries in the brokerage
space. Old-school brokers are now having
a difficult time keeping up with discount
brokers, and this trend is only going to
continue,” says Raghu Kumar, co-founder
of RKSV, Zerodha’s main competitor
in the discount brokerage space.
Kamath is an avid biker but
whenever he has free time, he goes
back to the chessboard. His idol is
Russian Grandmaster Garry Kasparov,
whom he admires for his aggression.
Bmaximage
“Chess has given me the skills to
trade in derivatives,” he says.
–pravin palande
FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 45
 / Finance
Under

THE STARTUP WHISPERER

Ashish AgrAwAl 26 Investment Advisor, Sequoia Capital

E mployees from venture capital

firm Sequoia Capital have camped
twice at Zomato’s offices. First in Delhi,
in 2013 before Sequoia made the first
of its two investments in the restaurant
search and discovery platform; and
then in Gurgaon in 2015, when Zomato
wanted them to help with research and
strategising as it was preparing to launch
its online food ordering business.
Ashish Agrawal, who joined Sequoia
in February 2013, was part of both the
teams. Today, he has progressed from
being an analyst at the company to a
member of the technology investment
advisory team on Sequoia’s investments in
Zomato, Ola Cabs, OYO Rooms, Grofers,
Go-Jek, Helpchat, Faasos, among others.
Most of the startups that Agrawal
has worked with have seen dramatic
growth or adapted their business
models to changing environments.
“In my role, I get to meet hundreds of
entrepreneurs every year. I find the
journey after we have partnered them
far more exciting,” Agrawal says.
Shivathilak Tallam, a senior associate
at investment banking firm Sprout Capital
Advisors, who has worked with Agrawal,
says: “He understands technology,
even its underlying trends and has
the eye to pick good tech winners.”
Agrawal has always been at home
with science and technology. At 15, he
travelled to Ukraine to represent India at
the International Astronomy Olympiad,
and was ranked second. He was also
startup-friendly. After studying computer
science and engineering from IIT-
Kanpur, Agrawal and a few batchmates
built a smartphone application called
‘Station Alert’, which allowed train
passengers to use their PNR to set
location-based alarms instead of time-
based ones. Later, they launched ‘Yatayat’,
an Ola-type service for auto-rickshaws.
He says 2016 will be spent in “helping
ashish agrawal loves entrepreneurs he worked with to build
to hang out in a
coffee shop, be it for their companies”. And that is the need
professional meetings of the hour in the startup economy.
or otherwise
–salil panchal
Bmax image

CatEgory Coordinators: Pravin Palande and Salil Panchal

ExpErts: sourabh Mukherjea: ceO, institutional equities, ambit capital; rajeev thakker: chief investment officer, PPFaS mutual Fund

46 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016


Even when he’s hosting
guests at his restaurant, Yash
Bhanage never forgets to
cheer for Manchester united
CateGory Coordinators: Kathakali Chanda and Anshul Dhamija
experts: Vicky ratnani: Chef and culinary director, Everstone Capital; nimish Bhatia: Chef and food consultant
/ fooD & hospitAlitY
Facilitating
good Food
Yash Bhanage 29
Founder & coo, the Bombay canteen
G rowing up, Yash Bhanage had no
fascination for the kitchen. Instead, every
time his family would eat out, it’s the restaurant
managers—dapper in their uniforms, welcoming
guests with a smile—who would catch his eye.
So, despite studying science in high school, the
charm of running restaurants took Bhanage out
of chemistry labs and, first, to the Institute of
Hotel Management in Goa and later to Cornell
University to study hospitality management.
While working at Mumbai’s Grand Hyatt,
he chose the front office. “In a month, I knew
the job wasn’t for me,” he says. He sought a
transfer to the restaurant and started as a waiter.
The journey that began with 16-hour shifts at
Grand Hyatt’s Celini has culminated in a 24x7
role steering The Bombay Canteen (TBC), a
restaurant that re-imagines Indian food, with an
emphasis on seasonal produce, in a fun way. Like
the thepla that morphs into a taco with pulled
pork filling, or the Sindhi tuk that’s inspired
by the Latin tostones and cooked with arbi.
When TBC was masterminded by Bhanage
and his Cornell classmate Sameer Seth (34-year-
old banker-turned-restaurateur) in late 2012, they
knew they weren’t going to look East or West for
inspiration, but mine into the country’s culinary
traditions and turn them on their head. Give Renu
aunty’s rogan josh, for instance, a vegetarian
makeover. Says Anoothi Vishal, food writer
and critic, “The thing with modern Indian
gastronomy is that you need to understand
the classics first, not just experiment with it
for the sake of theatre. That’s exactly what
TBC does. For somebody as young as Yash
to steer it is remarkable.” Since TBC’s launch
last February, Bhanage has impressed as much
with his ability to tell a story through food as well
as with his hands-on stewardship: He can clear
tables on a busy Saturday night, get behind the
bar to whip up a cocktail, and even shut down
the restaurant for a day to party with his staff.
Clearly, like his food, Bhanage
doesn’t take himself too seriously.
–kathakali chanda
JoshuA NAvAlKAr
FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 47
 / HealtH care
Under

Tracking
growTh
HarsH songra 19

Founder, My child app

A t the age of 11, Harsh Songra

was diagnosed with dyspraxia, a
neurological disorder that affects motor
skills. But that wasn’t a deterrent for
him. At 16, he was an expert at coding
for Android-based mobile apps. While
he credits such skills to an unusual
catalyst—“I was frustrated over breaking
up with my then-girlfriend. To distract
myself, I turned to coding”—he didn’t stick
to some run-of-the-mill geeky activities.
Instead, he developed My Child—a
free mobile app that could help parents
monitor the growth of a child between
11 and 24 months and screen potential
neurological, physical and speech
disorders. Launched in January 2015, the
app, which aspires to be a go-to guide for
parenting, has been downloaded more
than 8,000 times across 100 countries.
Songra has received seed funding
from investors like Pankaj Jain, a
partner in Silicon Valley-based venture
capital fund 500 Startups, and Pallav
Nadhani, co-founder of FusionCharts
and a member of the first Forbes India
30 under 30 List. Both Jain and Nadhani
concur that Songra is trying to solve a
real problem that his family faced. “Even,
if he is able to save a small percentage
of children from such disorders, that’s
a huge impact globally,” says Nadhani.
Says Jain: “The future prospects of
My Child are significant. There is a
global need for detecting possible
learning disabilities in children.”
Songra has garnered global support and
praise, with a mention on Facebook COO
Sheryl Sandberg’s blog last year. He has
received technical support and mentorship
from Facebook’s FBStart programme.
Songra, who moved from hometown
Bhopal to Bengaluru, now has two other
co-founders, Aafreen Ansari and Shreya
Shrivastava, both 19. “We want to make
the app a constant guide for parents by
broadening the filter—from pregnancy
When he takes a break through childhood,” says Songra, who
Bmaximage

from coding, Harsh dropped out of his BCA degree studies last
Songra goes for a jog
or a long walk November to focus on the app full-time.
–debojyoti ghosh

48 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016

connecT and heal
R ahul Narang was leading a cookie-
cutter life till 2009, when his mother
fell ill and the local doctor in Haryana’s
Fatehabad district couldn’t cure her.
The 50-km journey that his mother had
to make to Hisar to see a doctor who
would eventually heal her turned out to
be one of self-realisation. “The condition
of Indian health care isn’t any good. The
situation turns grim moving to rural parts,”
says Narang, the co-founder and chief
technology officer (CTO) of Lybrate, an
online doctor consultation platform.
On Lybrate, over 2,00,000 patients
from 50 cities trawl through listings of
over 90,000 doctors across specialities,
circumventing India’s skewed
doctor-patient ratio of 1:1,700.
CAtegoRy CooRdinAtoRs: Debojyoti ghosh and Shutapa Paul
exPeRts: Ranjan Pai: chief executive and mD, manipal education and medical group; Malvinder singh: executive chairman, Fortis Healthcare
raHul narang
The idea of empowering the masses
through technology came to Narang—an
engineer from the YMCA Institute of
Engineering and Technology in Faridabad,
who started his career with US-based
MPower Labs—when he was working with
Snapdeal in 2010. “I saw how technology
had drastically changed the ecommerce
landscape in India. I thought of replicating
the experience and using technology
in an innovative way to improve health
care delivery in the country,” he says.
So when former Snapdeal colleague
Saurabh Arora approached him with
an idea to democratise health care, he
lapped it up. The duo founded Lybrate in
May 2013, and there has been no looking
back since. Its scalability potential
29 co-founder and cTo, lybrate
rahul Narang starts
his day with an early
morning run
and high disruption quotient has seen
Lybrate recently raise $10.2 million
Passion: Jogging
in Series A funding from Tiger Global
Management, Ratan Tata, chairman
emeritus of Tata Sons, and existing
investor Nexus Venture Partners.
Sandeep Singhal of Nexus Venture
Partners believes that “Lybrate provides
a unique solution that significantly
improves the interaction between doctors
and patients. It has the potential to
change the health care landscape in
India. The company is riding on the
increasing penetration of smartphones
and the shortage of quality doctors.
Doctors, on the other hand, are seeing
increased productivity and monetisation.”
–shutapa paul
amit Verma
FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 49
 / Law, poLiCy & poLitiCs
Under
Making a Strong CaSe
Raman Jit Singh Chima 29
global policy director at access
now, an international non-profit
advocacy group
I n 2012, when Raman Jit Singh Chima
was on the rolls of Google India as
a policy analyst, the company faced a
knotty issue with Google Maps. The
photographs: amit Verma
service showed Arunachal Pradesh as
a part of China and strategic military
installations were visible on the internet,
inviting the government’s ire.
Dealing with these sensitive issues
required tact and diplomacy—a task that
Chima performed with aplomb. “I tried
to address these issues not merely as a
50 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016
lawyer but in a more holistic manner,”
says the graduate from the National Law
School of India University, Bengaluru.
Given his sound academic footing, he
was only too aware that the government
couldn’t get Google India to approve
its official maps in advance but could
penalise the company later. It was a fine
line and Chima recalls spending a lot
of time “managing the government”.
This experience helped Chima stand
in good stead. He is now global policy
director at Access Now, an international
non-profit advocacy group. The
organisation has succeeded in getting the
US to reform its controversial Patriot Act
and also helped the European Parliament
pass a net neutrality law. “He [Chima]
understands the machinations of
internet policy around the globe,” says
rama Jit singh
Chima spends
his leisure hours
visiting monuments
Nikhil Pahwa, founder of Medianama.
com, a digital and telecom news platform.
Over the past year, Pahwa, Chima
and Apar Gupta (who was part of Forbes
India’s 2015 30 Under 30 list) have come
together to found savetheinternet.in, a
website dedicated to net neutrality.
They’ve managed to get telecom
major Airtel to suspend a plan to
charge differential rates for VoIP
access and successfully urged telecom
regulator Trai to conduct a review of
net neutrality. Trai has also stopped
Facebook’s Free Basics programme,
pending review. The optimist in Chima
is confident that net neutrality will
gain legal protection in India. “Our
MPs have been surprisingly receptive
to the issues we are raising,” he says.
–samar srivastava
FreeDoM’S
aDVoCate
ShReya Singhal 24

Law student at Delhi University

A s a child, she was fascinated by stars

and space. It is this interest that took
Shreya Singhal to the University of Bristol
in England to study astrophysics. But
when she returned to India in 2012, she
realised the profession involved long hours
of coding. “I like to interact with people
and could not see myself sitting in front
of a computer for long hours,” she says.
In November 2012, the arrest of two
girls in Maharashtra, one for liking and the
other for questioning, in a Facebook post,
the shutdown in Mumbai following the
death of Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray,
rankled Singhal. Her emotional take on
the subject at a dinner table conversation
prompted her mother to ask: “Why
don’t you do something about it?”
She began researching and found
that section 66(A) of India’s IT Act was
subjective. Any post deemed ‘annoying’
on the internet could land people in jail
for three years. “What is annoying for you
may not be annoying for me,” she says.
She filed a writ petition in the Supreme
Court in December 2012 arguing that the
section violated the constitutional right
to freedom of speech and expression. In
March 2015, the apex court ruled in her
favour. “Shreya is deeply committed
to upholding the fundamental rights
of our people. Hence she filed a writ
petition challenging section 66 (A) and her
painstaking efforts and research greatly
helped my presentation of the case before
the Supreme Court,” says Soli Sorabjee,
jurist and former attorney general of India.
This episode sealed Singhal’s career
path. She is today in the final semester
of her bachelor’s degree course in law at
Delhi University. “I want to litigate on
constitutional law,” she says. Even before
she takes up her first case, Singhal has
already earned her stripes—or in her case, shreya singhal loves to
stars—as a ‘champion of free speech’. take her dogs for a walk
at Delhi’s Lodi gardens
–n madhavan

CAtegory CoordInAtors: samar srivastava and N madhavan

experts: Anup surendranath: professor for constitutional law at National Law University, Delhi, and director of the Centre on the Death penalty;
Ajit ranade: Chief economist, aditya Birla group

FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 51

 / NGOs & SOcial ENtErprENEurShip
Under

The gifT
of words
UPASANA MAKATI 26

founder and publisher, white Print

“W hy do you do this for us?” Or

“Are you blind?” Such questions
are commonplace for Upasana Makati.
People are curious to know why would
someone, after studying communication at
University of Ottawa, Canada, quit her first
job (in 2012) to ensure that the blind in India
have something to read in Braille English.
It was her “calling”, she explains, and
it came to her one night in March 2012. “It
was at the peak of my frustration. I was
not satisfied with my public relations job,”
Makati says. “I was reviewing how my day
started and I suddenly got a thought on how
would the day start for those who could
not see. What would they be reading?”
A Google search did not reveal much. A
meeting with a National Association for the
Blind (NAB) director showed there was little
on offer in India, which was home to the
world’s largest population of the blind (15
million). The closest they have is a periodical
in Hindi, run by Reliance Foundation
(part of Reliance Industries which owns
Network 18, the publishers of Forbes India).
By May 2013, Makati launched White
Print—India’s first monthly English
magazine in Braille. Help came from the
NAB, which prints this 64-page monthly,
packages it and distributes it to its entire
database. While Makati sources content
from contributors, she is often the writer
and editor of several articles, which
range from travelogues and world affairs
to inspiring tales and short stories.
By December 2015, White Print had 400
subscribers, up from 200 a year earlier;
revenues are generated from advertising
by some of India’s top corporates. Makati
is now writing a series of basic books in
Braille for kids. Tactile image printing
has also been planned for her magazine.
Anthony Vipin Das, an eye surgeon
at Hyderabad’s LV Prasad Eye Institute,
says: “As a doctor treating the visually
JOShua Navalkar

impaired, there is a limit to what we

can do. White Print means a lot more
to those we cannot do a lot for…it is upasana Makati has been
an attempt to complete the circle.” trained in hindustani
classical music
–salil panchal

52 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016

 KiCKiNg The CArBoN hABiT
HIMANSHU GUPTA & SHrey GoyAl
H imanshu Gupta would not have
been a part of Sustainable Growth
Initiative (SGI), a startup that advises
corporates and governments on energy
security and works towards low
carbon emissions, had he accepted a
corporate job he was offered in 2014.
“It was my first day at work and I was
at the gate of the Gurgaon office of a top
renewable energy producer. But I was
still in doubt and felt this was the time to
experiment with new ideas,” says Gupta.
From the office gate, he called up his
now business partner Shrey Goyal, who
had experience working in the solar and
bio-mass space. “We discussed a
29 27
startup idea and I went back home
and dropped a regret email to my
employer,” says Gupta, the youngest
Indian to write a chapter on
renewable energy in India’s 12th
Five Year Plan (2012-17).
SGI was launched in 2014, providing
products and consultancy services
to governments and CEOs to make
a cost-effective transition to a low-
carbon economy. Goyal spoke at the
recently concluded COP 21 climate
conference in Paris and is discussing
projects in Germany and the UK.
Says Trupti Jain, founder and
director of Naireeta Services: “SGI
founders, sgi
Gupta (left) is a cricket
buff, while Goyal is an
avid quizzer
brings unique expertise in the
technical, policy, social and human
components of challenges faced in
the fight against climate change.”
“As part of the Australia-India Youth
Dialogues, SGI is working on projects
centred on energy cooperation between
the two countries,” says Goyal.
Goyal and Gupta plan to expand
SGI’s advisory scope to North and South
America by 2017. The venture has garnered
revenues of around Rs 25 lakh in 2015,
up from Rs 15 lakh in 2014: A clear sign
aMit vErMa
that the fledgling company is on its way
to sustainability, in more ways than one.
–salil panchal
FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 53
 / NGOs & SOcial ENtErprENEurShip
Under
MAKiNg TrAsh TAlK
T he next time you give away your
old papers and plastic scrap to
your local kabadiwala (scrap dealers),
take a moment: Feel proud. For, you
have helped complete one end of the
chain that leads to effective urban waste
management and connects households
to the local scrap dealer. Chennai-based
entrepreneur Mathew Jose should feel
even prouder. After all, organising this in
the city through his venture Paperman
has been his goal over the past five years.
Jose, who grew up in Kerala, comes
from a family involved in plywood
ShahEEN thaha FOr FOrBES iNDia
trade. “My father’s business was linked
to cutting trees, and I am involved
in saving them,” says Jose who, after
graduation from Madras Christian
College, honed his entrepreneurship
CaTegory CoordinaTor: Salil panchal
experTs: pooja Warier Hamilton: co-founder and cEO at unltd india; Madhukar shukla: professor (organisational behaviour and strategic
management), Xlri
54 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016
MATHew joSe
skills at local NGO ExNoRa.
A chance discussion at home with a
local kabadiwala got him interested in
the recycling business. His bootstrapped
venture Paperman now connects 270
kabadiwalas to 3,500 households in
Chennai to ensure that scrap is collected,
electronically weighed and paid for
in 60 minutes. Paperman charges the
kabadiwala 5 percent of the total value
of each transaction as revenues.
Several entrepreneurs have set up
similar ventures in other parts of India.
But Paperman has differentiated in
scale and format. Jose has introduced
trash funding wherein customers,
instead of selling trash, can choose
to donate it to an NGO of their
choice. At least 35 NGOs in
if he wasn’t running
paperman, Mathew
Jose would be travelling
the world
28 founder, PAPerMAN
Chennai use Paperman to raise
funds for their causes, which
include child mortality to HIV.
This year, Jose will approach
investors seeking a $1 million funding
to help expand Paperman’s business to
Hyderabad and Bengaluru. In 2017, he
plans to regulate the market further, by
connecting kabadiwalas to the industry,
which needs waste products for recycling.
Paperman generated revenues of Rs 40-
50 lakh in 2015, a four-time jump from Rs
10 lakh in 2014. “What excites us about
Jose is that he is creating an alternate
economy from waste, through trash
funding,” says Trina Talukdar, venture
manager at Ashoka India, one of the largest
networks driving social entrepreneurship.
–salil panchal

Short and Sweet
AzhAr IqubAl, DeepIt purkAyAsthA, AnunAy pAnDey
Co-founders, Inshorts
o n March 23, 2013, Azhar Iqubal,
together with his IIT Delhi
classmate Anunay Pandey, and Deepit
Purkayastha (who was then at IIT
Kharagpur), created a Facebook page
called News in Shorts. It contained
summaries of news items with links to
the original stories and quickly generated
interest from readers. Months later, they
were admitted to the Times Internet-
backed TLabs startup accelerator. Today
their app, now called Inshorts, delivers
60-word summaries of the day’s news to
about 3 million subscribers everyday. (Its
founders claim that this number stood
at just 100,000 in December 2014.)
Category Coordinator: Angad Singh Thakur
experts: sasha Mirchandani: Managing director and founder of Kae Capital and co-founder Mumbai Angels;
nikhil pahwa: Founder, editor and publisher, Medianama.com
/ SoCiAl MediA, Mobile TeCh & CoMMuniCATion
23
The three co-founders aren’t big fans
of the news. “[But] it’s not that we’re
not interested in news content, it’s just
that we’re not interested in all kinds
of news content,” says Iqubal, CEO of
Inshorts. The online space, they believe,
is cluttered, so they are taking the help
of a personalisation engine to improve
the relevance of their own content.
In 2015, Inshorts raised a total of $24
million in two funding rounds, both led by
Tiger Global. Flipkart co-founders Sachin
and Binny Bansal are also investors in the
venture. Although they haven’t begun
monetising the platform yet, the revenue
model, say the founders, will be based on
advertising and sponsored content.
“With Inshorts, the founders
have struck a chord by tapping
into a few core consumer needs:
Simplicity, brevity, and speed,” says
Satyan Gajwani, CEO, Times Internet.
There exists an untapped market of
passive news consumers that is only
being served news content through
social media, believes Purkayastha,
the company’s chief strategy officer.
The race to coherently present news
to this audience is still on, he adds. It
also wants to expand the scope of its
content. “For a millennial audience,
what’s trending on Twitter is just as
relevant as other news,” insists Iqubal.
By moving beyond mere aggregation
to distribution, it can create a one-
stop solution for news delivery:
“The difference lies in how we’re
approaching the problem,” says
Pandey, the chief technology officer.
-angad singh thakur
Purkayastha (left),
iqubal (centre) and Pandey
love driving. For them,
the excitement of ‘mile-
munching’ is no less than
steering their venture
AMiT VerMA
FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 55
 / SportS
Under

A MAn On
COurse
AnirbAn LAhiri 28 Golfer

A s a young boy, Anirban Lahiri, the

son of an army doctor, would play
golf with his father at army golf courses.
He remembers feeling out of place
playing with “the Major sahabs and
colonels”. A junior golf competition that
he attended in Kolkata when he was 12
changed that. “I suddenly saw 60 kids
there, and I thought, ‘Wait a minute,
there are other kids that play this
game?’ ” Elated, he continued playing
golf, and in time, fell in love with it.
Lahiri turned pro at 20, and now at
28, he is ranked 43rd in the world.
“A lot of the guys that I’m now
playing alongside were my idols,”
he confesses. Consequently, Lahiri
has had to develop a strong sense of
belief in his own abilities to succeed.
His performances in the last two
years, he says, have assured him
that the belief was not unfounded.
Last year, he won the Asian Tour
Order of Merit, received a PGA
Tour card and became the first
Indian golfer to participate in the
President’s Cup (a series between
a US and an international team).
His newfound belief was perhaps
most prominently on display at the
PGA Championship at Whistling
Straits, US. Having won the prestigious
Long Drive Competition preceding
the major, he was in the top 10 going
into the final round. “I believed that
I could win it if I had a dream round
on that Sunday,” he says. Lahiri
finished fifth, the highest ever position
for an Indian golfer at a major.
“Anirban was always hardworking
and focussed; it was only a matter of
time before the results would show,”
says Gaganjeet Bhullar, Lahiri’s
2006 Asian Games teammate and
a member of the 2014 Forbes India
30 under 30 List. Lahiri, who now
counts Tiger Woods and Ernie Els
among his friends, says he is getting
When he stayed more comfortable with every major.
alone in Bengaluru,
anirban Lahiri Many believe that he may well be
Bmaximage

learnt to cook. India’s best golfing prospect yet. At

Soon, it turned
into a passion 28, he has enough time to prove it.
–angad singh thakur

56 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016

 Not just with the
vault, Dipa karmakar
can cook up a storm
in the kitchen too
LeAps Of fAith
DipA KArmAKAr 22 Gymnast
D ipa Karmakar was left speechless
when cricketing legend Sachin
Tendulkar praised her for bringing
laurels to the country during a felicitation
ceremony for Commonwealth Games
medallists. “It was the best compliment
I’ve ever got. It was my lucky day…
I remember the date [August 8,
2014] clearly because it happened
on the eve of my birthday,” says the
gymnast from Agartala in Tripura.
She admits she has a memory for her
achievements: Right from when she began
winning medals at the age of six to the 2014
Commonwealth Games held in Glasgow,
where Karmakar became the first Indian
woman gymnast to win a medal in the
history of the Games, after bagging a
bronze in the vault event. There, she also
achieved the distinction of becoming
only the third woman in the world
to successfully land the Produnova
vault—one of the most difficult involving
a handsprint and two somersaults.
In 2015, she won a bronze at the ART
Gymnastics Asian Championships in
Japan and finished fifth at the World
Artistic Gymnastics Championships in
Glasgow after becoming the first Indian to
qualify for the finals. Karmakar was also
honoured with the Arjuna Award last year.
Her performances in a sport that
is low-profile and nascent in India
are laudable, but Karmakar remains
grounded. “The year 2015 was a mixed
bag. My goal was to win a medal at the
World Championships and qualify for the
Olympics. I missed out on that… that’s my
regret,” says Karmakar, who is currently
pursuing her MA in political science.
Her coach Bisweswar Nandi can
identify with her dissatisfaction. “She’s
ziddi [stubborn]. She keeps practising
JoShua NavaLkar
till she’s satisfied,” he says. And she
stays hungry for more. “I have got a
lot from my country,” she says. “It’s
time for me to give back something.”
–kunal purandare
FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 57
 / SportS
Under

CLiMb every MOuntAin

ArunimA SinhA 28 Mountaineer

amputee mountaineer
arunima Sinha was
also a national-level
volleyball player

O n Christmas day last year, Indian

mountaineer Arunima Sinha reached
the summit of South America’s highest
peak, Mt Aconcagua. With this, Sinha,
an amputee, had successfully scaled
the highest peaks on five continents:
Australia, Europe, Africa, South
America and Asia. Even more remarkable
is the fact that her mountaineering
journey began, just about five years ago,
on a hospital bed in New Delhi’s All
India Institute of Medical Sciences.
Sinha was thrown off a train by thieves
on April 11, 2011, while on her way from
Lucknow to Delhi to apply for admission
to the Central Industrial Security Force.
An oncoming train ran over her right leg,
which had to be amputated. “Even as I lay
amit verma
on the bed,” says Sinha, “I decided that I
would take up the toughest sport in the
world. For me, that was mountaineering.”
It was an unusual choice. But what
drew her to it, she says, was the fact that
unlike other sports, “in mountaineering,
you’re up there all by yourself”.
As soon as she left the hospital, Sinha
got in touch with Bachendri Pal—the
first Indian woman to climb Mt Everest
—and informed her that she would come
meet her the next day. When they met,
says Pal, “I told her, ‘You’ve already
scaled the mountain in your mind.’ Most
people don’t even dare to do that.”
This conversation was followed
by months of training at the Nehru
Institute of Mountaineering in
Uttarkashi, Uttarakhand. “In the early
days, she could barely walk,” says
Pal, who heads Tata Steel Adventure
Foundation in Jamshedpur. Even after
she began training in earnest, Sinha’s
right leg would sometimes bleed or
swell up. “I wanted to test myself and
see how far I could go. After a while,
my legs got used to it,” says Sinha.
After 18 months of careful training,
and climbing other peaks in preparation,
Sinha finally reached the summit
of Mt Everest on May 21, 2013.
Ever since, she has continued to
work on her stated aim of climbing the
highest summit on each of the world’s
seven continents. Only two remain.
–angad singh thakur

CAtegOry COOrDinAtOrs: angad Singh thakur and kunal purandare

experts: sharda Ugra: Senior editor, espncricinfo.com; V Krishnaswamy: Senior journalist, author

