Charge of the eV Brigade pg.

59
Price ` 250. february 16, 2018

(Clockwise
from top)
AdityA
ShArmA
(Partner,
McKinsey &
Company);
NupurA
kirloSkAr
(Co-founder,
BleeTech)
GAurAv
muNjAl
(Co-founder,
Unacademy);
SuhANi
pArekh
(Founder,
Creative
Director,
Misho )
mithilA
pAlkAr
(Actor)
mANoj meeNA
(Co-founder,
Atomberg
Technologies)

30 3 0
They’re
making Their
own rules,
and Their
own business
models.
and They’re
deTermined
under To make a
difference

www.forbesindia.com
 Business.
Minus the paperwork.
You live on the go, travelling light.

You want things now,

not when the courier gets there.

You’re connected, 24/7,

and you want your reading at your fingertips.
Welcome to the
I NDIA

Tablet Edition
Editor’s Note
The Forbes India 30 Under 30 List is a celebration of dreamers and derring-doers, venturerers and adventurers
30 30
under
The Forbes India 30 Under 30 list cel-
ebrates the ambition and achievements
of the country’s young brigade, while
the package on electric vehicles does
a status check on carmakers and other
players in the ecosystem.
Best,
Brian Carvalho
Editor, Forbes India
brian.carvalho@nw18.com
4 | forbes india February 16, 2018
The Roaring Twenties
T
he number of
Indians under
25 is roughly
equivalent to
the total population of
six of the G7 countries,
except Japan. That’s
almost 650 million,
or half of the Indian
population—and as many
people in the US, France,
Germany, Italy, the UK,
and Canada put together.
The astounding number
is one part of the story.
The equally remarkable
part is that this generation
is not like any before them:
Most of them have grown
up on a diet of the internet,
technology, connectivity
and social media.
Don’t call them
millennials. This is Gen
Z, typically born between
the mid-’90s and the
mid-2000s, a period in
which the World Wide
Web became as ubiquitous
as Elvis or the Beatles
in the ’60s. In India,
this generation is also
unique because it took
shape in the first flush of
a liberalised economy.
They’re ambitious—not
just in Mumbai but in
Madurai or Moradabad,
too—and unabashedly
seek attention, success
and fame. These youth
can truly be India’s
demographic dividend,
although there’s still a
chunk that needs to benefit
from investments in
empowerment, education
and employment.
The good news is that
not all are waiting to see
what the country can do for
them. This bunch is driven
to break new ground by
either excelling in areas
they’ve chosen to make
their own (from sports
like shooting to creative
endeavours like fashion
designing) or looking
for new competitive
advantages with tech-
driven business models.
The Forbes India 30
Under 30 List—researched
extensively over three
months, compiled by
Team Forbes India and
helmed by Salil Panchal
and Neeraj Gangal—is
a celebration of these
dreamers and derring-
doers, venturerers and
adventurers. Sure, not
all of them will emerge
on the winning side but,
then again, here’s another
trait that sets apart this
generation: Failure
isn’t a four-letter word
in their lexicon. From
YouTube and web series
star Mithila Palkar 24,
to Yogesh Ghaturle, 22,
a co-founder of an app
for express checkouts at
supermarkets, to Yashas
Karanam, 23, a co-founder
of a satellite and rocket
propulsion startup, the
30 Under 30 List has
its fair share of post-
millennials looking for
their place in the sun.
One entrepreneur who
found his place in the sun
two decades ago is now
looking to do it again.
Chetan Maini founded
the Reva Electric Car
Company in 1994—born in
1970, he’s more Gen X than
Gen Z, though—to develop
an affordable electric
vehicle (EV). Seven years
later, he took the Reva to
market. At a time when
the government is nudging
carmakers to go all-
electric by 2030, Maini—
who sold Reva to the
Mahindras in 2010—has
moved beyond the EV but
not beyond the ecosystem,
with Sun Mobility,
where he is a co-founder.
With smart batteries
and charging stations,
Maini may once again
be ahead of the curve.
Every carmaker is
thinking about how to
transform an industry that
so far revolved around
the internal combustion
engine. The change will be
gradual (slower perhaps
than the government
envisages it) and painful
(for ancillary makers).
The industry’s display of
urgency is palpable. As
Ruchika Shah and a team
of Forbes India writers
discovered, there’s
frenetic activity underway
to build an EV ecosystem
from scratch—from
startups to the established
carmakers to other pockets
of India Inc. And don’t
forget the multinational
carmakers from Nissan
to Tesla as well as the
Chinese Armada that’s
waiting to join the party.
Enjoy the ride, which
begins on page 59.
 Contents
FebRuaRy 16, 2018 ● VoLume 10 Issue 4

3 0 30 undeR

20 | Young And FeArless 22 | smAll Art, Big Questions

The audacity of the 2018 batch of Forbes India Through miniatures, Sahil Naik depicts a world
30 Under 30 has a purpose stripped of human life

24 | When tech meets design 24 | Form And Function 26 | A neW AcAdemY

Kshitij Marwah’s seamless journey Ranjan Bordoloi is reviving and Unacademy is looking to build the
between art, design and engineering reinventing the dying ancient largest education platform not just
craft of brasswork in India but across the world

We vAlue your FeedbAcK. (From left) Suhani

Write to us at: forbes.india@nw18.com | Letters may be edited for brevity. Parekh, Gaurav Munjal,
Read us online at www.forbesindia.com Nupura Kirloskar, Aditya
on the cover & this page: Mexy Xavier Sharma, Mithila Palkar
location courtesy: High Street Phoenix. digital Imaging by: Sushil Mhatre and Manoj Meena
 FebRuaRy 16, 2018
27 | mining gold
From old goods
How Zefo became the god of all
things in selling used goods
28 | AmBitious For
A legAcY
2017 has proved Bhumi Pednekar
is no longer a flash in the pan
29 | the silent PerFormer
How Masaan opened a lot of doors
for actor Vicky Kaushal
30 | VirAl sensAtion
Mithila Palkar is living a dream
32 | Anti-Fit BY design
Alan Alexander Kaleekal has
designed a design language
33 | Art For the BodY
Suhani Parekh is designing
jewellery at the intersection of
sculpture and architecture
34 | the Queue Busters
Perpule founders want people to
circumvent the billing counter
35 | let’s tAlk dAtA
Aditya Sharma has risen to
become a partner at McKinsey
36 | tWice As good
24: edRIc GeoRGe FoR FoRbes IndIa; 41: mexy xaVIeR;52: nIshant RatnakaR FoR FoRbes IndIa
Chirag Chhajer’s restaurant raises
a toast to Burmese cuisine
37 | cleAn BoWled
Shraddha Bhansali has made
healthy, vegetarian food exciting
38 | the doctor is noW
on chAt
DocsApp is taking quality, urban
health care to distant corners
39 | the nAturAl WAY
oF things
How Deepanjali Dalmia moved
away from synthetic to natural
40 | courting chAllenges
Gautam Bhatia thrust himself into
the limelight in court
41 | hitting the right
notes
Jubin Nautiyal’s devotion to music
is second to none
8 | forbes india February 16, 2018
42 | the scent oF A riVer
HelpUsGreen co-founders are
22
straddling religiosity and business
43 | the right ViBes
BleeTech Innovations has built
India’s first wearable aid for the
hearing impaired
44 | in ProPulsion mode
Bellatrix Aerospace wants to make
space clean, green and affordable
Sahil Naik’s debut solo exhibition took place in Kolkata
45 | FAnning chAnge
Atomberg Technologies has 62
changed the way ceiling fans have
been guzzling energy for decades
46 | distriBution
redeFined
Meesho helps merchants sell more
efficiently through social media
47 | exPert medicAl
AdVice on the go
Curofy helps doctors stuck Jubin Nautiyal wanted to be a singer from a young age
with unusual cases by fetching
responses from peers
53
48 | FAst And Furious
Toe-crushing yorkers and his
ability to bowl them at will makes
Jasprit Bumrah a rarity in India
49 | the gAme chAnger
Harmanpreet Kaur has shown
the world that girls, too, can play
cricket damn well
The Pratilipi co-founders claim the forum has about
49 | lAst WomAn stAnding
15,000 users writing on it
Savita Punia has taken Indian
hockey past many milestones
54
50 | gunning For (more)
gold
Heena Sidhu: Former World No 1 is
still raring to go
51 | electriFYing
scooters
How Ather Energy is
revolutionising the lifeblood of
private transportation
52 | lAnguAge no BAr
With its online platform, Pratilipi
is breathing life into vernacular
writing
53 | the clAss oF 2017
The kids are all right Members of the 2017 alumni continue to do good work
 ContentS

uPFront
60
column
18 | Boom And Bust technologies
The current financing model has no long-term benefits

