Isha and Akash Ambani, Adar Poonawalla, Byju Raveendran — meet the Indians who made it to Fortune's ‘40 under 40’ list this year

Adar Poonawalla, 39, is running the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer Serum Institute of India and is the ray of hope for millions of Indians waiting for a coronavirus vaccine.

SII has signed two agreements for the supply of Covid-19 vaccines, the first being AstraZeneca-Oxford's candidate, for which the company has agreed to produce up to 1 billion doses for low and middle-income countries.

The Serum Institute of India would introduce candidate vaccines from AstraZeneca and Novavax for COVID-19 at less than ₹250 per dose in India. The Pune-based institute partnered with Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to offer up to 100 million doses, with the price capped at $3 for 92 low and middle-income countries (LMIC), including India.

The 28-year old Isha Ambani and his twin brother Akash Ambani are the children of Asia’s richest man and chairperson of Reliance Industries, Mukesh Ambani. Both of them are actively involved in business operations and have been at the forefront of Reliance Jio’s expansion plans in India. They were also actively involved in the launch of Jio Mart — a venture that aims to gain leadership in India’s online grocery market.

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39-years old Byju Raveendran is one of the youngest Indian billionaires and the founder of edtech startup BYJU’s. His $1 billion startup saw a massive boost in numbers after coronavirus forced millions of students in India to stay at home and study online. BYJU’s registered six million new students joining the platform in March alone.

“Byju Raveendran has shown the world that it really is possible to build a massively successful online education company. Byju’s, as the company is known, has become India’s biggest education technology company, helping millions of students prep and study for the most important exams of their lives while teaching them a thing or two about core topics like mathematics and science,” Fortune wrote.

39-years old Manu Kumar Jain manages Chinese smartphone giant Xiaomi in the Indian subcontinent. Jain, who has previously worked with McKinsey and has led fashion startup Jabong, barely had any idea about smartphones when he joined Xiaomi six years ago. Now, Xiaomi controls 29.4% smartphone market share and is also a leading smart TV provider.

“In his quest for knowledge at the start of his new gig, the executive regularly carried between 30 to 40 smartphones in his bag, testing out features and checking out competitors, Fortune said. It added that under Jain, Xiaomi overtook Korean giant Samsung to become the smartphone leader in India in just three years, bolstered by a strategy to act more like an Indian company,” Fortune wrote.

Dhaval Shah and Dharmil Sheth are the founders of PharmaEasy that was launched in 2015. Ever since the launch, PharmaEasy is said to have disrupted the market. Two years into the business, they started getting over 80,000 orders a month. Now, the health-tech startup has been merged with MedLife — the latter will be selling all its operations for an almost 20% stake. Their combined value will be reportedly $1.2 billion.

“PharmEasy has been around since 2015, but its services have taken on an essential prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic. It reportedly serves more than 700 cities, delivering both medications and diagnostic services, and has raised more than $300 million,”Fortune wrote.

The list also includes SoftBank Group Senior vice president, investments Akshay Naheta (39), Head of digital assets and distributed ledger technology (DLT) at TD Ameritrade Sunayna Tuteja, Maverick Ventures Managing director Ambar Bhattacharyya (37), and ACLU Chief product and digital officer Deepa Subramaniam (39).

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