58 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016


CRACKING THE CODE
Ankit Sobti, AbhinAv ASthAnA, Abhijit kAne
A bhinav Asthana, Ankit Sobti and
Abhijit Kane were not fast friends
when they decided to start Postman. What
bound them together was their skills in
writing code and their love of gaming.
In 2009, Asthana had enrolled for a
six-month internship at the Yahoo R&D
centre in Bengaluru, where he met Sobti.
A year later, Asthana co-founded a startup
TeliportMe, where Kane, a graduate from
BITS, Pilani and the youngest of the trio,
got an internship. In October 2014, the
three started Postman, two years after
Asthana wrote code for the first version
of their eponymous (software) platform.
The Bengaluru-based startup
builds platforms for the development
and management of APIs (application
28 28 25 Co-founders, Postman
programming interfaces, by which
different software talk to one another).
Postman covers the entire API
development cycle. Its core audience
includes individual software developers
across the world, as well as companies
with software development teams. Initially
available for free, Postman also launched a
cloud-based paid platform last December;
300 companies are now registered on this.
The venture has a 17-member team
(including its co-founders) of which 12 are
in core development. Postman recently set
up operations in Austin and San Francisco
in the United States, a key developer
market. It has also received an undisclosed
amount in funding from venture capital
fund, Nexus Venture Partners.
abhinav asthana (right) and abhijit Kane together
/ Technology
“Within a year of operations, we have
emerged from having a few hundred
thousand users to 2.5 million users,”
says Asthana, the CEO of the company.
Postman counts some of the largest
organisations in the world, including
Microsoft, Sony, Real Networks, Box
and Netflix, as users of its platforms.
“We are very bullish about the company
and feel that it can possibly be one of the
best software startups to come out from
India,” says Sameer Brij Verma, director,
Nexus Venture Partners. And adds with
confidence: “We definitely foresee a
future where developers think about
Postman as the platform of choice
when they are working with APIs.”
–anshul dhamija
Bmaximage
more than their venture, their love for
gaming brought ankit Sobti (centre),
FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 59
 / technology
Under

Due Vigilance Toshendra sharma 26 Founder, Wegilant net Solutions

U nlike most 26-year-olds, Toshendra

Sharma doesn’t complain about
the lack of weekend breaks. “My father
was a fruit vendor and worked 24/7.
Working with him in my childhood has
given me my work ethic,” says Sharma.
The result of his work ethic
is Wegilant Net Solutions which,
according to Ravi Gururaj, chairman
of the Nasscom Product Council and
investor in Sharma’s startup, solves a
“deep pain point” in the IT-security
space. Typically, given data sensitivity,
most companies focussed on features
first and performance second; security
was only a tertiary thought.
Wegilant specialises in this
niche, with its key product Appvigil,
launched in 2014. It targets the global
market of mobile application (apps)
security, and is delivered successfully
at competitive prices, despite being
up against firmly entrenched global
players like HP and IBM. Its customers
include IT-security solutions provider
Quick Heal Technologies, Meru Cabs,
enterprise messenger app GupShup
and customer chat services company
Haptik Inc. It also has clients in the
US, Hong Kong, Japan and Australia.
Appvigil protects mobile apps from
hackers/attackers in pre- and post-
development stages. It helps detect
security flaws in apps and fixes them in
the development stage by scanning for
the most critical security flaws, while also
monitoring attacks during production.
Sharma started Wegilant in October
2011, while pursuing his MTech degree
in computer science at IIT Bombay.
“I wanted to start something but
couldn’t find a cofounder so I started
the company alone. I spent 16 hours a
day working and even slept in office.
It was madness,” says Sharma.
Bootstrapped for its first three years,
in 2014 Wegilant raised seed funding
of Rs 1 core. A pre-series A funding of
Rs 3.5 crore was raised in April 2015.
“Wegilant has credible ambition
to disrupt the cyber security
space. It is one of the few Indian
photographs: amit Verma

product companies garnering

his startup leaves toshendra
sharma with no leisure time, except
a few breaks to play the flute
global attention. Worldwide, the
threat to both governments and
businesses arising out of data security
breaches is a very real, large and
imminent danger,” says Gururaj.
–debojyoti ghosh

60 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016


HacK anD SecuRe
I take pride in being a geek and a nerd,”
says Saket Modi. In 2008, he hacked
his pre-board chemistry examination
paper, while a class 12 student at
Lakshmipat Singhania Academy, Kolkata.
He owned up to his teacher and, since
then, he has been an evangelist on
cyber security and ethical hacking.
During his four-year graduation
course in computer science at the LNM
Institute of Information Technology,
Jaipur, Modi conducted cyber security
workshops at Indian Institute of
Technology (IIT) campuses across
the country. “Doctorate students of
computer science used to attend my
Category CoordInators: anshul Dhamija and Debojyoti ghosh
experts: V Balakrishnan: chairman, exfinity Venture partners, a Vc fund that invests in technology startups; sharad sharma: co-founder and governing
council member of ispirt (indian software product industry roundtable) and formerly ceo of yahoo india r&D
sakeT modi
workshops,” recalls Modi. In 2012, Modi
set up Lucideus—an IT risk assessment
and digital security services firm.
“I keep telling CXOs that there are
100 ways in which a 15-year-old in shorts,
with a 1 mbps internet connection, in a
garage in some remote location, can steal
confidential company data,” he says.
Currently, Lucideus, which has
its headquarters in Delhi, has over 50
clients, which include ICICI Bank,
Standard Chartered, Tata Sky and
IndiGo. The company’s clientele also
includes the ministries of home affairs,
finance, corporate affairs and defence.
“He (Modi) has the ability to think
saket modi
is passionate
about playing
the piano
25 co-founder, lucideus
quickly and come up with solutions.
The knowledge that he has at
such a young age is phenomenal,”
says Bharat Panchal, head, risk
management, at the National Payments
Corporation of India (NPCI).
Set up by the Reserve Bank of
India, the NPCI is responsible for all
retail payment systems in the country
and has been a client of Lucideus for
the last two years. “Going forward,
I’m sure India will have one bright
name in cyber security in Lucideus, a
company which can be benchmarked
to global companies,” says Panchal.
–anshul dhamija
FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 61
  / Last year’s 30u30
Under
The Class of 2015
How has the last year panned out for the members of the 2015 30 Under 30 List?
Happily, exceptionally well in some cases. Then there are others who are on the
cusp of achieving potential while a few have changed tracks and moved on to other
ventures. The disappointments are few and far between, as shown by this report card
sahil Barua
EcommErcE
Sahil Barua
Co-founder, Delhivery
The Gurgaon-based ecommerce fulfillment
company Delhivery raised $85 million of
funding in a round led by Tiger Global
Management in May last year. Its existing
investors, including Multiples Alternate
Asset Management, Nexus Venture
Partners and Times Internet Ltd, also
participated in this round. The company
also made a few strategic investments. In
July, it invested an undisclosed amount
in the on-demand delivery startup,
Parcelled. In October, Delhivery, along
with startup incubator Tracxn Labs, added
another $5 million to this investment.
In the same month, Barua’s company,
along with Sands Capital Ventures and
Accel Partners, invested $7 million in
hyperlocal delivery startup Opinio.
The Forbes India Impact: “Being featured
in the 2015 Forbes India 30 Under 30
List helped us bring the enablement
side of ecommerce into the mainstream.
It has created greater visibility for the
industry and for us specifically,” says
Barua. “New clients have called us after
seeing the coverage; a lot of people have
62 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016
Breakout stars
Pranshu Patni
referred to the article when joining us.”
PranShu Patni
Co-founder, Culturealley
Language-learning platform CultureAlley
had an impressive 2015. By the end of the
year, Hello English, an education app, saw
its user base grow exponentially to close to
10 million users, from a mere 500,000 in
February 2015. It also became the leading
education app in India, Nepal, Bangladesh,
Egypt and Saudi Arabia, says Patni. The
Kae Capital-backed firm is now featured as
a top developer on Google Play, a feat that
only 15 companies in India can boast of.
In March, the Jaipur-based CultureAlley
raised $6.15 million from Tiger Global
and other investors. “We were also hosted
by the President of India for a discussion
on ‘Education and Innovation’ for the
future of the country,” says Patni.
EntErtainmEnt
Chaitanya tamhane
Filmmaker
Accolades poured in from everywhere
for Tamhane in 2015 after his debut film,
Court, released. Greater glory followed
when the courtroom drama won the
Chaitanya tamhane
National Award for best feature film.
But the icing on the cake for 28-year-old
Tamhane was when Court was chosen
as India’s official entry to the Oscars in
the best foreign language film category.
The multilingual film eventually failed to
make it to the shortlist at the Academy
Awards, but Tamhane’s stock continues
to soar with the film continuing to
garner rich praise across the globe.
HEaltH carE
ShaShank nD anD aBhinav lal
Founders, Practo technologies
In Shashank ND’s own words, “We grew
by leaps” in 2015. The health care startup
raised $30 million in February 2015, which
enabled it to expand services within India
and other emerging markets. Within a
few months, it raised another $90 million.
“This is testimony to the fact that we are
on the right track and more companies
and people believe in our vision of helping
mankind live healthier, longer, across the
globe,” Shashank says. Practo is the world’s
largest appointment booking platform with
40 million appointments managed every
year, connecting billions of patients to over
200,000 health care practitioners, 10,000
hospitals, over 8,000 diagnostic centres