FeAtures

roAd to electric
60 | the leAder Plugs in
Maruti is preparing for the electric vehicles (EV) era

Kenichi Ayukawa says Maruti will launch an ev in India in 2020

64 | AheAd oF the gAme
Startups are the torchbearers of the Indian EV revolution
77
68 | First moVer & shAker
Mahindra & Mahindra placed its bets on EVs in 2007

71 | eVs And indiA: A golden oPPortunitY

An entire ecosystem can be built around EVs

72 | the Big sWitch

World over, carmakers are shifting gears towards EVs

74 | PAVing the WAY

Many conglomerates are building infrastructure for EVs

77 | here comes the sun

Chetan Maini bet on electric mobility before anyone else

80 | leAding the chArge chetan Maini will play a key role as India prepares to become ev-ready
EESL is procuring EVs to rent to the government

cross Border
82 | comPetition is the neW union
Firms treating workers well outperform those that don’t

recliner

60: amIt VeRma; 77: nIshant RatnakaR FoR FoRbes IndIa; 90: madhu kaPPaRath
90 | the secret liVes oF Young AchieVers
The opportunities to succeed are more today

94 | ‘We must shoW our commitment to

the Art ecologY oF the region’
Jagdip Jagpal, the new director of the India Art Fair,
talks about her plans for making art accessible 90
APPrAisAl Aneeth Arora, founder, Péro, handles the internet with care
96 | cAr: mAserAti leVAnte diesel
Does it have enough on its platter to justify its price tag?
on the cover: Styling: eshaa amIIn & team; Hair and MakeuP Partner:
Jean cLaude bIGuIne; Wardrobe CourteSy: MitHila: turtle neCk- h&m;
Fitness column PantS- manGo; trenCH Coat- buRbeRRy; HeelS- aLdo; JeWellery- edesIGns;
SuHani: SHirt & Skirt- manGo; HeelS- steVe madden; nuPura: dreSS- buRbeRRy;
97 | the shAPe oF us overCoat- manGo; HeelS- chaRLes & keIth; JeWellery - edesIGns;
ManoJ: JaCket- GstaR; SWeater- scotch & soda; JeanS- dIeseL; SHoeS- dune;
Activities that grow muscle strength must to stay toned gaurav: JaCket & PantS- huGo boss; turtle neCk- bRooks & bRotheRs;
SHoeS- dune; aditya: Suit- canaLI; SHoeS- dune; SHirt- scotch & soda

regulArs | 10 letters | 12 leAderBoArd | 98 thoughts

subscriber service: to subscribe, change address or enquire about other customer services, please contact: FoRbes IndIa, subscription cell, c/o digital 18 media Ltd,
empire complex, 414, senapati bapat marg, Lower Parel, mumbai - 400013. tel: 022 4001 9816 / 9782. Fax- 022-24910804 (mon – Friday: 10 am - 6 pm)
sms FoRbes to 51818 email: subscribe@forbesindiamagazine.com, to subscribe, visit www.forbesindia.com/subscription/
to advertise, visit www.forbesindia.com/advertise/

February 16 , 2018 forbes india | 9

 Forbes india
Podcast 30 under 30
By Neeraj Gangal &
Salil Panchal
www.forbesindia.com
Click Here

Magazine ForbesLife India Thought Leadership Web Special Lists Blogs Multimedia

Must-Read Blogs Follow us on

Microgrids: The case for India to

achieve 24x7 clean and reliable
power for all
From an extended coastline to
mountainous regions, from mines to
historical monuments, microgrids can
be a game-changer for reliable access
to power for Indians

Click Here

five brands nailing social media strategy

They are doing all the right things to grow their followers on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

How organisational
transformation can be driven
effectively by human resources
The human resources (HR) department
plays a pivotal role by intervening
effectively to ensure a smooth
transformation

Does India Inc really care Why are robo-advisors on the

about CSR? rise in Asia?
With a law in place mandating CSR, there India and China are moving fast when
is an increasing trend to dress it up as a it comes to technology adoption, and
business discipline. That is distracting generally, despite starting late, tend to
firms from what must be their leave the early adopters far behind in terms
underpinning goal, doing good of usage
Zen and the art of wise wealth
management
Seven habits of CEOs to build a highly effective cyber security strategy India may have flirted with the wannabe
In the age of information and technology where data is king, a company cannot be devoid of a wealth model for a while but it’s time to
security strategy to protect its data return to our roots and be wise about wealth

10  | forbes india february 16, 2018

CEO-News & Group Editor-in-Chief:
Rahul Joshi
Editor, Forbes India:
Brian Carvalho
Executive Editor:
Abhilasha Khaitan
Design Director: Anjan Das
Senior Associate Editor:
Pravin Palande
Editor (Technology):
Harichandan Arakali
Associate Editors:
Monica Bathija, Aveek Datta,
Samar Srivastava, Salil Panchal,
Anshul Dhamija
Principal Correspondent:
Sayan Chakraborty
Senior Correspondent:
Varsha Meghani
Head of Desk: Kunal Purandare
Deputy Heads of Desk:
Jasodhara Banerjee, Kathakali
Chanda, Pramod Mathew
Editor (Online) & Head-Events:
Neeraj Gangal
Senior Copy Editor: Ruchika Shah
Content Manager: Bhagwan Patil
Web Programmer: Aditi Satam
Senior Art Director:
Benu Joshi Routh
Graphics Director: Sameer Pawar
Assistant Art Director:
Sachin Dagwale
Senior Principal Designer:
Pradeep Belhe
Principal Designer:
Pandharinath Pawar
Chief Illustrator:
Chaitanya Dinesh Surpur
Chief Production Manager-Digital
Imaging & Print: Sushil Mhatre
Production Manager: Mithun Anare
Chief Photo Editor: Vikas Khot
Photo Editor: Mexy Xavier
Chief Photographer: Amit Verma
Consulting Editor (Photo):
Madhu Kapparath
Head-Photo Archives and Research:
Prakash Rasal
Intern:
Naandika Tripathi
CEO–Forbes India & President-
Revenue, Network18:
Joy Chakraborthy
FORbES INDIA SAlES TEAM
Vice President: Preeti Sahni
Girish Sharma, Brijesh Singh,
Atishay Singh, Kanwaldeep
Singh, Divya Bhatia, Mona Parate,
Dilshad Ahmed Khan, Janki Modi,
Daksha Solanky, Mitu Midha,
Karina Mehta, Riti Menghani,
S Salim Baig, Kaushik Paradkar,
Anil Bhatia, Abhishek Shah,
Vaibhav Kumar
MARkETING
Vice President:
Priyanka Tiku
Deputy General Manager:
Neha Chimbulkar
Juhi Batra, Jitendra Gujar,
Nidhi Shah
SubSCRIPTION & CIRCulATION
General Manager:
Subhadra Bose
Kaushal Pillai, Vinod Parab
ADVERTISING OPERATIONS
Senior VP & Head–business
Planning & Strategy:
Chaitali Karia
Smita Suvarna, Krishna Gupta,
Prashant Rane
Compliance
Ratnesh Rukhariyar
legal and Corporate Affairs
Nitesh Shrivastava
Finance
Pinaki Saha
FORbES MEDIA llC
Chairman & Editor-in-Chief:
Steve Forbes
Executive Chairman & CEO:
Mike Perlis
CEO / Asia: William Adamopoulos
Editor, Forbes Asia: Tim Ferguson
Views & opinions expressed in this
magazine are not necessarily those
of Digital18 Media Limited (Digital18),
its publisher and/or editors. We (at
Digital 18) do our best to verify the
information published, but do not
take any responsibility for the absolute
accuracy of the information. Digital18
does not accept responsibility for
any investment or other decision
taken by readers on the basis
of information provided herein.
FORBES INDIA is published by Digital18
Media Limited under a license agreement
with Forbes LLC, 499 Washington Blvd.,
Jersey City, NJ 07310.
“FORBES” is a trademark used under license
from FORBES LLC.
©2009 Digital18 Media Ltd • ©2009 FORBES
LLC, as to material published in the U.S.
Edition of FORBES. All Rights Reserved.
©2009 FORBES LLC, as to material
published in the edition of FORBES ASIA.
All Rights Reserved.
Forbes India is published fortnightly.
Copying for other than personal use or
internal reference or of articles or columns
not owned by FORBES INDIA without
written permission of Forbes India is
expressly prohibited.
Editorial Office: Mumbai - Digital 18 Media Ltd,
Ground Floor, Empire Complex, 414, Senapati
Bapat Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai 400013.
Tel:+91-22-66667777, Fax: +91-22-24910804.
Delhi - FC-7, Sector 16A, Film City, Noida,
Uttar Pradesh- 201 301. Tel: +91-120-469 1418.
Bangalore - Millennia Tower, Tower C, 6th
Floor, No.1&2, Murphy Road, Ulsoor,
Bangalore- 560 008. Tel: +91-80-4064 9191
Subscriber Service: To subscribe, change
address or enquire about other customer
services, please contact: FORBES INDIA,
Subscription Cell, Digital 18 Media Ltd, Ground
Floor, Empire Complex, 414, Senapati Bapat
Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai 400013.
Tel: 022 4001 9816 / 9783.
Fax- 022-24910804 (Mon –Friday:
10 am - 6 pm) SMS FORBES to 51818
Email: subscribe@forbesindiamagazine.com,
To subscribe or advertise,
visit www.forbesindia.com
Forbes India is printed & published by
Brian Carvalho on behalf of Digital18 Media
Limited & Printed at Kala Jyothi Process Pvt.
Ltd., Plot No. W-17 & W-18, MIDC Industrial
Area, Taloja - 410 208 & Published at Empire
Complex, 1ST Floor, 414, Senapati Bapat Marg,
Lower Parel, Mumbai - 400 013.
Editor: Brian Carvalho
february 16 , 2018 forbes india | 11
 LeaderBoard
IT Firms Bank on
Digital to Stay Fit
Big ticket contracts in
digital services bring
in the moolah P/13
Growth boosters
‘IMF India Growth Forecast Achievable,
Growth Drivers to Prevail’
Global growth, local manufacturing seen as positives, while rising oil prices raise concerns
A Mahindra & Mahindra plant in Chakan, Maharashtra. Manufacturing is one of the sectors expected to lead
India’s economic growth
the international
Monetary Fund (IMF), in
late January, projected that
India’s Gross Domestic
Product (GDP) will grow
at 7.4 percent in FY19 and
7.8 percent in FY20 in its
World Economic Outlook
update. This will make
India the fastest growing
world economy as China,
during the same period,
is expected to grow at 6.8
percent in FY19 and 6.4
percent in the next fiscal.
Danish siDDiqui / reuters
Economists in India
are equally bullish about
the pace of growth over
the next 12 to 18 months
and believe that the IMF
forecast is achievable.
12 | forbes india february 16, 2018
The Sensex & The
Budget
A look at how the index
has reacted to budgets
in previous years P/14
“We are coming off a low
base, but demonetisation is
behind us, and some of the
concerns relating to Goods
and Services Tax are behind
us,” says Dharmakirti Joshi,
chief economist at rating
agency Crisil. “Global
growth is expected at 3.9
percent in FY18, which
would be the fastest since
the 2008 slowdown. With
external factors in order
and internal factors being
sorted out, we expect
an upside in growth.”
Economists largely
expect growth of around
6.5 percent for the year
ending March 2018.
Indranil Pan, chief
HUL Revs Up
Rural growth is behind
the consumer goods
company’s impressive
results P/15
economist at IDFC Bank,
is backing the IMF’s
bullishness. “I see growth
on the upside from current
levels,” he says. Growth
is expected to be led by
the manufacturing and
services sectors, though Pan
believes the government
will continue to focus on
improving rural incomes
to boost consumption.
India’s stock markets,
already at record levels,
have factored in much
of the good news. As
corporate earnings start to
improve over the next two
quarters and bank lendings
pick up, it will revive the
private sector capex cycle.
Surfing in
the Sky
Indians will have to
shell out more to use
Wi-Fi on flights P/16
Joshi predicts growth of
7.6 percent in FY19, while
Pan pegs it at 7.1 percent.
Nomura’s chief India
economist Sonal Varma
believes the general
elections will be the focal
point, and in a pre-budget
note writes that she
expects “the government
to deliver measures that
have both economic and
political benefits—such as
increasing allocations to
rural, affordable housing
and power schemes—
without compromising
on infrastructure.”
The real hiccup to
India’s growth story could
come from rising crude oil
prices. Brent crude, the
global benchmark, rose to
$70 per barrel recently.
India, the world’s third
largest oil importer, would
see its bill rocket if prices
rise further. “If oil moves to
$75-80 [per barrel] we need
to take the pain,” says Pan.
Noted US economist
Nouriel Roubini, who
was in India in January
warned about the impact
of rising energy prices and
called for fiscal prudence.
—salil Panchal

LeaderBoard
Coming of age
IT Firms Bank on Digital
to Stay in Shape
Share of digital services revenue rises as companies bag big-ticket
contracts in software solutions and cloud computing
over the past two
years, India’s top IT
companies began to break
out the contribution of
digital services to their
revenues. The numbers
reflect their attempt to win
business from their largest
clients—banks, car makers,
oil exploration companies,
airlines, retail chains and so
on—by tapping the power
of digital.
Tata Consultancy
Services (TCS) had
quantified the digital
services component of
its overall revenue at
13.7 percent at the end of
December 2015. Two years
on, that has increased to
Digital services as a proportion of total revenue (%)
32.5
26
19.5
15.5 15.9
13.7
13
6.5
0
q3FY16 q4 16 q1FY17
Source: Company data
22.1 percent, TCS reported
on January 11, when it
released its third-quarter
earnings results.
The proportions aren’t
different at Wipro and
Infosys. Wipro said the
revenues earned from its
digital services have grown
from 17.9 percent of its
overall revenues in April
2016 to over 25 percent at
the end of December 2017.
While Infosys hasn’t broken
out its digital services
contribution on a quarterly
basis, about a fourth of the
company’s revenues has
new-age digital flavour,
COO UB Pravin Rao said
during the latest earnings
21.7
19.5
17.9
16.8
16.1
q2 17 q3FY17
Fiscal quarter
results discussions on
January 12.
Adding digital services—
typically a combination
of software solutions and
services that help clients
take advantage of data
analytics, and the move
to the cloud computing
model—to their portfolio,
and the more difficult
ability of “problem finding”
(as ex-Infosys CEO Vishal
Sikka put it), have become
a matter of survival for
the outsourcing services
providers as nimble
startups and internet
giants offer alternatives to
traditional IT software.
That the digital route is
WiPrO
24.1
22.1 22.5 22.1
19.7
18.9
17.9
q4 17 q1FY18 q2 18
$50 mln
Value of the biggest
digital services
contract won by
the Tata Consultancy
Services to date
paying dividends is evident
from reports that Wipro
has won multimillion dollar
contracts on the back of
intellectual property from
Appirio, a cloud solutions
company it acquired last
year for half a billion
dollars. TCS can probably
build complex virtual
“twins” of turbines for
Rolls-Royce, not only saving
time, effort and money, but
also, potentially, identifying
The digital
route is paying
dividends. Wipro,
for instance, has
won big contracts
on the back of IP
from Appirio
problems with, say,
manufacturability before
they arise. The company
won a $50 million contract
in the digital services area
during the latest quarter—
it’s biggest to date. Even in
traditional IT outsourcing,
tcs
that value would make the
contract a large one, and
here, it implies “digital
25 has come of age”, as the
company puts it. The
problem is, traditional
outsourcing—shipping
application development
and maintenance to cheaper
centres in India—isn’t
growing. And it’s only going
to wane in the future. The
question now is whether
the Indian IT companies
have enough time to cash
q3FY18 in on the growth in their
digital services and scale it.
—HariCHandan arakali
february 16 , 2018 forbes india | 13
 16%
The rate at which