shashank ND and abhinav Lal
and 4,000 fitness and wellness centres
across 50-plus cities and 15 countries.
Social mEdia, mobilE tEcH
& communication
Sameer Pitalwalla
Ceo and co-founder, Culture Machine
“2015 has been an incredible year for
Culture Machine both in terms of growth
and opportunities. Not only have we
attained the number one multi-channel
network with over a billion watch
minutes, we have 400 million monthly
views and over 700 channels,” Pitalwalla
says. Culture Machine will be organising
South Asia’s first ever digital awards, the
Streamys, which, says Pitalwalla, will
bring the biggest names in YouTube and
online video together for the first time.
The Forbes India Impact: “Getting
appreciation from Forbes India and
being featured in its the 2015 Forbes
India 30 Under 30 List gave a sense
of great achievement to a startup
like ours. It got Culture Machine
the recognition within the desired
audience and highlighted our media and
technology interplay,” says Pitalawalla.
sameer Pitalwalla
the others
art & culturE
kartik SooD
artist
“The year (2015) has been great. I did
a residency in Basel, Switzerland, after
being named the Emerging Artist of
2013 by the Foundation for Swiss Arts
Council,” says Sood. “I also went on an
art studio collaborative trip to Paris and
Italy. I have been working on several
projects to be showcased in 2016,
including a solo exhibition—called In
Search of a Dream and Other Stories—at
Latitude 28 gallery for contemporary
art in Delhi on January 30.”
mohini Dey
Bass Guitarist
Dey says 2015 has been “crazy busy” for
her. She has been doing more than 10
shows every month. “A few memorable
ones are of course the constant gigging
with AR Rahman. At present, I am part
of his Tamil Nadu tour,” Dey says. “The
other very special collaboration saw
me playing in Steve Vai’s upcoming
album. My own album is now in the
mixing stage and will be out soon.
Jim SarBh
theatre actor-Director
“The year has been a mix of a lot of things,
with the high point being a nice juicy
role in Neerja (releases February 19), the
film directed by Ram Madhvani, starring
Sonam Kapoor. I also acted in Dar Gai’s
film 3 1/2 Takes (working title), due for
release in May 2016. My debut feature
film Ajeeb Aashiq directed by Natasha
Mendonca premieres at The Rotterdam
kartik sood
Jim sarbh
International Film Festival in February
2016. I will also be acting in Konkona Sen
Sharma’s debut film A Death in the Ganj,”
says Sarbh. “On stage, I played Born in
Kalki Koechlin’s The Living Room, and
Julio in Rajat Kapoor’s What Is Done Is
Done, his newest clown-Shakespeare
based on Macbeth; I also acted in Jean
Anouilh’s Legend of Lovers, directed by
Alyque Padamsee.” Besides acting, Sarbh
wrote a play with Navjot Kaur called
Everything She Needs, Amrita et Boris,
which premiers in France in January, and
finished translating The Maids [by French
dramatist Jean Genet] into Hindi, along
with Priyanka Bose and Vaibhav Dixit.
dESign
Dhairya DanD
Designer and researcher
Over the last year, Dand’s efforts have
become bolder. A summary of the
innovations that Dand is working on,
which he shared with Forbes India, include
experiments in reconfiguring exfoliated
human fingernails as raw material for 3D
printing; electronic circuits in the form
of skin tattoos that have sensors to read
biosignals; a painting whose ink is electro-
conductive, which can sense human
Mohini Dey
FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 63
  / Last year’s 30u30
Under
Dhairya Dand
touch and respond by producing musical
notes; and an attempt to make an actual
spider weave a web using 3D patterns
exported from a software to the creature.
EcommErcE
mehul agrawal
Co-founder, FabFurnish
Agrawal, who quit FabFurnish in July
2015, is now starting another company of
his own. “Building a rockstar team for the
next big idea!” says his LinkedIn profile.
EntErtainmEnt
ShraDDha kaPoor
actress
Kapoor continued her golden run at the
box office with her solo release in 2015,
ABCD 2, entering the Rs 100 crore-club.
Her performance in the movie earned
her appreciation not only for her acting
skills but also her dance moves. In the
pipeline: Rock On!! 2, Baaghi: A Rebel For
Love and Half Girlfriend. Her passion
for singing will see her lend her voice
to a few songs in Rock On!! 2 in 2016.
aditi Mittal
64 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016
Mehul agrawal
aDiti mittal
standup comedian
Mittal says 2015 was the best year for her.
“I experimented with music, did comedy
in Hindi for the first time, learnt to face
failure and be independent,” she says. “I
have released two comedy songs—‘Satth
rupiye di chai and ‘Facebook pe mummy’—
and did shows in 14 cities in India in 15
days. I also went to London and performed
for the BBC. Currently, I am working on a
script which will go for shoot by January-
end. I also want to do a six-song album for
this character I do called Dolly Khurana.”
The Forbes India Impact: “I am in the
business of comedy, so it is ironically
hilarious when a serious magazine
like Forbes India recognises your good
work,” Mittal says. “My interaction
with Forbes India has been wonderful.
My dad has that one emotional tear of
pride every time he reads the article.”
FaSHion
ruChika SaChDeva
Founder and creative director, Bodice
ruchika sachdeva
shraddha kapoor
Sachdeva’s brand Bodice has been
selected to exhibit at the International
Fashion Showcase 2016 in February.
This is an annual initiative organised by
the British Council and British Fashion
Council during London Fashion Week.
“Last year was when we focussed on
expanding our retail network; Bodice is
now available in around 20 stores across
India,” Sachdeva says. “In 2016, we would
be focusing on our own online store
and working on our digital presence.”
Food & HoSpitality
rahul Dua
restaurateur
“In the past year, my first venture Café
Lota has grown from being just an
experiment with home-style regional
Indian food to the city’s favourite lunch
spot. While the café and its concept have
achieved commercial acceptance, we have
ensured that we are constantly challenging
ourselves with our ever-changing menu,”
says Dua. His second venture Rustom’s
Parsi Bhonu was successfully launched last
year along with food writer and restaurant
manager Kainaz Contractor. “We won
rahul Dua
rahul Mehra
the Top Chef Award for Best Regional
Restaurant in Delhi NCR in August 2015.
I am also set to open the first Rustom’s
Café and Bakery in January 2016 at the
Khoj International Artists Association.”
The Forbes India Impact: “Being part of
the 2015 Forbes India 30 Under 30 list was
hugely instrumental in strengthening my
belief about pushing regional Indian food
and 2016 will be no different,” says Dua.
rahul mehra
Co-founder and partner,
Gateway Brewing Company
“The craft beer momentum is finally
catching on and the Gateway Brewing
Company is at the forefront, riding this
wave. In the past year, we’ve tripled
our market presence and volumes,”
says Mehra. “We have queries from
all over the country and will soon
start distribution in other cities.”
The Forbes India Impact: “Being part
of the 2015 Forbes India 30 Under 30
list has brought us credibility and added
an edge to our brand,” Mehra says.
(From left) Guneet kaur, Parijata Bhardwaj and Isha khandelwal
karthik Naralasetty
heaLth Care
karthik naralaSetty
Founder, socialblood
Socialblood, an app to connect blood
donors with those who require it, has
launched operations in 18 countries
including Rwanda, Kenya, Pakistan,
Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia,
Indonesia, Zambia, Peru, Mexico,
Colombia, Niger and Mongolia. The
application has witnessed an 85 percent
increase in monthly visitors, a 59 percent
rise in requests for blood and a 65 percent
drop in donor response time compared to
last year. The company has also hired a
mobile team in Myanmar and has plans of
going ‘app only’ in the first quarter of 2016.
law, policy & politicS
luBhyathi rangaraJan
anD Shreya raStogi
Legal activists
Rangarajan and Rastogi, who work for
the rechristened Centre on the Death
Penalty, managed to get a significant
order in the case of Shabnam versus the
abhishek Choudhary (left) and saransh Vaswani
shreya rastogi (left) and Lubhyathi rangarajan
Union of India. The Supreme Court
laid down rules for due process to be
followed in case a prisoner on death row
was executed. Notice has to be issued to
the prisoner, and a representation has
to be made to the sessions court where
a lawyer must be present. However, a
few months later, that process was not
followed in the case of Yakub Memon,
who was executed for his role in the
1993 Mumbai blasts. The Centre is now
working on a project to study the mental
health of inmates on death row as well
as preparing to release a statistical
report on the death penalty in India.
iSha khanDelwal, PariJata
BharDwaJ anD guneet kaur
Lawyers
The Jagdalpur Legal Aid Group has had
an eventful year. Two members, Parijata
Bhardwaj and Guneet Kaur, left while
Isha Khandelwal continues to fight
for the rights of the local population.
Khandelwal says their workload in the
last year has gone up manifold. Their
main test came when the group took up
FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 65
  / Last year’s 30u30
Under
alok kumar
the case of Santosh Yadav, a journalist who
chronicled excesses by the security forces
in Chhattisgarh. In a curious incident,
the Bastar Bar Association barred them
from practicing. Judges refused to allow
them to stand in court and the group had
to fight back to get this overturned.
ngos & Social EntrEprEnEurSHip
aBhiShek ChouDhary
anD SaranSh vaSwani
Founders, saajha
Choudhary and Vaswani’s Delhi-based
non-profit educational startup Saajha
made rapid moves in 2015, operating
directly in 85 schools (58 in the previous
year) and strengthening operations in
1,200 out of Delhi’s 1,800-odd government
primary schools. Saajha has also partnered
with the Delhi state government to ensure
that one local MLA and a social worker
formed part of school management
committees (SMC) in each school. It
has tied up with Bengaluru-based IT
samay kohli (left) and akash Gupta
66 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016
Bhuvneshwar kumar
outsourcing firm Mindtree to create
a mobile app for SMCs, which
documents meetings and attendance
of teachers. In 2016-17, Saajha
plans to expand into Karnataka,
in alliance with Deshpande
Foundation, an NGO which was
founded by Gururaj Deshpande.
alok kumar
Co-founder, Prayas Innovation;
founder, Jigsaw Design
Designer-turned-entrepreneur Alok
Kumar, who had co-founded Prayas
Innovation with Manish Mathur in
2014, quit his company last year to
set up another firm Jigsaw Design in
Pune. A delay in getting large orders,
particularly from some state
governments, forced Kumar to look
beyond Prayas. He is now developing
the prototype for a women’s safety
product, which was earlier to be
launched under the Prayas fold.
SportS
kiDamBi Srikanth
Badminton player
“I won two major titles early in 2015, and
reached my career-best ranking (of World
No 3),” Srikanth says. There were some
disappointments as well with a flurry of
early exits from tournaments. Srikanth
ended the year ranked 9th, though he
retained his spot as the top-ranked men’s
singles player in India. “It is highly
competitive at the top, and I have had
some ups and downs but qualifying for the
Super Series finals was a good experience.”
BhuvneShwar kumar
Cricketer
Kumar, whose swing bowling made him
a valuable asset to the Indian team, was
forced to stay away from the Test squad for
all of 2015, barring a solitary appearance at
Sydney in January 2015, owing to injuries
and a dramatic dip in form. Although
he was a part of the ODI squad for 13
matches, he will be best remembered for
the dubious distinction of conceding 106
runs in a single one-day international
against South Africa in Mumbai. An injury
to teammate Mohammad Shami saw
Kumar make a comeback to the national
squad for the tour to Australia in 2016,
and though it may be premature to write
him off, 2015 clearly wasn’t his year.
tEcHnology
Samay kohli anD akaSh guPta
Ceo and Co-Founders, Grey orange
“The company is experiencing a
phenomenal pull from customers
worldwide, having tripled our customer
base,” says Kohli. “We are now turning
to technology to improve customers’
supply chain efficiency and helping them
optimise their operations. We raised
a Series-B round of funding of Rs 200
crore, while our overall business grew
over five times.” Grey Orange also set up
base in Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore
and more than doubled its employee
strength. Besides, the company also
set up a state-of-the-art research and
development campus in Gurgaon last year.
compiled and edited by: aveek datta
reporting by: angad singh thakur,
benu joshi routh, debojyoti ghosh, deepti
chaudhary, jasodhara banerjee, kathakali
chanda, kunal purandare, salil panchal,
samar srivastava, shutapa paul

Glass Half-Full,
Yet Half-Empty
While the Start-up India Action Plan legitimises
entrepreneurship, it lacks bold moves that can
help young businesses cut through red tape in
payments, raising money or listing
By HaricHandan a arakali
I
t was early this January, a
couple of weeks before Prime
Minister Narendra Modi
announced the coming of
age of Indian startups by launching
the Start-up India Action Plan; in
Bengaluru, Anandraj Koormapolu
had queued up to get a Rs 500 stamp
paper to urgently close a deal.
This was his second attempt in as
many days to procure the paper as
the vendor in the city’s Koramangala
area—home to many technology
companies—had closed while he was
waiting for his turn the previous day.
Koormapolu, a software products
veteran, couldn’t help being bemused
at the system; he could have spent his
time fine-tuning the latest release at
his startup. Zoojoo.be, the company
he co-founded with friend Avinash
Saurabh, had recently raised its first
$1 million from venture capital (VC)
firm Roundglass Partners, and the two
were excited about raising their game.
Zoojoo.be brings together employees
of an entire company in a social
media environment to drive wellness;
using gaming elements, users are
encouraged to set and beat personal
fitness goals. The implications of this
for health insurance are enormous.
India’s new age startups aren’t
about exporting cheap labour. They
solve big problems for Indians in
India. Some of them might even
Start-uP india action Plan
go on to set the bar for the rest of
the world in innovation, despite
the frustrating trips for stamp
papers and other red tape.
It is the recognition of this
potential of the startup economy,
and the current environment
that stifles its growth, that has
prompted the Union government to
announce the country’s new policy
to build the startup ecosystem.
Everyone Forbes India spoke
to agrees the policy is a giant leap
forward. “The biggest win here is the
government’s recognition of startups,”
says Girish Mathrubootham,
founder and chief executive of
Freshdesk, India’s first startup to
attract investment from Google
Capital and whose cloud-based
customer support products boast of
50,000 customers in 143 countries.
“Now we will have a seat at the
THE POLICY
IS A MISSED
OPPORTUNITY
TO HAVE
ARTICULATED
SOMETHING
TRULY VISIONARY
Policy
table,” and startups might get more
attention, Mathrubootham said in
a phone interview from Chennai.
“The prime minister’s
backing for the policy is bringing
entrepreneurship to the forefront...
making it a household name for
the first time in India’s history,”
says Alok Goel, managing director
at venture capital firm SAIF
Partners. “The biggest thing it’s
doing is telling people that being
an entrepreneur is fine.”
It has also dawned on the
government that startups are
different from the traditional small
and medium enterprises, and that
these ventures are a legitimate
economic activity and a source of
wealth and job creation, says Sanjay
Anandaram, partner at Seedfund,
a Bengaluru-based VC firm.
For ventures starting today, this
is a huge step, says Rajiv Srivatsa,
co-founder and chief operating
officer at Urban Ladder, which sells
furniture online. From creating a Rs
10,000-crore corpus to popularising
entrepreneurship in schools, the
policy reflects “tremendous energy
and momentum”. “Ten years from
now... school children will want to do
this [entrepreneurship],” he adds.
The startup policy also has some
tax breaks and other concessions for
new startups and tries to make tasks
such as registering a new startup,
or shutting down a failed one, less
bureaucratic. There is even a proposal
to build a smartphone app to track
the progress of such processes.
W
hile the startup policy
has set the ball rolling,
there is also the feeling
that it lacks bold steps and the new
policy is a missed opportunity to
have articulated something truly
visionary. “I don’t think this policy
has anything for startups that
were established four years ago or
even six or seven years ago,” says
FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 67
 Policy Start-uP india action Plan

Srivatsa, “barring some mentions

like encouraging patent filing.”
Aditya Sanghi’s Hotelogix in
Bengaluru is a rival to Freshdesk in
the hospitality space, selling internet-
based customer management software
for small- and medium-sized hotels
across the world. Sanghi needs to
collect payments from customers fairly
frequently, “but we can’t have their
cards on file”, he says. Under Indian
rules, each payment would require a
second factor of authentication, which
means that startups here can’t save the
credit card details of their customers to
periodically deduct fees. “I spent a year
setting up a unit in the US, which we
now use to collect money,” says Sanghi.
With Freshdesk, too,
Mathrubootham headquartered the
company in the US, which also makes
it easier to raise money from overseas
investors, and eventually list on a
stock exchange. “I understand that the
RBI has these rules to ensure security
and prevent funding of terrorist
activities and such things,” he says.
“But you’re also killing startups.”
Bikram Sohal, who started
SavvyMob, a last-minute online hotel
reservation service, recalled how at
an earlier venture, his co-founder
had turned up at Hong Kong, where
Sohal was based at the time, with a big
bundle of documents to register the
company. “None of that was in fact
required,” Sohal recounts. “Within
a few hours we were done, and we
had a bank account and a card in a
day” and they were good to go. At
Bengaluru-based SavvyMob, getting
a corporate credit card—for working
capital—required a deposit larger
than the credit limit as collateral.
“If you can do this [registering a
company] in a couple of hours in Hong Prime Minister narendra Modi at the launch of Start-Up india at Vigyan Bhawan, new delhi,
Kong, and in a day in California, why on January 16
not here,” Seedfund’s Anandaram
asks. “You are forcing companies to money or listing norms. company laws and shackled further
leave India because of the onerous Another big disappointment by how they are taxed. Employees
documentation requirements.” across the board is that the policy who have worked, say, five years at
Getty imaGeS

The startup policy has made does not make it easier for startups a startup, helped it become big, and
no hard decisions on easing to use employee stock options seen the value of their stock rise
bureaucracy in payments, raising (Esops), which are bound by archaic manifold in the process will have