LeaderBoard
the Sensex has
compounded since 1979,
when the index
was introduced

index waTch
Sensex and its Budget Moves Knee-jerk reactions give
way to fundamentals
2014 2016
One week later: The Sensex had an almost non-stop rally from about 17,000 One week: The period leading up to the budget had seen a brutal correction
when Narendra Modi was announced as PM candidate. The budget rally was in the Sensex, which had fallen by 12 percent from the start of 2016. While the
tempered when Arun Jaitley failed to announce any significant policy changes. budget brought little cheer, the Sensex began rallying along with global markets
Over six months: While awaiting the NDA government's first full budget, the as the US Federal Reserve indicated it would go slow on tightening.
market continued to rally primarily due to the steep decline in oil prices. By Six months: The six months after the budget saw India enter a Goldilocks period
hiking excise duties the government was able to sharply reduce the fiscal deficit. of low oil prices, low inflation and low interest rates. Valuations expanded and
the markets rallied even in the absence of earnings growth.
26,000
Budget week 26,000 Sensex 2016
25,600
Sensex 2014 30,000 25,200
6%
25,200
31,000 24,400
24,800

24,400
0.4% 28,400 23,600

29,400 22,800
24,000
22,000
26,800

27,800

25,200

26,200
22%
23,600

24,600
10%
22,000
26 Feb 31 Aug
23,000 2016 2016
9July 11 Feb
2014 2015
2017
One week: The Budget did little to pause the post demonetisation rally,
2015 which began in January 2017 after a steep fall the previous two months.
One week: By 2015, the government, confident of a better fiscal position, was Housing incentives were expanded and education and social sector spends
able to budget for increased spending. The NDA’s 2015 budget got a thumbs up were up while the subsidy bill came down—all of which the market liked.
due to the road map for the reduction in corporate taxes, a ‘housing for all’ push Six months: Sensex valuations continued to expand as the market priced
as well as a significant bump in the allocation for infrastructure spending.
in a revival in earnings. Rising commodity prices aided earnings of oil and
Six months: While India’s macro position had improved significantly, corporate
metal companies even as India’s macro position worsened. The selling by
performance and the lack of earnings growth drove the Sensex down.
FIIs was made up by buying from domestic investors.
30,000
29,000
29,800 0.5%
28,600
29,600
28,200
Sensex 2017
29,400
Sensex 2015 33,000 27,800

30,000
29,200
27,400
2.8%
29,000
27,000
31,200

28,600

29,400

27,200

27,600
17%
25,800
10%
PuniT ParanjPe / reuTerS

25,800

24,400
24,000
31 Jan 31 Jul
23,000 2017 2017
27 Feb 31 Aug
2015 2015 Source: BSE Compiled by Samar Srivastava

14 | forbes india february 16, 2018


LeaderBoard
eArnings wATcH
HUL Revs Up
Riding on better rural demand, growth is back at India’s largest
consumer goods company but so is competition
HUL’s current `34,400-crore topline is over two and a half times that of Patanjali Ayurved
recent quarterly
numbers at Hindustan
Unilever (HUL) showed
why it is so hard to bet
against India’s largest
consumer goods company.
Despite the increased
competition from rivals
Patanjali Ayurved, Dabur
and Marico, the company
clocked an 11 percent year-
on-year volume growth.
The better-than-expected
numbers can partly be
explained by a 4 percent
decline in volumes during
the same quarter last year
but they were equally
the result of an uptick in
growth in rural India.
“While it would be fair
to say that rural markets
have shown better growth,
I would like to wait for
another two quarters
before I can point to a
definitive trend,” said Sanjiv
Mehta, CEO of Hindustan
Unilever during the results
press conference. For the
company, and the consumer
goods sector in general,
the scars of two successive
bad monsoons in 2015 and
2016 as well as the demand
shock brought about by the
demonetisation of high-
value currency notes are
still raw. More recently,
the implementation of the
goods and services tax also
caused some turbulence in
their distribution channels.
What surprised analysts
was the fact that the
company cut expenses
marginally by 0.4 percent
while at the same time
increasing advertising
expenses by a whopping
25 percent to `1,107 crore.
The company said it
plans to continue with
the increased advertising
$46 bln
HUL’s market cap as on
January 25, 2018. This
compares with the $170 billion
m-cap of its Anglo-Dutch
parent Unilever
planning to fight tooth and
nail rival Patanjali, whose
co-founder Baba Ramdev
has said that he plans to
beat HUL’s topline in the
year ending March 2019.
While refusing to brush
aside the Patanjali
threat, Mehta did
point out that “we’ve
added Patanjali’s
topline of `12,000
crore over the last
five years”. As of
now, HUL is more
than two and a half
times larger than
Patanjali at `34,400
crore. HUL has also
boosted its presence
in the herbal and
Ayurveda space
with its Ayush and
Indulekha brands.
The company internally
as the competitive termed the opportunity
intensity among consumer in naturals as the next
companies has increased. megatrend and is expected
What they’ve saved in the to launch toothpaste,
form of lower GST rates has shampoo, conditioners
either been passed on to the and facewashes under
consumer through price the Ayush brand,
reductions or increased according to a report by
grammage or ploughed Edelweiss Securities.
L To r: PriyAnkA PArAsHAr / MinT viA geTTy iMAges, ADnAn AbiDi / reUTers;
back in the form of What could trip growth?
advertising. Clearly, HUL is First, rising commodity
prices mean that HUL
Q3 results snapshot and its rivals would have
SaleS to pass on price hikes to
` 8,742 Cr consumers. This could trip
growth in low unit price
( 4% YoY)
packs where consumers
Profit are sensitive to price
(before exceptional items) rises. Second, a poor
ToP: sHAiLesH AnDrADe / reUTers
` 1,706 Cr monsoon or a pull back
( 28% YoY) in government spending
or a lower-than-expected
hul’s market cap* rise in minimum support
` 2,95,776 Cr prices could result in less
money in the hands of rural
(one-year growth in m-cap
is 63%) consumers and lesser sales.
*As on January 24, 2018 —sAMAr srivAsTAvA
february 16 , 2018 forbes india | 15

LeaderBoard
In-flIGht ConneCtIvIty
Surfing in the Sky
Indians can soon upload a selfie on social media mid-air using Wi-Fi
on flights, but will have to shell out big bucks for internet connectivity
with the telecom
Regulatory Authority of
India (Trai) in January
giving its nod to in-
flight voice and data
connectivity, domestic and
international fliers within
the country’s airspace will
soon be able to make calls
and browse the internet.
India’s existing laws
did not allow access
to the internet while
aboard an aircraft.
Several Indian airlines
are now expected to follow
their global counterparts
and offer services like
Wi-Fi on flights.
At present, Emirates,
Qatar Airways, JetBlue
Airways and Turkish
Airlines and others
provide internet services
luCAs JACkson / ReuteRs; InfoGRAphIC: sAmeeR pAwAR;top: AmIt DAve / ReuteRs
on international routes.
In India, the charges
for in-flight internet are
likely to be between `500
and `2,000 for 30 to 60
minutes, in line with
international rates.
Wi-Fi in airlines is
provided by service
providers such as Inmarsat,
Viasat, Gogo, Panasonic
Avionics and Global
Eagle Entertainment.
Internet on flights is
provided usually by two
means. One, an antenna
on the fuselage of the
aircraft picks up signals
from mobile broadband
towers on the ground (but,
16 | forbes india February 16, 2018
17%
Increase in domestic
air passenger traffic in
India during January-
December 2017,
according to DGCA
this can be disrupted by
large water bodies).
The second, and the
most common, method
is via satellite-based
systems, which are able
to provide connectivity
across oceans and
mountains. Both are
expensive, resulting in
high costs to flyers.
“The whole thing
should have been done
a long time ago,” says
Mark Martin, founder
of Dubai-based Martin
Consulting Llc. “It costs
around $250,000 [`1.5
crore] for fitting the
technology in the aircraft.
Can airlines afford to
instal that today? I am not
sure. With operating costs
going up now, it might
be stupid for airlines to
fit them. We should have
Internet on a flight in India is likely to cost between `500 and `2,000
for 30 to 60 minutes adopted the technology
a long time ago.”
With low-cost carriers
Stay connected, pay for it currently leading
What internet connectivity costs onboard foreign flights
India’s aviation market,
AmericAn Airlines Virgin AtlAntic it is also unlikely that
WhAtsApp 1 hour entire airlines will opt for a
durAtion retrofit of the devices.
2 4 Full £2.99 £4.99 £14.99 “It makes sense when
hours hours durAtion
purchasing the aircraft,”
$12 $17 $19 Service provider: aeromobile
adds Martin. “But doing it
as a retrofit doesn’t make
Service provider: GoGo
any sense. It would cost
emirAtes sri lAnkAn Airlines about $2.5 million to fit
150 mB 500 mB 1 hour entire durAtion
the technology on atleast
10 aircraft and you also
$9.99 $15.99 $5 $20
have to factor in data
Service provider: onair Service provider: onair connectivity packages.
Considering all this,
turkish Airlines browsing rates could be
1 hour 24 hours anywhere between `1,200
$9.99 $14.99
Service provider:
3,000 m and `1,800 per hour
per seat. Is the Indian
panaSonic avionicS The alTITude beyond
whIch InTerneT access consumer willing to pay
wIll be allowed that? I am not sure.”
Through wI-FI on
FlIghTs —mAnu BAlAChAnDRAn
Das Capital
Boom and Bust Technology
The current financing model builds businesses which may show short-term
gains, but provide no long-term benefit to the economy or job creation
By Satyajit DaS
investment in new technologies
has always been risky. Older innovations
like railways, canals, telephones, cars
and airplanes, resulted in substantial
losses to many investors. The uncertainty
surrounding the projects, lack of
understanding of the technology and
unrealistic return expectations were
all contributors. Recent technology
investment cycles are similar, though
there are additional risks.
First, the financing model has
changed. Patient capital has been
replaced with a focus on quicker returns.
Funding for scientific research has declined in real
terms in many nations. Historically, government funding
for research was important. Public money funnelled
through the Pentagon helped develop the internet. A
National Science Foundation grant seeded development
of Google’s search engine. Public funded venture
capital provided great societal benefits as well as large
profits for private businesses. But increasing public
finance pressures have reduced government funding.
This has resulted in research shifting focus to safer
proposals that are more likely to receive funding
rather than uncertain, but potentially groundbreaking,
areas. Increasing reliance on corporate investment
or sponsorship accentuates applied research rather
than pure research. Crucial fundamental knowledge
is now neglected. But quantum physics makes silicon
chips possible, Einstein’s theory of relativity underlies
satellite navigation systems and abstract mathematics
makes computing and telecommunications possible.
Large scale corporate investment in pure research,
such as the ones undertaken by Bell Labs, Xerox’s Palo
Alto Research Centre (PARC) and Lockheed’s famed
Skunk Works, is less prevalent today. Researchers
working at Bell Labs helped develop radio astronomy, the
transistor, the laser, the charge-coupled device (CCD),
information theory, the UNIX operating system, and the
C and C++ programming languages. PARC contributed
to innovations such as the personal computer, the laser
18 | forbes india february 16, 2018
printer and the graphical interface.
Lack of investment in basic education,
rising inequality and reduced social
mobility may also be factors that
affect innovation. The Equality Of
Opportunity Project—in an interesting
paper titled ‘Who Becomes an Inventor
in America? The Importance of
Exposure to Innovation’—labelled
this the ‘Lost Einsteins’ phenomenon;
in effect, lack of opportunities led to
under-utilised talent in socially and
economically disadvantaged groups
and resulted in low levels of innovation.
In the absence of the historical public sector
financing model, a ‘lottery ticket’ model of
funding has evolved, hampering innovation.
Entrepreneurs, backed by venture capital or
angel investors, now pursue disruptive technologies,
with limited long-term growth and productivity
potential. They hope to extract short-term monetary
value by selling out to an incumbent or the public
through an initial public offering (IPO).
Second, the few successful businesses that
emerge then engage in a further destructive
process, investing high margin profits from their
primary products into risky, speculative projects,
sometimes with large investment needs.
Alphabet Inc., for instance, has used the profits
from its Google search business looking for a second
profitable product—its self-titled ‘moonshots’. These
projects include related activities like high-speed
internet provisions and smart household devices. It also
encompasses more ambitious projects like high-altitude
balloons to provide internet access around the world
(Project Loon), self-driving cars and space explorations.
In 2015, the projects lost around $3.6 billion on revenue
of $448 million. Alphabet’s $75 billion in revenues and
$16.3 billion in profits allowed the losses to be absorbed.
But there is no certainty that any of these investments
will prove successful or over what time frame.
In recent times, Alphabet has recognised the poor
prospects of these projects and discontinued many of them.
These two factors affect technology
investments in several ways.
They promote over-investment. Rival groups
simultaneously finance competing ventures, resulting in
unprofitable projects or games of technology leapfrog. This
leads to low returns or losses on some or all investments.
Changes in financing arrangements have fostered a
close relationship between the financial and technology
sectors. Investment banks now
collude with venture capitalists
to create products allowing
insiders to cash out and transfer
the true risk to external investors
keen to participate in the new
digital frontier. The naive belief,
amplified by a sycophantic
media, that technology is
pivotal to economic revival and
ample liquidity, resulting from
loose central banking policies,
has facilitated the process.
The approach entails high
valuations, obscure pricing
metrics, and complex private
funding arrangements (often
with guaranteed returns for
some). The emphasis is not on
new lasting businesses but the
creation of unicorns—businesses
with a valuation above $1
billion, which has become a status symbol. At their peak,
there were around 150 such firms with a combined
valuation of over $500 billion. It thrives in a frenzied
atmosphere dominated by Fomo (fear of missing out).
New technologies very often have unstable earnings
models. Google, Facebook, Twitter and their successors
rely heavily on cannibalising existing advertising revenues.
Earnings are vulnerable to declining advertising rates
driven by the lack of space on smaller mobile devices,
resistance to ads and the advent of ad-blocking software.
Amazon’s profitability is not driven by its retailing, it’s
being dominated by the cloud computing business.
Much of the new internet-based economy is
predicated on free services. Where they are not
dependent on advertising, new businesses emphasise
free platforms or services. The aim is to create
a sufficiently large user community from which
stealth revenues can be extracted either directly or
by selling user data to allow targeted marketing.
Attempts to move to subscription models or charging
for access is generally met with resistance. Users,
habituated to free services, switch to free competitors,
restricting pricing power and profitability.
The funding models also encourage subtle exploitation.
The lure of unicorn riches has attracted a new generation
that serves as cheap labour accepting shares in lieu of
salary in the hope of a large pay-day when the firm goes
public. Stories abound of eight coders living in a single
bedroom or in a shipping container to work on their
dream projects. In effect, it does not create the well-paid
jobs that would sustain expanded economic activity.
Many innovations may also
require a winner-takes-all, market-
dominance model, reducing
economic efficiency by reducing
competition. Intel, Microsoft
and Google are some of the
examples of this phenomenon.
This process is evident in
emerging areas. The process of
industrial competition recognises
this reality. Many new businesses
now do not displace competitors
through efficiency or create new
markets but seek to engender
the belief that investors accept
that they will dominate their
industry, inevitably. But fierce
competition in each segment
increases spending through
higher expansion and customer
acquisition costs, extending
the period before investment is
recovered. Businesses like Amazon.com highlight the
difficulty of building a profitable, sustainable business.
New technology investment is motivated, in part,
by an increasingly difficult economic environment
characterised by low growth and diminishing returns.
Investors desperately seek higher-than-market average
growth in revenues and earnings to meet return targets
and attract investment. It drives excessive investment
in many new ventures. The technologies and business
models are unproven. Investors rarely understand the
underlying technology, its potential evolution or risks.
Given that the outcomes are uncertain and unpredictable,
a level of intrinsic volatility may be inevitable.
These factors perpetuate cycles of technology booms
and busts. While it may benefit a few individuals,
it is unclear whether it creates the significant long-
term and economy-wide impact on growth and
productivity of previous industrial revolutions.
This is the second article in a three-part series
sameer pawar
(Satyajit Das is a former banker. His latest book is
The Age of Stagnation. He is also the author of Extreme
Money and Traders, Guns & Money.)
february 16, 2018 forbes india | 19
 3 0 30 under