68 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016

to pay over a third of the notional
value of that stock as tax if they have
to truly own the shares, while the
company remains privately held.
As a result, many allow the options
to lapse, especially when leaving the
company to join another. If there’s
bad blood between the startup and the
employee, that makes the situation
worse. There are scenarios when the
startup will require signatures on
various forms—like the shareholder
agreement, for instance—of people
who own stock in the company,
whether they are current employees
or not, says Sanghi. Therefore, Esops
are also useless as a way to attract
and retain talent, he added. “I’m
still struggling to get all my Esops
documentation in order. I have just
issued promissory notes to everyone.”
From starting a company to running
it to shutting it, “all the paperwork
that’s being asked for today is with
an eye of suspicion,” Sanghi says.
These kinds of frustrations—a
huge daily distraction from the
actual task of inventing something
or innovating something—are
what compel many firms to move
their headquarters to the US, the
UK, Hong Kong or Singapore.
Singapore is widely seen as
perhaps the best country in terms of
ease of doing business, and among
the top three least corrupt nations.
The city state also has specific
regulations encouraging startups.
For instance, an inventor can take a
working prototype to the government
and get financial aid to develop and
commercialise it, or, having raised
some funding, get matching grants
and so on. The inventor in Singapore
can also rest easy that the fruits
of his labour will not be stolen. In
other words, a strong patent regime
and a well-developed intellectual
property regime is in place.
Not so in India. Goel recalled
he had recently met someone who
had built a very interesting electric
vehicle that had a lot of potential for
personal transport, but “he is worried
A MIXED BAG
The Start-up India Action Plan,
launched on January 16, has set the
ball rolling on policies that can help
startups get off the ground. But there
are unaddressed issues
Hits
1. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s
involvement draws mainstream
attention to entrepreneurship
and will make ‘startups’
a household term.
2. Innovation programme to raise
awareness about entrepreneurship
at the school level.
3. Tax breaks and capital gains
concessions for startups.
4. Efforts to reduce red tape in
registering a startup, including an
online app for monitoring progress.
5. Fund of Rs 10,000 crore to help
startups take off.
Misses
1. Existing startups, started over the
last 4-6 years don’t get much help.
2. Tax holiday during early years won’t
help as most startups don’t make
profits that early.
3. Service tax concessions, which could
have helped, are missing.
4. Esop rules have been left untouched,
which is being seen by many as a
huge disappointment.
5. No hard decisions on easing
bureaucratic tangles in payments,
raising money or listing norms.
about commercialising it in India
because he fears a larger company
will copy his idea and bring out a
rival product into the market soon.”
Urban Ladder’s Srivatsa agrees:
“IP protection takes too much time
and is too expensive in India.”
So if the government is talking
about helping companies on this
front, that’s a step forward.
There isn’t much precedence in
India in terms of patent enforcement.
And in the startup policy, patent
enforcement isn’t clearly mentioned.
However, there is a discussion on
subsidies for patent filing, which
implies that there is an interest in
creating a stronger patent regime.
While the startup policy is a
good start at playing catch-up,
there are many areas beyond the
immediate purview of the policy
that impacts the ecosystem, where
there are no quick fixes. These
range from basic infrastructure like
good roads to 4G networks to what
Anandaram calls “invention-oriented
research and development”. Take a
professor from Stanford University
and one from any of India’s top
institutes in the same field. “The
guy from Stanford will always be
thinking, ‘How can I commercialise
this?’,” says Anandaram.
“Even in the second or third
year of study, if a project is good a
Stanford professor will encourage
a student to go start a business,”
says Sashi Chimala, executive
vice president at the Wadhwani
Foundation-backed National
Entrepreneurship Network. “That
culture hasn’t come to India yet.”
This isn’t restricted to the narrow
definition of technology. “Show
me where in India there is any
cutting-edge research in behavioural
economics,” says Goel of SAIF
Partners. “In the US there is so much
of research into cognitive behaviour
and how product development
must incorporate such findings.”
Startups, both those which copied
Western models and adapted them
to Indian conditions, and those
that are looking to commercialise
their own original ideas, can help
solve pressing problems and benefit
millions of Indians. Enabling them
calls for an environment in which
being an entrepreneur is a good
thing. That, like all good things, starts
with the family. “When we were
growing up, our parents could only
envision us as doctors, engineers
or maybe lawyers,” says Goel.
“Today a lot of us are open to our
children becoming entrepreneurs.”
Koormapolu’s trips to get
stamp papers won’t end overnight,
but the startup policy is a step
closer to that scenario.
FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 69
 Forbes IndIa trophy

Riding
on Glory,
Glamour
The Forbes India Trophy
was a glitzy affair with
a dash of style

2 3
photographs: Forbes IndIa photo team

70 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016

 4 5

1. Model Kamal Sidhu with husband

Nico Goghavala 2. Fight to the finish…
the race was a close affair 3. Theatre
veteran Raell Padamsee with food critic,
TV host and writer Rashmi Uday Singh
(right) 4. Jewellery designer Farah Khan
Ali (second from left), actor Randeep
Hooda (third from left), Anil Uniyal, CEO,
Forbes India, CNBC TV18, CNBC Awaaz
& CNBC Bajar (third from right),
Sourav Majumdar, Editor, Forbes
India (second from right), with Audi
India head Joe King (extreme right)
during the presentation ceremony
of the Forbes India Trophy at the
Mahalaxmi Racecourse on Sunday,
January 17, 2016 5. Kailash and Aarti
Surendranath pose for the shutterbugs
6. Sunil Alagh (centre), former CEO of
Britannia Industries, during an animated
conversation 7. Model Cleo Isaacs was
among the celebrities at the show

6 7

Presented by

Presenting Sponsor In Partnership with Associate Sponsor Beer Partner

FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 71

 CROSS BORDER
fitBit

G
iven how things go in
Silicon Valley, Fitbit Wellness warriors:
Fitbit co-founders
shouldn’t be around. It James park and
started selling wearable Eric Friedman

activity trackers when other

hardware startups struggled for
funding. Its founders hadn’t sold a
single gadget when they shipped
their first product and had no clue
how much it would cost. Last year,
Apple launched a smartwatch that
was to blow all other wearables
away. Instead, Fitbit remains the
biggest device seller by shipments,
and its founders, James Park and
Eric Friedman, raised $841 million in
one of 2015’s most successful IPOs.
They’re on track to earn $215 million
on sales of $1.8 billion for 2015,
double of what they earned last year.
Threats to Fitbit’s existence aren’t
going away. Its share of the global
wearables market shrank from 33
percent to 22 percent in the past
year as Apple and China’s Xiaomi
launched their own devices. Fitbit’s
most high-tech smartwatch, the
$250 Surge, is nowhere near as good
as the Apple Watch or the Samsung
Gear. Analysts suspect consumers
will gravitate toward watches
that do more than count steps.

Fit for Work

Fitness trackers have a tendency to
wind up at the bottom of the sock
drawer after a few months of use.
Yet, Fitbit has a buffer that could
prolong its survival: An obscure Fitbit is losing market share to Apple, but
market called corporate wellness. that’s okay. Corporate wellness is saving it
Around 80 percent of American
employers do things such as subsidise
BY parmY olson
gym memberships or organise activity
challenges that encourage their staff
to be healthy, and they spend an than 70 large American employers for managing wellness programmes,
average of $693 per worker on such have bought Fitbit devices in bulk says that some 70 percent of the
ChRiStian PEaCOCk fOR fORBES

programmes, according to Fidelity
Investments. Fitbit has been going
after these dollars since it first started
shipping to consumers in 2009 and
will gross as much as $180 million this
year from thousands of employers,
making the corporate market one of
its fastest-growing businesses. More
for their staff, including Target,
which recently bought 330,000,
and Barclays, which is subsidising
their cost for 75,000 staffers.
Other wearable-device makers
such as Jawbone and Misfit sell to
employers, too, but Fitbit dominates.
Jiff, a startup that makes software
devices ordered by its corporate
customers are Fitbits. Though Misfit
charges employers less per device
at about $40, corporate customers
still gravitate to Fitbit because of its
better software and analytics service,
says Jiff CEO Derek Newell, and they
avoid the Apple Watch’s high price

72 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016


tag. Expect more employers to ape
Target and buy devices in bulk, says
Stephanie Pronk, head of wellness at
insurer Aon, who advises employers
on how to build their programmes.
“Devices are coming down in cost, so
employers see that as a viable option.”
Fitbit dates back to an unusually
cold May morning in San Francisco
in 2006 when co-founder Park was
shivering in line to become one of
the first people to buy the Nintendo
Wii. He took the game console home
and was struck by its combination
of sophisticated sensors with a
dead-simple interface that kids and
grandmothers could use. He called his
partner on a previous startup, the tall
and lankier Eric Friedman, who was
in Bangkok for a conference. “I’ve got
an idea,” Park said, for a pedometer
that would be as sophisticated and
accessible as the Wii. They flew to
Japan, where pedometers and on-the-
job exercising were plentiful, to survey
how people use their devices. In 2008,
Friedman bought a small balsa-wood
box and stuffed it with circuitry
to fashion their first prototype.
Months after launching their $99
Fitbit Tracker, Park and Friedman
got a phone call from Vickie Lee, a
vice president of HR at the Austin,
Texas, office of semiconductor firm
Tokyo Electron. In the midst of
planning her first corporate wellness
programme she spotted an ad for
the Fitbit Tracker and ordered two
devices to try out. Fitbit’s website
was clunky, but its app’s graphs and
data were just geeky enough to thrill
her 1,200-person workforce of mostly
engineers. She paid $120,000 to buy
a Tracker for everyone. A couple of
years ago, Aon’s Pronk contacted
Fitbit. “There’s an opportunity here
to come into corporate America,” she
told them. At the urging of several
employers, Fitbit developed software
to track and analyse workers’ steps
and sleep activity, and in the middle
of 2015, began bundling it for free.
Not many bosses have the nerve
to track their workers’ sleep just yet,
even though it would be a step toward
addressing workplace mental health
issues; insomnia is highly correlated
with depression and anxiety. Jiff’s
Newell says a few of his corporate
customers tried offering rewards
to staff who showed the healthiest
sleep patterns and met with a privacy
backlash from their workers.
Fitbit needs more pioneers to
expand the market for corporate
wellness tracking. Employers
(especially those that are self-insured)
are already saving money. Cloud-
computing service firm Appirio cut
its 2014 insurance premiums by 6
percent, or $280,000, after showing
its insurer the activity data from
400 Fitbits it had given to workers.
Tokyo Electron, also self-insured,
is paying $11,800 per employee per
year on health costs but estimates
the number would be $15,000 if
it weren’t for its Fitbit-focussed
wellness plan. Its annual claims
growth is now running at 5 percent,
down from 11 percent in 2008.
Fitbit’s researchers are working
on adding more ways to track
health. What about talk that it could
introduce a sensor for monitoring
blood sugar, a way into the diabetes
market? “No comment,” says
R&D chief Shelton Yuen, whose
team built one of the first optical
sensors to measure pulse. It’s not
always the people you expect who
solve the trickiest problems.
FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 73
 CROSS BORDER
autOS

The
Future
is the
Past
The entire auto industry
is betting on self-
driving cars—except
Mazda’s Masamichi
Kogai, who believes
lots of people love to
get behind the wheel

By joann muller

S
queezing the accelerator on
the Mazda MX-5 Miata as
it exits a curve on a twisty
back road in Michigan, you
can’t help but smile. In the rearview
mirror you can see a whoosh of dead
leaves rising in your wake, dancing to
the hum of the exhaust coming from
the car’s high-revving, four-cylinder
engine. Mazda’s $25,000, 155 HP
roadster is not the most powerful car
on the planet—far from it. But with
the top down and the sun warming
your neck on an unseasonably mild
December day, you just want to keep
driving forever. It’s that much fun.
Mercedes-Benz, Cadillac, Volvo— to work or even take a nap during This is the future, asserts Tesla
not to mention Google, Tesla and, their commute. Volvo just unveiled Chief Executive Elon Musk. “Any cars
rumour has it, Apple—are all racing the Time Machine, a futuristic that are being made that don’t have full
to relieve drivers of that fun. Within cockpit with a 25-inch flat-screen autonomy will have negative value,” he
five years, most automakers say, that rotates out of the dashboard as predicted in a November conference
they’ll offer highly automated cars that the steering wheel retreats and the call with Wall Street analysts. “It will
can handle stop-and-go traffic and driver reclines. Google is developing be like owning a horse. You’re really
freeway speeds without any driver self-driving cars that don’t even come owning it for sentimental reasons.”
input. In ten years drivers will be able with a steering wheel or gas pedal. Not everyone thinks so. “It’s not

74 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016


just getting from point A to point
B,” says Mazda’s soft-spoken CEO,
Masamichi Kogai, who heads up
perhaps the only major automaker
that is not working on autonomous
cars. “Our mission is to provide
the essence of driving pleasure.
“The car for me is like being
home,” he continues. “As soon as
I get inside the car, no one outside
can bother me. I might go to a lake
or to the mountains. I don’t know
where I am going until I get there.”
Kogai has a very clear road map,
however, when it comes to leading
the once struggling Mazda into the
future. The company tried keeping
up with larger Japanese rivals
at the wheel:
mazda Ceo
masamichi Kogai
makes cars for
drivers, not robots
like Toyota and Nissan and nearly
wound up bankrupt, losing billions
in the mid-1990s. Ford Motor, which
SCOtt COunCil FOR FORBES
had owned a small stake in Mazda
since 1979, soon became its largest
shareholder, effectively controlling
the company with a 33 percent stake.
But by 2008, in the throes of the
financial crisis, Ford slashed its stake
FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 75
 CROSS BORDER autOS
ignition spaRk plugs (2)
figuring out how to
make fun-to-drive
Mazdas that would
meet tougher fuel-
economy standards
without an R&D
intake hole
budget for hybrid
or electric cars.
Mazda turned
that weakness into
a strength, defying
conventional
thinking by
exhaust theorising it could
hit the targets with
regular gasoline
3-sided
engines—albeit
RotoR radically redesigned
ones. It developed a
new engine from the
A Different KinD Of engine inside out, boosting
instead of pistons moving up and down in a cylinder, Mazda’s rotary the combustion
engine traps pockets of charged air while it turns. With fewer moving efficiency to
parts, the engine cycle is faster, resulting in more power per litre
levels no other
automaker would
to 14 percent, then dumped the rest dare try because of the associated
starting in 2010. Cast off in a sea of red ‘engine knocking’. But since Mazda
ink, Mazda went into a tailspin, losing was starting with a clean sheet, it
nearly $3 billion from 2009 to 2012. redesigned the exhaust system,
Mazda was forced to rethink every chassis and body to offset such effects
aspect of its business, from the way and achieve the desired engine
its cars are designed and engineered performance. The soup-to-nuts
to the way they are assembled. Kogai approach resulted in a 15 percent
was in the thick of it, first as head of improvement in fuel efficiency over
manufacturing, then as chief executive previous engines and was quickly
since 2013. He overhauled Mazda’s incorporated in models like the
manufacturing footprint, ending Mazda CX-5 crossover and the
production in Michigan while opening Mazda3 and Mazda6 sedans. The last
a new plant in lower-cost Mexico two get close to 40 miles per gallon
and setting up joint manufacturing (the bigger SUV gets a solid 33).
ventures in Russia and Vietnam. To pay for it, Mazda issued $2.7
Cost-cutting alone wouldn’t solve billion in a stock and debt offering in
Mazda’s problems. It had to figure 2012. It was a gigantic bet for a small
out how to be as agile as its cars. company trying to stay competitive
Instead of designing cars one with larger global players.
at a time and leaving it up to the But it worked. After the catastrophe
manufacturing team to figure out of its divorce from Ford, Mazda has
how to produce them, Mazda pulled been profitable for the last three years.
everyone together—designers, In the fiscal year ended March 31,
engineers, suppliers, purchasing 2015, net income was $1.3 billion, on
staff and production experts— revenues of $25 billion. Global vehicle
and began plotting its entire sales are up 12 percent since 2012, and
lineup five to ten years out. Mazda’s Ebitda margin has improved
Their most difficult challenge was to almost 9 percent, better than
76 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016
Ford’s 7.9 percent but still lagging
the industry average of 11 percent.
Wall Street isn’t a believer. Mazda
shares were down 15.7 percent in 2015
(through mid-December), versus 3.4
percent for the industry as a whole.
Mazda attributes its resilience to its
history, which is inextricably linked
to its hometown of Hiroshima. When
America dropped the first atomic
bomb on the city in August 1945,
Mazda, then known as Toyo Kogyo
Co. Ltd., made three-wheel trucks
and military hardware. While most
of the city was flattened, Toyo Kogyo
was spared by a quirk of topography:
A hill between the blast site and
the factory diverted the inferno up
and over its operations. Within four
months Mazda was back in business.
By the early 1960s, Mazda was
making cars. But so were a lot of
other Japanese companies. When the
government wanted to consolidate
the industry behind a handful of
strong companies, Mazda’s then
president, Tsuneji Matsuda, saw
the writing on the wall. To preserve
Mazda’s independence, he licensed
a promising technology for a rotary
engine from German scientist Felix
Wankel in 1961. Elegantly simple
but difficult to make well, the rotary
engine became Mazda’s obsession
for the next half-century. In 1967 the
company introduced the world’s first
rotary sports car, the Cosmo, followed
by the rotary-powered RX-7 in the late
’70s, ’80s and ’90s and the RX-8 in the
2000s. A win at 24 Hours of Le Mans
in 1991 sealed Mazda’s cult following.
There was an outcry in 2011,
when Mazda stopped production
of the slow-selling RX-8, but now
Kogai has given loyalists reason for
hope. At the Tokyo Motor Show
last November he unveiled the RX-
Vision, a sports car concept that had
Mazda lovers drooling. A smiling
Kogai was coy about whether Mazda
would build it: “The only engine we
can think of in that car is a rotary
engine.” There will be plenty of
drivers lining up if it happens.
 Life
recliner appraiSal
Actor Geena Triumph hits
Davis talks about the nail on the
onscreen female head with its
representation Street Twin
P/84 P/89

recliner Can an ambitious revival plan rejuvenate India’s oldest Chinatown?

Tulu Sinha for forbeS india

A community club
in Tangra, Kolkata’s
second chinatown
 Life recLiner

Will the
Dragon
Dance
Again?

Ethnic Chinese perform a lion

dance to celebrate the Lunar
New Year in Kolkata. The
Indian Chinese Association
revived the tradition a
few years ago to bring the
community together
Kolkata’s Chinatown, the
oldest in India, has been
in decline for decades. An
ambitious revival project
now aims to alter the
community’s future
BY KAThAKALI ChANdA

M
uch before the rest
of the city begins
its Sunday, a lane
behind Lalbazar,
the police headquarters in central
Kolkata, stirs awake with the clank
of cookware and the aroma of food.
The sleepy pavements on either side
of Chhatawala Galli spring into action
as makeshift stalls—a few rickety
tables and chairs—are propped up.
Someone dunks a long-handled ladle
into a simmering pot of fishball stew
and stirs it. Somebody else keeps
plates of momos ready. As day breaks,
the din of visitors rises, and huddles
form around items on sale. A man
in his twenties haggles for speckled
pork sausages, while his companion
bites alternately into a pau (a steamed
bun with a filling of chicken, pork or
shrimp) and a crunchy spring roll.
Shutterbugs snake through the crowds,
capturing what could just be the last
images of a decades-old tradition.
Welcome to the Chinese breakfast
market in Kolkata’s Tiretti Bazaar,
home to the oldest Chinatown in
India. (See box on how the community
settled in Kolkata.) The home-cooked
Chinese meals served here come
with spoonfuls of nostalgia. And for
many of those who have frequented
the market since childhood, nostalgia
is perhaps all that remains.
“The Chinese breakfast market
hardly has any Chinese people these
days,” says Sam, 70, a third-generation
Jayanta Shaw / reuterS

Chinese who has been coming to

the market for the last 20 years.
Like most other Chinese businesses
in the city—shoe and furniture stores,
beauty parlours—the breakfast market
is a pale shadow of its past. Not only

FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 79

Life recLiner
has it shrunk, with many stalls now
being run by Indians who’ve taken
over from their emigrating Chinese
employers, the market is also no longer
a daily affair. Says Brenda, a second-
generation Chinese-Kolkatan, as she
lays out her stock of rice noodles,
shrimp wafers and silk peds, “Pehle
chalne ki jaiga nahin tha [earlier there
would not be enough space to walk].
Now, there are hardly any Chinese
stalls. And the market barely functions
through the rest of the week.”
It’s a similar picture at Bentinck
Street. Once known to the local
Chinese as ‘shoe road’, it was where
Kolkata’s old-timers headed for
authentic, handmade footwear.
Now you can count the number
of Chinese-run shops on your fingers.
CH Ku, owner of Eong Soon, recalls:
“The downfall started when some of
the shoemakers started getting cheap,
machine-made shoes from Agra and
Kanpur. Besides, we could not keep
up with modern chains like
Sreeleathers or Bata.” With businesses
on the wane, the younger generation
has lost interest. Ku doesn’t think
his children will continue to run
his shop. “I’ll have to take it to
my grave it seems,” he says.
Not too far from Bentinck Street,
and a couple of lanes from the
breakfast market, is 22 Blackburn
Lane, a two-storey building that once
housed Nanking restaurant, which
by many accounts was Kolkata’s first
fine-dining Chinese restaurant set up
in 1924. In its heydays, says Dominic
Lee, the CEO of Pou Chong Sauces,
Nanking was a playground of the rich
and famous. “This is where British
officers, and later film stars—the Raj
Kapoors and the Dilip Kumars—
would come for authentic Chinese
food. Horse-drawn carriages would
bring the elite, and violinists would
welcome the guests,” says Lee. He
recounts how the stars would wave at
the throng of fans from the balcony.
“One such gathering was refusing
to let Pran leave, so the actor threw
some money and when the fans
rushed to collect it, he slunk away.”
80 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016
How tHe CHinese
Came to CalCutta
Records cited by historians Zhing Xian
and Tansen Sen in their paper ‘The
Chinese in South Asia’ (published in
the Routledge Handbook of the Chinese
Diaspora) show that, in the latter half of
the 18th century, a few hundred Chinese
migrants had come to Calcutta on ships
that arrived from Canton. But the most
well-known “first” settler was a tea trader
named Yang Dazhao, nicknamed Atchew,
who received a land grant from the then
Governor General Warren Hastings in
1778 near Budge Budge, on the eastern
bank of the Hooghly river. Atchew set up
a sugar mill on the plot in the area since
called Achipur, and began to bring labour-
ers from China.
Around 1857, when about 500 Cantonese
and Hakka Chinese were already living in
Calcutta, engaged in shoemaking,
carpentry and selling opium, the
community started settling in Bombay
too, mostly around the Mazagon Dock
area. But the settlement on the western
coast never attained a critical mass.
Hence, it is only in Calcutta that the Chi-
nese carved out a distinct living district—
two, in fact—for themselves.
The restaurant shut some time in
the mid-1970s. Its illustrious history
is now ransom to a pile of garbage
and tarpaulin shanties crowding its
entrance. Travel writer and blogger
Rangan Datta says that in 2011 he had
to crawl through the shanties to reach
the building. “I would say there has
been a marginal improvement with
the garbage removal in five years. But
there is still a long way to go,” he adds.
A new beginning
The removal of the garbage is
perhaps symbolic of the seeds
of a revival plan that have now
been sown for the 200-year-old
Chinese community in Kolkata.
It probably began in 2008, when
a legal tussle arose involving the
trustees of the Toong On Church,
on the first floor of Nanking’s
building, and the family that owned
the restaurant. It ended with the
then municipal commissioner
Alapan Bandyopadhyay declaring
the building a heritage structure.
Around the same time, Dominic
Lee had been making presentations
at several seminars of a blueprint to
renovate Chinese temples in Tiretti
Bazaar, where some of the idols
and artefacts date back to the 1830s.
The proposal found resonance with
some conservation enthusiasts, one
of them being Rinkoo Bhowmik, the
director of BuzzzMedia, a Singapore-
based communications firm.
Bhowmik, who was born in
Kolkata, consequently conceived the
Cha Project in which she brought
together a motley team of academics,
designers and architects to implement
Lee’s project. “A heritage renovation
project in Kolkata had always been on
my mind. When I moved to Singapore,
I saw that a lot of ideas that had been
in my head had been implemented
[in Singapore]. That was the start of
the Cha Project,” says Bhowmik.
Inspired by the Singapore model,
the Rs 100-crore Cha Project
approached the West Bengal tourism
department and, in August 2014,
submitted a detailed project report
(DPR) to Chief Minister Mamata
Banerjee. According to the DPR,
Tiretti Bazaar’s renovation wouldn’t
merely be a cosmetic intervention with
tiled pavements, ornamental lighting
and Chinese motifs, but an economic
revival that would begin with
transforming the breakfast market into
an all-day food street. “We felt this
could be a showcase project for urban
regeneration in the city. Besides the
food street, the six temples in the area
could also form a heritage walk trail to
add economic sustainability,” says GM
Kapur, the Cha Project’s India partner
and head of the Kolkata regional
chapter of Intach (Indian National
Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage).
The project has brought on
board, in various capacities, global
experts such as James Shen from
the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, and Beijing’s People’s
Architecture Office, an award-winning