ART ENTERTAINMENT aditya SharMa, 29 NGOs & SOCIAL pawaN Gupta,

Sahil Naik, 26 BhuMi pedNekar, 28 Partner, McKinsey & Company ENTREPRENEURSHIP NipuN Goyal, Mudit
Sculptor Actor aNkit aGarwal, karaN vijayverGiya, 26, 27, 27
FOOD & HOSPITALITY raStoGi, 28, 29 Co-founders, Curofy
vicky kauShal, 29
DESIGN Actor chiraG chhajer, 29 Co-founders, HelpUsGreen
Co-owner, Burma Burma SPORTS
kShitij Marwah, 29 Mithila palkar, 24 jaNhavi joShi, Nupura
Shraddha BhaNSali, 25 kirloSkar, 25, 25 jaSprit BuMrah, 24
Founder and tinkerer-in- Actor
Founder, Candy & Green Co-founders, BleeTech Cricketer
chief, Tesseract Inc.;
Research Affiliate, MIT FASHION Innovations harMaNpreet kaur, 28
HEALTH CARE Cricketer
raNjaN Bordoloi, 27 alaN alexaNder SCIENCE & GREEN TECH
Founder and creative kaleekal, 29 SatiSh kaNNaN, Savita puNia, 27
eNBaSekar rohaN M GaNapathy, Goalkeeper, women’s
director, Studio Bordoloi Founder, creative
diNadayalaNe, 28, 28 yaShaS karaNaM, 25, 23 field hockey
director, Kaleekal Co-founders, Bellatrix
ECOMMERCE Co-founders, DocsApp heeNa Sidhu, 28
SuhaNi parekh, 26 Aerospace
Gaurav MuNjal, Founder, creative deepaNjali dalMia, 26 Pistol shooter
Founder, Heyday Care MaNoj MeeNa,
roMaN SaiNi, heMeSh director, Misho SiBaBrata daS, 29, 27
SiNGh, 27, 26, 25 TECHNOLOGY
LAW, POLICY & POLITICS Co-founders, Atomberg
illustrations: sameer Pawar

Co-founders, Unacademy FINANCE taruN Mehta,

Technologies
rohit aBhiNav pathak, GautaM Bhatia, 29 SwapNil jaiN, 28, 28
raMaSuBraMaNiaN, Saketh BSv, yoGeSh Legal writer & lawyer SOCIAL MEDIA, MOBILE Co-founders, Ather Energy
karaN Gupta, hiMeSh Ghaturle, Sathya TECH & COMMUNICATION raNjeet pratap SiNGh,
joShi, arjit Gupta, NarayaNaN, MUSIC SaNkaraNarayaNaN
vidit aatrey, SaNjeev
27, 28, 29, 29 24, 25, 22, 26 juBiN Nautiyal, 28 BarNwal, 27, 28 devarajaN, praShaNt
Co-founders, Zefo Co-founders, Perpule Singer, songwriter Co-founders, Meesho Gupta, rahul raNjaN,
29, 28, 29, 28
Co-founders, Nasadiya
Technologies / Pratilipi

20 | forbes india february 16, 2018

 Young and fearless
The audacity of the 2018 batch of Forbes India 30 Under 30
has a purpose, and money and fame for them are just byproducts.
Meet the twenty-somethings who are shaping the new India
by salil Panchal & neeraj gangal

T
he Forbes India 30 Under 30 is
now five years old. And while
our selection process has become
more rigorous with each new edition, the
sheer growth in the number of names on
the longlist and the quality of nominee
profiles have reaffirmed that the old
adage ‘if you’re good enough, you’re
old enough’ holds true even today.
Generation Z is rewriting the rules
of the game, and playing it hard too. It
is putting its mind and money where
its beliefs are, with gumption and
imagination. Our list is representative
across 15 categories and though it is
exhaustive, it is not definitive, given
India’s vast geographical spread. We
have steered clear of considering well-
established names, next-generation
entrepreneurs and those having access to
an influential lineage. Through our own
research and multiple conversations with
industry experts, we selected names that
meet our three broad criteria: The extent
of impact of their achievements,
and their ability to disrupt the status
quo; scalability of the business or
line of work and; their potential
to stay a long-term player.
Consider the audacious Rohan M
Ganapathy, 25, and Yashas Karanam,
23, who are developing rockets and
electric propulsion systems for satellites.
Their firm, Bellatrix Aerospace, is
the first startup that the Indian Space
Research Organisation opened its
doors to. HelpUsGreen founders Ankit
Agarwal and Karan Rastogi (both
29) are preserving the Ganga from
becoming a sewer by ‘flowercycling’
religious waste into lifestyle products,
employing thousands of rural families.
That’s profit, but with a purpose.
Enterprise excites others like
Burma Burma’s Chirag Chhajer, 29,
whose vegetarian, no-alcohol Burmese
restaurants are doing roaring business.
Design innovator Kshitij Marwah, 29, has
developed the world’s first holographic
AR headset that works with a smartphone.
For some, it’s about freedom,
expression or simply the joy of doing
something well. For instance, Gautam
Bhatia, 29, is part of a team that is
working on multiple challenges to the
Aadhaar Act. Indian hockey goalkeeper
Savita Punia, 27, of Haryana whose
grandfather encouraged her to take up
the sport to toughen her up, is now a
name to reckon with. Former World No
1 pistol shooter Heena Sidhu, 28, is a
qualified dental surgeon, but succeeded
at the sport she took up as a hobby
because of her grit and determination.
“You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’
But I dream things that never were; and
I say, ‘Why not?’,” wrote playwright
George Bernard Shaw. The 30 achievers
on our list—artistes, chefs, designers,
entertainers, entrepreneurs, finance
gurus, musicians and sportspersons—
seem to be driven by the same spirit.

Methodology
the research process the criteria. three, in consultation with we have only
was three-fold: one, spreading the word experts. the last stage considered for selection
interviews by the on social media. was separating the those who were under
Forbes India team this helped us arrive final 30 from the other the age of 30 as on
with sources across at a longlist of over contenders. armed with december 31, 2017
relevant categories as 300 names across 15 expert views, the Forbes (the cutoff date for
well as through studies categories. the next India editorial team selection of the list).
of databases and step was narrowing debated, argued and thus, in the case of
media coverage. two, down to a ‘short vetoed its way down to enterprises which have
on forbesindia.com, longlist’—the names the final 30. we realised several co-founders,
inviting applications most likely to make that there were some we have considered
from, or nominations it to the top 30. this others who could not be only those where at
of, entrepreneurs and pool of around 100-odd ignored and deserved least one of them is
professionals who fit names was decided a special mention. under the age of 30.

february 16, 2018 forbes india | 21

 3 0 30
uNdEr art

Small art, big questions

Sahil Naik 26

Sculptor

g rowing up in Ponda, Goa, Sahil

Naik would join the annual Diwali
festivities by helping build Narakasura
effigies with wood, newspapers, hay
and home-made glue, which would
then be set alight amid fireworks and
revelry. Today, the skills he uses are
perhaps those he learnt first as a child,
but the sculptures he creates are shaped
by his experiences as an adult. Naik’s
debut solo exhibition, Ground Zero,
now running at Experimenter Gallery,
Kolkata, depicts, through miniatures, a
world stripped of human life and its small
joys, and abandoned to a derelict fate.
Naik’s work explores the politics and
poetics of terror, and how architecture
stands as anything but a mute witness
to the horrors in human lives.
For Ground Zero, Naik chose
two locations—the cafeteria at MS
University in Baroda, where he studied
for his master’s degree, and the area of
Khirkee in Delhi, where he attended a
residency by Khoj International Artists’
Association—and imagined them in
different circumstances: The cafeteria Mahendru, curator and programs his upcoming exhibitions include a
as an explosion site, and the Khirkee manager at Khoj, says, “I am very group show at the Delfina Foundation,
neighbourhood as a post-apocalyptic interested in Sahil’s practice—the London (January, 2018), the India
vestige. “For me, the abandoned structures complexity of his ideas translates Art Fair with Experimenter, Kolkata
are open to a speculative narrative,” he into his sculptures in a nuanced yet (February 2018) and at Turn of the
says, leaving the viewer to imagine what effective manner. He is hardworking, Tide, curated by Khoj International
calamity might have befallen these spaces. honest, and has a fine eye for detail.” Artists’ Association (February 2018).
Talking about Naik’s work, Radha Naik has won several awards and —jasodhara banerjee