design company, along with Lukas
Pauer from the Harvard Graduate
School of Design, Fulbright scholar
and conservation architect Kamalika
Bose and Columbia University
graduate Abhimanyu Prakash. “In the
’70s, Singapore made its Chinatown
super-touristy, displacing inhabitants
and killing its flavour. It was only after
they were brought back that the area
became bustling again. We don’t want
to repeat that mistake,” says Bhowmik.
Apart from attracting tourists, to
the area, the Cha Project hopes to
give local Chinese households better
earning opportunities and stem the
flow of migration that started with
the 1962 Sino-Indian war. According
to numbers quoted by Paul Chung,
president of the Indian Chinese
Association, there remain only about
2,500 Chinese in Kolkata, down from
more than 80,000 before the war.
War and its vestiges
The year 1962 was a watershed
moment for the Chinese in Kolkata.
As Tansen Sen, professor of history
at the City University of New York
and director, New York University’s
Center for Global Asia in Shanghai,
says, “Many were persecuted,
deported or interned. Many
businesses were shut and properties
confiscated. That started the story
of a total decline for the community
and that’s what made them look at
every outsider with suspicion.”
The insularity of the Chinese
community in Kolkata contrasts
with the fact that it had initially
been an exception among its global
counterparts in the way it had
co-existed with other migrant
communities in the Calcutta of the
19th century. “The development of
Chinatowns around the world has
been a racial process. Hence, most
Chinatowns became an exclusionary
urban space. Their touristy interface
came later. The older Chinatown
in Kolkata, on the other hand,
existed in close proximity to the
Anglo-Indian, Armenian, Jewish,
Parsi and all other communities,”
says Jayani Bonnerjee, a cultural
geographer and an assistant professor
at Jindal School of Liberal Arts and
Humanities in Sonipat, Haryana.
That, however, changed in the
The Chinese breakfast market
in Tiretti Bazaar. With the
dwindling Chinese population,
the market is today just a pale
shadow of its past
early decades of the 20th century,
when the Hakka Chinese started
leather tanning and, because of
environmental reasons, had to relocate
to Tangra, on the eastern fringes of
the city. The boundary walls that
the tanning units built for security
concerns triggered a ghettoisation
that the community hadn’t seen
before. Tangra, Kolkata’s second
Chinatown, hence, had the look
and feel of a walled community, an
identity that was consciously imbibed
by the Chinese to stick together
when the war broke out in 1962.
At that time, Kolkata-born Ming
Tung Tsieh was a schoolboy in
Darjeeling, where his father had
a shoe shop. “In the middle of the
photographS: tuLu Sinha for forbeS india
night, we were picked up and kept
in Darjeeling jail for 10 days. When a
sufficient number of Chinese people
were gathered, we were sent to
Siliguri. Then one full special train of
Chinese detainees were sent to Deoli
in Rajasthan,” says Tsieh, who has
authored a book, A Lost Tribe, on his
Deoli experience. The Tsieh family
stayed in the camp for two years.
“We were not tortured. But food
FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 81
Life recLiner
was insufficient. Living conditions
were bad. We were packed in army
barracks with six people in one room.”
Monica Liu turned a teenager
at the Deoli camp; she recalls that
more than 10,000 people from the
camp left for China. “They left in
three batches. Each ship carried
more than 3,000 people. But we
faced the worst when we returned.
We had no business or house. I
overheard my dad telling mum that
he had only Rs 24 in his pocket. That
wasn’t sufficient for our family of
seven for more than a week,” says
Liu, who now owns five restaurants
and a beauty parlour in the city.
The war also set off a cycle
of persecution that haunted the
Chinese long after the last detainee
was released from Deoli. They
were not allowed to return to five
sensitive border districts in India,
uprooting many like Tsieh from their
homes for good. He went to stay
with his sister in Pune and started
working in a restaurant, but was
stopped from coming to Mumbai
for better business prospects.
“I was asked to get permission
from the central government.
Many of our friends started
migrating at this point,” he says.
Li Yang Hsiung’s grandfather, who
escaped detention, came to face a lot
of restrictions; he was threatened
with arrest if he stepped out of
82 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016
Tangra and moved towards central
Kolkata. “My maternal uncles were
left without a job. They had to sign
an undertaking that they will never
return to India. Subsequently, they
joined the merchant navy and settled
abroad,” says Hsiung, who runs an
organic manure business in Tangra.
Compounding these effects
of the war was the political and
economic churn of the ’70s and
’80s in Kolkata. The Naxalbari
movement had made the city restive
and the industrial slump later sent
the economy in a downward spiral.
As employment opportunities dried
up, citizens started fleeing Kolkata.
The Chinese were no exception.
In 1975, 19-year-old Joe Li, the son
of a shoe shop owner, borrowed $500
from his grandmother and took a flight
to Tehran. From there, via a series of
buses and trains, he reached Sweden to
work as a dishwasher in a restaurant.
“There were no job opportunities
and I saw my parents were routinely
harassed for being of Chinese descent.
I knew I had to leave,” says Li, who
continued to work in the Swedish city
of Boden before migrating to Canada
in 1985. He adds that the hostilities
towards the Chinese continued even
later. In 1979, when he returned to
meet his wife-to-be, “just because I
looked Chinese, the customs officer at
Mumbai airport questioned me about
how I held an Indian passport. I felt so
angry that I didn’t come back to India
till 1994,” says Li, now the regional
councillor of Markham in Canada.
If the lingering aftermath of the
war was not enough, the community at
Tangra was dealt a death blow by the
Supreme Court with a series of orders
in the 90s to shut the tanneries and
move them to Bantala, 16 km away.
It not only affected their business,
but also their lifestyle. Most Chinese
families in Tangra lived in the same
house as their tanneries. “Some could
move the tanneries, but many couldn’t
due to economic and social reasons.
Some of those who couldn’t are still
trying to do some work or are leasing
out the factory to others to continue
tanning surreptitiously. They are
always wary of being harassed and
exploited, as their forefathers probably
were. That’s why the community
in Tangra is not forthcoming and
tries to keep to themselves,” says
Bean Ching ‘Binny’ Law, president
of the Chinese Indian Association.
Internal hurdles
This seclusion is proving to be a huge
impediment for the Cha Project,
points out Sen. The project’s plan
to set up a cultural centre, which
would house a museum on Chinese
history, in place of the Nanking
restaurant, faced several hitches in
its early days due to the community’s
reluctance to share details.
 Besides, in a community already
riven by sub-ethnic and economic
divisions, members were not even
willing to share information with
each other. Says Sen, “One of
the main issues for Chinatown’s
revival was whether the people
would help revive themselves.”
The community’s cynicism, borne
out of persecution and economic
hardships, is reflected in their attitude
towards the Cha Project as well. The
owner of a restaurant, who refused to
be identified, called the revival efforts
“a joke, a waste of money”. “Will the
government dole out any capital?
Does it have any inkling about what
the Chinese community wants? The
project will just make a Chinatown
without the Chinese,” he said. Another
restaurant owner wondered whether
any revival project can give the locals
a life on par with that in the US or
Canada. Only then would it stem the
flow of migration, he said. “How much
can you earn from the food market?
Rs 15,000? Rs 20,000 a month? Can
you run a family with that?” he asked.
While the Cha Project hasn’t yet
drawn up a plan for the revival of
Tangra—“It’s a tricky issue because of
the furious real estate development
taking place there,” says Sen—doubts
The Toong On Church at 22 Blackburn
Lane Kolkata (left); high rise buildups
inside Tangra’s Chinatown show a spurt
in real estate
The Cha Project
was formed as an
economic and
cultural revival plan
for Kolkata’s
Chinese community
are already creeping in among the
locals. “Clean our sewage first, give
us streetlights, restore law and order.
Fancy things can come later,” says
a local refusing to give his name.
Another asks derisively, “What
revival? Another [ornamental] gate?”,
referring to an imposing structure
on a road that runs past Tangra that
an NGO is said to have launched
amid fanfare and then vamoosed.
This is where a few individuals like
Dominic Lee, Binny Law and Paul
Chung have stepped in. With them,
the Cha Project has found entry points
into the community, particularly with
its youth who, says Sen, have been
key players in raising awareness.
Bhowmik went a step further and
said the Cha Project has been able to
bring down some of the internecine
walls. In January 2014, her colleague
Nandini Ghoshal had organised a
community engagement workshop,
bringing together 24 representatives
of sparring Chinese clubs, temples
and trusts. “Initially, they were
cagey. But once the right questions
were asked, they all opened up. At
the end of the workshop, it broke
the ice. They were all laughing and
having tea together,” she says.
The fact that the Cha Project has
progressed at snail’s pace has also
contributed to the community’s anger.
Surojit Bose, joint director of the
state’s tourism department, says it is
willing to fund the infrastructure for
the food street through the Kolkata
Municipal Corporation (KMC), but
stakeholders have hit a stumbling
block with an issue as minor as the
garbage removal mechanism from
around the Nanking building.
Hope shines
But Bhowmik isn’t giving up. If all
goes well, she says, the food street
will be launched with an Asian food
festival in December 2016 or January
2017. Singaporean street food guru KF
Seetoh is being roped in to mentor the
locals and a mega restoration-cleanup-
training-rebranding drive will be
organised in the lead-up to the event.
Ming Tung Hsieh, a former
Deoli detainee, is trying to be
hopeful about the project, but
he keeps asking himself if too
little is being done too late.
The fact that migrating to the
West is no longer as easy as it was
in the past—given the financial
hardships post-recession and stricter
immigration policies—is forcing the
community to look for opportunities
within the city. John Liao, who
runs a restaurant, feels establishing
oneself as an entrepreneur abroad
is difficult. “To run a business there
and save up for one’s retirement
is impossible,” says Liao.
Janice Lee, who went off to study
in Canada when she was 12 and
returned to India in 2013 to join her
family business, feels the revival
plan will boost the local economy
as well as tourism. Robert Hsu, 37,
a web and app designer, and the
secretary of the Indian Chinese
Association, says a lot of youngsters
with better educational qualifications
than their forefathers are opting
to stay back, given the exponential
rise in employment opportunities
in sectors like IT and hospitality.
Paul Chung, whose Indian Chinese
Association organised the traditional
lion dance some years ago and the
first dragon boat festival in 2015,
speaks highly of the young ones too.
“In all these, it’s the young people
who took the lead. They did all the
hard work. They give me hope.
I don’t think that the Chinese in
Kolkata are going to wither away.”
As the community steps into the
Year of the Monkey on February
8, that would perhaps be its
most heartening takeaway.
FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 83
 Life recLiner

‘There are a Lot of Instances

Where a Male Character
Could Have Been Replaced
by a Female One’
Oscar-winning actor Geena Davis talks about why we need more women
in front of the camera, and behind

By Jasodhara BanerJee
neiLson Barnard / Getty imaGes

84 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016

G
eena Davis is best known for
the memorable characters
she has portrayed, whether
it is the rebellious Thelma
in Thelma and Louise (1991), a baseball
phenomenon in A League of Their
Own (1992), the first female President
of the US in TV show Commander
in Chief (2005-06), or an assassin
working for the US government in
The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996).
But since setting up the non-profit
Geena Davis Institute on Gender in
Media, she has also been recognised
as an advocate for representation
of girls and women in films and
television programming. She was
appointed Special Envoy for Women
and Girls in ICT [Information and
Communications Technology]
for the UN’s International
Telecommunication Union; she is
also an official partner of UN Women,
and the Chair of the California
Commission on the Status of Women.
In February, the Geena Davis
Institute will be presenting its Global
Symposium during the first FLO
(Ficci Ladies Organisation) Film
Festival, in Mumbai. Excerpts from
a telephone interview with Davis:
Q How should films address
gender equality? Is it through
more women-centric scripts, or
by including more women in the
entire film-making process?
It is in both these ways. Because so
much of the message we get about
ourselves is through popular culture.
Are we [women] reflected? Do we see
ourselves? And if women and girls
are not valued in popular media to
the extraordinary extent that they
are in life, it’s sending a message that
they are second-class citizens, they
aren’t as important as men. I think
we will change the way we value
women if we see them as 50 percent
of the characters and doing half of
the interesting and important things.
In other words, life can imitate
art. And we know from various
examples that this is the case; that
people are inspired by characters.
That would include not just films
about female characters or about
women, but whatever anybody is
going to make; they should just make
sure that there are more female
characters. They can change some
of the male characters to female and
include them, like half the population
like they are in the real world.
The other side is having more
women as decisionmakers, behind the
camera, as writers and directors. All
those numbers are very, very low; I
am sure in India as well, as it is around
the world. Our research shows that if
there is a woman producer, director or
writer, then the onscreen percentage
[of women] goes up. [Without women]
the point of view of women is not
being told, and our perspectives are
not being included. Men and boys
are living in a world where they
don’t have to take into account the
opinion of women and their ideas.
Q Recently, some female actors
in Hollywood have demanded to
be paid as much as their male
counterparts. What are the factors
that have traditionally determined
pay for male and female actors?
Unfortunately, there’s much more
value in the minds of studios and
financiers that male characters are
more important. There’s a powerful
belief, which turns out to be not true,
that men don’t want to watch women,
but women will watch men. So we
have to make everything centred
around the male characters. There is
so much focus on the male characters
that their salaries get bigger and
bigger, and you have a situation where
so much of the budget is spent on
the male star’s salary that it almost
doesn’t matter who the woman is.
It’s like, let’s just get somebody for a
low price, maybe we can even get a
recognised star for a lot less. Like in
the recent case of The X-Files [where
Gillian Anderson was offered half of
what co-actor David Duchovny was
offered], my jaw fell when I learnt
of it. In these times, when there is so
much focus on this. I heard they gave
her a hard time about paying her the
same. It wasn’t like, ‘Oops, sorry.’
There couldn’t be a situation where
they [Anderson and Duchovny] could
be more equal in terms of the role and,
yet, it’s still happening so openly.
Q You have played strong female
characters in many of your films.
Was this a conscious decision?
I am very lucky that parts like
that came my way. I wanted to
play interesting and complicated
characters who were important to
the story, and I was lucky enough
to find parts like that. Some of
them were unusual movies, like
FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 85
Life recLiner
The Fly (1986). It was for selfish
reasons that I wanted something
challenging to do as an actor.
But later I realised that all along I
had been playing characters who were
in charge of their own fate. The best
example of that would be Thelma in
Thelma and Louise [in which Davis
starred with Susan Sarandon]. We
make horrible decisions, but at least
we are in charge of our own lives all
the way to the end. That is why it
resonated with women so much.
Q Do you have a favourite
female character?
I suppose that would be my own
favourite character of Thelma. As
far as other female characters are
concerned, I love Katniss Everdeen
[played by Jennifer Lawrence in
the Hunger Games series of films].
I think it’s a fantastic character.
Q Are there any male
characters you think a woman
could have played better?
I don’t know about a woman playing it
better, but there are a lot of instances
where a male character could have
been replaced by a female one, unless
it was for something like historical
accuracy. Part of what we can do
to open things up is to just make it
gender-neutral casting. Write the
characters in a way that they could
be played by a man or a woman.
Obviously, in the US we have a lot
of problem with diversity as well. It
could be a black or a white, or a man
or a woman. We have to open up our
minds about who can play the parts.
Q Are there certain elements
that a successful woman-
centric film should have?
The evidence is in that movies
about women, or starring women,
or directed by women, are very,
very successful. We don’t need to
keep pretending that that was a
one-time thing, a one-off. Because
movie after movie comes out that are
enormously successful, with a female
cast. Whether it’s Bridesmaids, or The
86 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016
according to davis, movies about
female archers, like animation movie
Brave (above), are inspiring young
women to take up the sport
Hunger Games, or the new Star Wars.
The lead character is a young woman
[Daisy Ridley plays Rey in Star Wars:
The Force Awakens], and it is the most
successful movie of all time. We don’t
need any further proof that audiences
will go in droves to see movies that
are about women characters.
I think there are two things: It’s
acknowledging that, hey, it’s just as
commercial and just as interesting to
have a female lead or a second lead;
and second, it’s like, let’s make movies
that women aspire to, and admire.
Q You were part of the trial
semifinals for archery to represent
the US at the 2000 Sydney
Olympics. Do you see the same
kind of gender disparity in the
sporting industry in the country
like you see in the media?
Absolutely. We had a law back in
the 1970s called Title IX, which
made a huge impact on the number
of girls playing sports in school and
college, which said girls must be
treated equitably with boys where
facilities and participation were
concerned. But it’s really lagging.
Female athletes don’t make as much
[money] as the male sportstars, they
don’t get the media attention.
But I will say we have an interesting
study that’s going to come out in
the next few months. Two movies
about female archers that came out in
2012, The Hunger Games and Brave,
the animated movie, resulted in the
number of young women taking
up archery in the US skyrocketing.
The study, I am sure, will show
that those images inspired women
and girls to take it up in real life.
Q Would you say something like
that happened after the release of
your film, In a League of Their Own?
We’ve never done a study about
it; maybe we should do one. But I
know from personal experience
that the number of girls and women
who would come up to me and
say, ‘I play sports because of that
movie’, is just unfathomable. It’s
interesting because people still watch
it as much now as they did when
it came out almost 25 years ago.
Q What has been the biggest
achievement of the Geena Davis
Institute on Gender in Media?
We’ve raised awareness in
Hollywood, since we started out
almost 10 years ago, when not only
were people not talking about this,
but there was so little awareness
about female representation.
It wasn’t until we did our research
that the discussion was launched,
and we have tried to stay at the
forefront of this, making sure that
Hollywood knows at every level
about the lack of representation,
particularly in what’s made for kids
and families. So that we can stop
creating unconscious gender bias
through media images. We’ve visited
every studio, every [TV] network,
every production company, every
guild and shared our data with them.
I think it’s certainly having an impact.
The FLO Film Festival, in
association with NFDC, will be held
in Mumbai between February 18 and
20. Details at: flofilmfestival.com
The Revivalist
Having breathed new life into classic properties in the
Midwest and the Caribbean, hip hotelier Ben Weprin
has a new vision for New Orleans
By ABrAm Brown
R
esurrection is a time-
honoured tradition in
New Orleans, and the
city’s latest renaissance is
happening now at the Pontchartrain
Hotel, a 106-room, 88-year-old
property in the Garden District.
The flags above its awnings still
droop and its Venetian-style plaster
façade has faded from its former
glory. It’s what a realtor might market
as a fixer-upper, one with plenty
of character. Back in the day, the
Manning family used to go to the
Pontchartrain for holiday dinners,
Archie suiting up his boys in jackets
and ties. Tennessee Williams lived in
the hotel while writing A Streetcar
Named Desire; the city’s green trolleys
still rumble past on St Charles Avenue.
The man responsible for renovating
the Pontchartrain for a June 2016
opening couldn’t be more excited at
its potential. “Dude, the history of
New Orleans is amazing,” says Ben
Weprin, 37, winding through the
construction consuming the hotel’s
interior. “New Orleans is just f@#king
cool. Lil Wayne grew up around here!”
Weprin, founder of Chicago-based
AJ Capital Partners—AJ stands for
adventurous journeys—is one of the
hottest young hotel developers in the
country. He specialises in buying a
run-down gem and giving it a new
shine, a task undoubtedly made easier
by his irrepressible midwestern
optimism. Armed with $800 million
in equity raised from the likes of
billionaire John Pritzker, he has
successfully rejuvenated resorts and
hotels in the Caribbean, Miami, Napa
Valley and, of course, Chicago. AJ
Capital’s portfolio contains 18 hotels,
including the iconic Malliouhana in
Anguilla, and the more reasonably
priced Graduate hotels (upscale
lodging in much-visited college
CRAIG MULCAHY FOR FORBES
towns). “He’s aggressive and knows
what he wants,” says Pritzker, who
was an executive at his family’s Hyatt
Hotels before launching the Joie de
weprin is jazzing up the Pontchartrain
in new orleans with help from chef John
Besh and Cooper manning
FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 87
Life RECLInER
Vivre, tommie, Alila and Thompson
boutique hotels. “There’s no stopping
Ben if he wants something.”
Weprin needed to think that way
when he got started—in the fourth
quarter of 2008 (the characters Q408
partially form AJ Capital’s official
logo). After working as a real estate
broker and for Chicago developer
and restaurateur Larry Levy, Weprin
set out to raise his own capital to buy
luxury resorts, figuring the crash
would make them less expensive.
And if the properties had the right
provenance, he reckoned, people
would eventually return. He scraped
together funds from “whoever would
invest in me”, he says, even hitting
up his childhood dermatologist
(who contributed a small amount).
Much of Weprin’s time has
been spent in Chicago. There he
has renovated and reopened three
hotels: The Soho House Chicago,
Hotel Lincoln and the Chicago
Athletic Association, which as its
name suggests was once a private The Chicago Athletic Association lobby
men’s club. He has a schmaltzy line
about what he does—“We’re not
owners; we’re stewards”—but he shop on the first floor, where politicos Cooper Manning, Eli and Peyton’s
does tend to look at a new property fuelled by blueberry muffins ruled brother, joining Weprin in a com-
with a preservation architect’s the Crescent City. (Weprin swears pleted guest room. Manning, an oil
gaze, thinking first about what he he has the original recipe and that and gas executive, is one of Wep-
can save and second about what those pastries will return, too.) “It’s rin’s investors, as well as a close
he should add. He’s careful not to going to look just like it did in 1927.” friend. (The bar at the Graduate
apply a distasteful amount of gloss, Across the hall, bags of concrete on hotel in Oxford, Mississippi, where
sneering at the Hiltonesque idea of the floor of the Bayou Bar mark the Archie, Eli and Cooper attended
interactive TV with a video about progress of its restoration. The murals Ole Miss, is named The Coop.)
the hotel’s amenities and history. above the bar are staying. They depict Weprin has designed each
At the 241-room Chicago Athletic a sleepy view of life on the bayou: room at the Pontchartrain to feel
Association, a magnificent Venetian Boats, fishermen, shacks. On the roof, homey, a rejection of cookie-
Gothic landmark overlooking Weprin is putting in an entirely new cutter chic at boutique hotels. The
Millennium Park, he made sure to bar. New Orleans is long on places to room’s white linens, green rug
keep the majestic original ballroom get a drink but short on boozy aeries. and scarlet bedside bench form a
while installing an energetic “There are a lot of excuses to pleasant, playful contrast, and the
rooftop restaurant, Cindy’s, and, have a few more in this city,” says drink service programme offers
appropriately enough, a game room. guests the opportunity to have
Weprin has approached the “He’s aggressive and craft cocktails made in-room.
Pontchartrain similarly. In November “It has the same feeling as staying
2015, New Orleans chef John Besh
knows what he wants. at someone’s house,” Manning says.
signed on to oversee the hotel’s four There’s no stopping “Your bohemian aunt’s house,”
restaurants, including the famed Ben [Weprin] if he says Weprin. “Where you can
Caribbean Room. “We’re bringing it have a Scotch,” adds Manning.
all back,” he says, breezing out of the
wants something.” “Right, the aunt who gave you
once and future Silver Whistle coffee your first Scotch at age 14.”

88 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016

 Life ApprAisAL

Motorcycle
Triumph
Bonneville
Street Twin
By Ashok GeorGe

R
ecreating an icon is
tricky, especially when its
something as legendary
as the Bonneville. The
challenge is to bring the Bonneville
into the modern era of design and tech
without compromising on everything
the motorcycle stands for. Although
the purists might disagree, I think
Triumph has hit the nail on the head
with the Triumph Street Twin’s
design and technology: It looks like
a Bonneville that has thrown away
the bell bottom trousers and gotten
itself a new pair of skinny jeans.
It is an all-new bike with great
attention to detail. For instance,
the headlights are now mounted
on a cast aluminium bracket and
the single throttle body is hidden
behind a brushed aluminium cover
that looks straight off the muzzle
of a .50 calibre Browning machine
Signature bits like the blacked-out Twin too has a front-end that feels
engine with brushed fins still stay, a bit disconnected. However, that
as does the old-school exhaust. doesn’t take anything away from
Both the engine and chassis are all the capability of the motorcycle.
new. The chassis remains a double What the Street Twin likes to do,
cradle unit but the steering geometry and is intended for, is moderately fast
has been changed. riding over twisty roads
The wheelbase has tech specs and urban environments.
become shorter and Type 900 cc, parallel twin, Its engine still uses a
SOHC
the suspension uses parallel twin motor, but
dual rate springs. A Power 55PS@5,900 rpm the difference is that the
kerb weight that is Torque 80Nm@3,230 rpm displacement has been
more than 11 kg less LxWxH 2090x785x1114 bumped up by 35 cc and it
(mm)
and a smaller fuel tank is now fully liquid cooled.
(when compared to the Price Rs 7 lakh (estimated)
In the process, it is 36
+ Mid-range punch,
previous Bonnie) make handling, ABS
percent more fuel efficient,
for a very quick steering and has traction control.
- Front-end feel, laggy throttle
motorcycle. The tyres— The biggest and
the new Pirelli Phantom most significant change
Sportscomps—are just as grippy as in electronics is that the Street
they were on the predecessor. Twin gets dual channel ABS. This,
The Bonneville was always a rather combined with better brakes,
stiff riding bike and this remains true makes for a lot more confidence
Courtesy: overdrive

gun. The clocks are all new with
a lot more information—two trip-
meters, an odometer and current
and overall fuel consumption, aside
from the regular tell-tale lights.
for the Street Twin. But the new dual
rate springs improve the ride quality.
Where the motorcycle falls
short is front-end feedback. Just
like its predecessor, the Street
while riding the motorcycle fast.
The new Triumph Street twin is
a huge improvement over the older
motorcycle. It is the ideal evolution
of the standard Bonneville.

FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 89

Life nuggets

A pick of the best, the latest, the greenest, the

quirkiest, the most luxurious... that money can buy

Auto
Electric experience
Expected to be rebadged as the Q6 in 2018,
this fully-electric e-tron quattro concept
claims a range of 500 km, using three electric
motors and a large lithium-ion battery. Audi
claims a 0-100 kmph time of 4.6 seconds
with an electronically limited top speed of
210 kmph. The e-tron quattro concept is
based on their second generation modular
longitudinal platform, with its dimensions
lying between those of the Q5 and Q7.
audi.com

90 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016

 Home

Delicate radiance
The Flower and Butterfly t-light
from the Enchanted Collection of
Nupurh J is handcrafted in pure silver
and adorned with 24-karat gold gilt.
Note the intricately carved floral
motifs and perched butterflies.
facebook.com/nupurhj

Home

Stumped!
The Esker stool, created by
Nicholas Baker and Madison Heim,
is a sculpted piece emulating nature
and embodying sustainability. The
stool is a cedar stump that has
been debarked, sanded and carved
with hand tools. The inside was
hollowed out to make a small nook
for storage. The cushion has been
made from foam thread and felt.
nicholas-baker.com; madisonheim.com

Style

Time of the year

To celebrate the Chinese New
Year, the playful and self-assured
monkey, the ninth sign of the
Chinese zodiac, takes centrestage
on the dial of Piaget’s Altiplano
Cloisonné Enamel watch. World-
renowned master enameller Anita
Porchet has brought each Chinese
zodiac sign to life in her own
interpretation, turning the ultra-
thin Altiplano watch into a refined
work of art. The watch is available
in an 18-carat white gold case set
with 78 brilliant-cut diamonds,
and a black alligator leather strap
with white gold pin buckle.
Piaget.com
Stumped! and Delicate radiance, courtesy Better
Interiors; Electric experience, courtesy Overdrive

FEBRUARY 19, 2016 FORBES INDIA | 91


thoughts
disruption
Over the next 10 years, I expect many more industries
to be disrupted by software, with new world-beating
Silicon Valley companies doing the disruption in more
cases than not. —Marc anDreessen
There’s a phrase in Buddhism, ‘Beginner’s mind’. It’s
Chaitanya dinesh surpur; top: anthony potter ColleCtion / getty images
wonderful to have a beginner’s mind. —steve Jobs
By idolising those whom we honour, we do a disservice
both to them and to ourselves…we fail to recognise that
we could go and do likewise. —charles Willie
The key is to embrace disruption and change early. Don’t
react to it decades later. You can’t fight innovation.
—ryan Kavanaugh
The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that
heralds the most discoveries, is not ‘Eureka! I found it!’
but ‘that’s funny’. —isaac asiMov
Creativity is an input to innovation and change is
the output from innovation. —braDen Kelley
A moment of disruption is where the conversation about
disruption often begins, even though determining that
moment is entirely hindsight. —steven sinofsKy
92 | FORBES INDIA FEBRUARY 19, 2016
“It would be a terrific
innovation if you could get your
mind to stretch a little further
than the next wisecrack.”
—Katharine hepburn
“If you want something new, you
have to stop doing something old.”
— peter DrucKer
True disruption means threatening your existing product
line and your past investments. Breakthrough products
disrupt current lines of businesses. —peter DiaManDis
Great companies start because the founders want to
change the world... not make a fast buck. —guy KaWasaKi
Disruptors don’t have to discover something new;
they just have to discover a practical use for new
discoveries. —Jay saMit
Never before in history has innovation offered promise
of so much to so many in so short a time. —bill gates
Innovators need a heavy dose of faith. They need to
trust their intuition that they are working on a big idea.
That faith need not be blind. —clayton christensen
Expertise is the enemy of innovation. —stephen shapiro
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