2015, and the Magnum Foundation’s

Special mention Photography and Social Justice Fellowship
in 2017. In 2015, he also received a grant
from the India Foundation for the Arts to
Soumya SaNkar BoSe 27
document the lives of jatra (Bengali folk
Photographer theatre) artistes. Coming from a family of
Sahil Naik: Edric GEorGE for forbES iNdia

jatra artistes, Bose’s work evolved from

merely photographing the performers in

s oumya Sankar Bose, from Paschim

Midnapore district of West Bengal,
started out to be an engineer. But after
his graduation, he decided to study
photography and pursue it as a career.
He is the recipient of the Toto-Tasveer
Emerging Photographer of the Year,
staged environments to include archival
photographs, found letters, used items
and lived spaces, as well as audio and
video recordings of his subjects.
His works have been published in
leading publications of the country.
—jasodhara banerjee

Category Coordinator: Jasodhara banerjee

experts: priyanka and prateek raja: co-founders of Experimenter Gallery, kolkata

22 | forbes india february 16, 2018

 3 0 30
unDer Design

When Tech meets design

Kshitij Marwah 29

Founder and tinkerer-

in-chief, Tesseract Inc.;
Research affiliate, MIT

i t was at MIT Media Lab in 2011 that

IITian Kshitij Marwah received
his first formal education in inter-
disciplinary learning. It was a space
where artists, designers, architects
and engineers came together to
innovate and apply design thinking,
and he realised disciplines cannot be
isolated. “In the world of today, most
of the innovations are happening at
the intersection of art and design, of
creativity and technology,” says Marwah.
In 2012, he started the MIT Media
Lab India Initiative. It was a platform
where aspiring innovators learnt how
to use design thinking as a tool to solve
problems, along with getting access to
future technologies to build solutions
that could compete with the best in
the world. What started with barely 50
people, by 2016 was 20,000 innovators
strong, people who had worked together
to create something useful for their
house, their community, their society.
At 19, Marwah won the Google
Prodigy Award and also worked on a
collaborative tool with a professor at
Harvard Medical School for improving
engagements between doctors to
discuss their patient studies. In
2016, he founded Tesseract Inc. to
create made-in-India products that
are innovative and design-led.
Marwah and team (all fellows from
the MIT Media Lab India Initiative)
have developed cutting-edge technology
in the form of Voxel, the world’s first
holographic headset that works with
smartphones, and Quark 360—the world’s
smallest 360 Virtual Reality (VR) camera.
“Kshitij is extremely driven and
technically savvy. He brings diverse
people together to make great
things happen on an international
scale while keeping his feet on the
ground on issues relevant to India,”
says Marwah’s Professor Joseph A
Paradiso from MIT Media Lab.
In March 2017, Marwah was listed in
Amit VermA

the MIT Technology Review as a Top 10

Innovator Under The Age of 35 (India).
—benu joshi routh

24 | forbes india february 16, 2018

Form and function
raNjaN BOrDOLOi 27
Founder and creative director,
Studio Bordoloi
L ast October, at the Red Dot Award:
Design Concept 2017, Guwahati-based
designer Ranjan Bordoloi was the only
Indian to walk away with two awards,
including the Best of the Best, in the
furniture category. His collection ‘Pitoloi’
comprised small stools and a barstool,
was made by cutting sheets of brass and
given shape by wooden moulds, with
the small pieces joined by an ancient
floor-based coal welding technique.
Bordoloi, who has done a course in
Category Coordinator: benu Joshi routh
experts: ashiesh shah: Architect and interior designer; Zameer Basrai: Architect, the busride Design studio
Furniture and Interior Design from IIT
Guwahati, says he came up with the idea
of using brass during his college days
when he was exploring different materials
and production techniques. A Pitoloi
chair, created for his final year graduation
project, won the Park Elle Decor Student
Award, 2015 (the best use of traditional
material). Showcased at India Design ID in
February 2015, his work was also spotted
by Giulio Cappellini, art director of Milan-
based Italian design firm Cappellini,
and he was selected to showcase at the
Salone del Mobile in Milan in April 2015.
Bordoloi works with brass to revive
the dying ancient craft of making utensils
and artefacts by hammering the alloy—
traditionally practised by a community of
Assamese artisans. “Currently my work is
very artisanal, but going forward, I would
also like to get into industry, combine a
high-tech production facility in the form
of robots with artisans,” says Bordoloi.
“What impressed me about Ranjan
Bordoloi’s work is his sensitivity
towards the materials. His projects are
never obvious, but they are able to mix
contemporary and innovative forms
by using manufacturing techniques
belonging to the artisan tradition
of his country,” says Cappellini.
DipAk kumAr for forbes inDiA
Bordoloi was also one of the winners of
the Godrej Design Lab 2016 competition
where he won for his edgy Kaathfula chair,
inspired by the shape of a mushroom.
—benu joshi routh
february 16 , 2018 forbes india | 25
 3 0 30
uNdeR ecommeRce
A New AcAdemy
Gaurav Munjal 27
roMan Saini 26
HeMeSH SinGH 25
Co-founders, Unacademy
W hile a student of engineering
in Mumbai, in December 2010,
Gaurav Munjal uploaded a short
video tutorial on computer graphics
on YouTube. He had set up a channel
called Unacademy on the video-
sharing platform through which his
friends could access the tutorial.
Buoyed by the positive response, he
NishaNt RatNakaR foR foRbes iNdia
26 | forbes india february 16, 2018
started uploading more tutorials related to
computer programming. This continued
even after he started work as a software
engineer at Directi and later set up his
first company Flat.to in 2013. He sold
Flat.to to Common Floor a year later.
Amid this, Munjal, a resident of
Jaipur, roped in his friend Roman Saini
to upload tutorials on how to crack the
civil services exam, on the channel. Saini,
a doctor by training, had qualified as an
IAS officer in 2013. He quit his job in 2015
and joined Sorting Hat Technologies, a
company that Munjal had set up along
with Hemesh Singh in September 2015.
Sorting Hat owns and operates
Unacademy, a digital education platform
comprising a mobile app, a web portal
and a YouTube channel, where 4,000
educators offer both free and paid-
for video tutorials. Unacademy has
1.5 lakh tutorials on its platform
and it registered 20 million views in
December 2017. “We want to build the
largest education platform not just in
India but across the world,” says Munjal,
co-founder and CEO, Unacademy.
The Bengaluru-based startup has raised
$17.6 million in venture funding from
investors such as Sequoia Capital India,
Nexus Venture Partners, SAIF Partners
and Blume Ventures. “Unacademy is well
on its way to cater to an ever-growing
audience that has an unquenchable urge
to learn and grow,” says Bhavin Turakhia,
CEO and co-founder, Directi, and director
on the board of Unacademy. “There is
no limit to Unacademy’s potential to
scale and become a household name.”
—anshul dhamija
(Left to right)
Roman Saini,
Gaurav Munjal and
Hemesh Singh
 MINING Gold FRoM old goods
roHit raMaSubraManian 27 Karan Gupta 28 HiMeSH joSHi 29 arjit Gupta 29

Co-founders, Zefo

R ohit Ramasubramanian, Karan Gupta

and Himesh Joshi were colleagues
at the Boston Consulting Group in
Mumbai before they all quit in turns
by mid-2015. Along with Joshi’s friend
Arjit Gupta, they zeroed in on selling
used goods by launching Zefo in August
2015, but not before contemplating
starting a consumer products company
and a food delivery business.
Then, the sale of used products was
dominated by the likes of Quikr and
OLX. No startup handled everything
from supply and logistics to payments.
No wonder few gave Zefo a chance. “It
is an operationally complex business.
Not everyone believed that it was
going to be the next big thing,” says
chief executive Ramasubramanian.
However, Zefo has proved its
cynics wrong. It raised $15 million
from Sequoia Capital, Helion Ventures
and Beenext, and currently clocks
about `15 crore in monthly sales.
It not only buys products directly
from consumers before refurbishing (Left to right) Karan Gupta, Rohit Ramasubramanian, arjit Gupta and Himesh Joshi
and selling them, but also from
behemoths like Flipkart, Amazon, Urban Abhishek Goyal, angel investor and co- Also, he needs to ensure a steady supply
Ladder, Pepperfry and Micromax. founder at Tracxn, a startup tracker. of products which are in demand.
“Their model is better than the Ramasubramanian is aware that So far, Zefo has done well and the
marketplace [model] because you take he has to price his products wisely quartet is striving to ensure that their
in the inventory. The margins are better considering the discounts that online success is not written off as a fluke.
and there is more credibility,” says retailers offer on similar new products. —sayan chakraborty

aniKet Deb 28 segment], revenue dropped by 90 percent,

specIAl mention but we knew that we were doing the right
SacHin aGrawal 27 thing,” says Deb, the chief executive.
Today, Bizongo, which works with
about 3,000 manufacturers, has emerged
anKit toMar 27
as the go-to destination for companies such
Co-founders, Bizongo as Flipkart, Myntra, Lenskart, Cadbury
top: NishaNt RatNakaR foR foRbes iNdia

and HUL to source packaging materials.

Backed by Accel Partners and IDG

i n February 2016, Aniket Deb, Sachin

(L to R) Sachin agrawal, aniket deb
and ankit tomar
Agrawal and Ankit Tomar took a tough
call to down the shutters on the chemicals
Ventures, it facilitates transactions
worth almost a $1 million every month.
—sayan chakraborty
and polymers segment, which accounted
for about 90 percent of their business-to- CateGoRy CooRdinatoRS:
business marketplace Bizongo’s revenue. anshul dhamija and sayan chakraborty
The plan was to instead focus on expeRtS: Sudhir Sethi: founder and chair-
packaging materials, a fledgling, but man, idG Ventures india; deepinder Goyal:
high-margin segment. “The month after founder & ceo, Zomato; GV Ravishankar:
md, sequoia capital india advisors
[closing the chemicals and polymers

february 16, 2018 forbes india | 27

 3 0 30
UnDER EnTERTAInMEnT

AMBITIOUS
FOR A
LEGACY
Bhumi Pednekar 28

Actor

A svelte Bhumi Pednekar beams

with confidence as she greets us in
early January, two days prior to leaving
for Chambal for the shoot of her next,
Abhishek Chaubey’s dacoit drama Son
Chiraiya. The spring in her stride is
both evident and understandable.
The year 2017 has proved to be a
“landmark year” for the actor with both
her films, Toilet: Ek Prem Katha and Shubh
Mangal Saavdhan, winning accolades
from critics and audiences alike. Their
success has dismissed any notions anyone
may have had of her being a one-hit
wonder (Dum Laga Ke Haisha, 2015).
“I am happy about my choices and the
impact my films have had… slowly and
steadily I am going towards the life I’ve
wanted,” she says of her purple patch.
From the overweight small-town girl
in her debut film to a villager unafraid
to leave her husband’s home because it
lacks a toilet in her second, Pednekar has
made some bold choices and “had fun
doing that”. “I will be heartbroken the
day I realise I have been part of a film
that I didn’t believe in or if my work is
mediocre. I am scared of that,” she says. 
Filmmaker R Prasanna, who directed
her in Shubh Mangal Saavdhan—which
dealt with erectile dysfunction—says
Pednekar epitomises the best of today’s
COURTESY: YASH RAJ FILMS PVT LTD

women. “She knows exactly what she

wants and is devoid of insecurities
about how she looks [on screen]. She
is ambitious for the right things…
she is ambitious for a legacy.”
Pednekar does not dispute that and
says expectations only motivate her.
—kunal purandare

28 | forbes india february 16, 2018

THE silEnT
pErformEr
Vicky kaushal 29

Actor

E very time Vicky Kaushal missed out on an

award for Masaan (2015), he was flooded
with more messages expressing surprise than
the congratulatory ones he got whenever he
won one. So good was his career-defining
performance in the film that even Amitabh
Bachchan appreciated his work. “I could not
sleep all night after receiving a text from him.
It was too surreal for me,” recalls Kaushal.
Life has changed overnight for the engineer-
turned-actor. “Before Masaan, my routine
was to step out with a bag filled with casual
clothes, formal attire, a kurta-pyjama and
a trimmer, and do the rounds of Bandra,
Oshiwara and Versova [in Mumbai] to check
if I was fit for any audition,” says Kaushal.
“After the film, I started getting invited
to offices to discuss films. I got to meet
the people I wanted to collaborate with.
Masaan opened a lot of doors for me.”

photo: Mexy xavier; Makeup: rupesh parab; hair: sangeeta paralkar

Kaushal has an interesting lineup of films
in 2018. He stars in Meghna Gulzar’s Raazi
with Alia Bhatt, Rajkumar Hirani’s biopic
on actor Sanjay Dutt and Karan Johar’s
Love and Lust, a series of four short films.
Besides, he starts shooting for Uri, based
on the 2016 surgical strikes, and Anurag
Kashyap’s Manmarziyan. Plus there’s Love
Per Square Foot, a Netflix original film.
His directors vouch for his talent. “Vicky
is an instinctive actor. He can emote and
communicate without saying a word. He can
do it with silences, with his eyes and give you
multiple variations of a scene. As an actor,
he is not myopic at all; he always has the entire
film in sight as well,” says Meghna Gulzar.
Kaushal says he is living his dream.
“What I am getting right now was never
planned. But this is way better than
what I could have planned,” he says.
—kunal purandare

february 16, 2018 forbes india | 29

 3 0 30
under entertAinment

Viral SenSatIon
Mithila Palkar 24

Actor

o n a sultry evening in March 2016,

Mithila Palkar posted a ‘cup song’ on
YouTube. Before she knew it, the video went
viral, garnering 2.9 million views to date and
fetching the actor overwhelming attention.
While using a plastic cup as a percussion
instrument was a novel idea, the Mumbai girl’s
top: photo: Aditi tAilAng for forbes indiA; Location courtesy: shizusAn shophouse & bAr, high street phoenix; styLing: eshAA Amiin & teAm; Wardrobe

infectious charm also worked in her favour.

‘Cup song’ or otherwise, the mass media
courtesy: shirt, pants and Fur coat - mAngo; heeLs - ChArles And Keith; JeWeLLery - edesigns; hair and Makeup partner: JeAn ClAude biguine

graduate was already on the cusp of becoming an

internet sensation. Palkar became a millennial
favourite as Meera Sehgal, the popular character
she played in the Girl in the City web series
later that year. “Whatever I experience with
the characters I play is something close to what
millennials feel. The ‘realness’ of it appeals to
the audience,” says Palkar, who admires actor
Priyanka Chopra for her career choices.
Palkar has featured in plays, commercials and
films such as Katti Batti (2015) and Muramba
(2017), but her predominant work has been
on over-the-top platforms, including web
series Official Chukyagiri (2016), Annoying
Things…. (2016) and Little Things (2016).
And this is just the beginning. Her
upcoming projects include a play by Akvarious
Productions and her first movie as a parallel
lead—Karwaan, starring Irrfan Khan and
Malayalam heartthrob Dulquer Salmaan.
“Mithila is on her way to where she has to be.
Her strength is that she is not limiting herself
to any one medium of entertainment,” says
Akarsh Khurana, who has directed Karwaan.
At her TEDx Talks appearance last year, Palkar
spoke on ‘It is okay not to have a plan’. The
belief clearly seems to have worked for her.
—neeraj gangal

advertisements. She will next be seen in

special mentIon Yashaswini DaYaMa 23
a web series, Made in Heaven, directed
Actor by Zoya Akhtar, Nitya Mehra, Alankrita
Srivastava and Prashant Nair, and will
play a lead role in a feature film, The

I f her debut as the protagonist’s spirited

neighbour in Phobia (2016) made
audiences take notice of her, Yashaswini
Odds, directed by Megha Ramaswamy.
—neeraj gangal

Dayama’s portrayal of Jackie, Alia Bhatt’s

friend in Dear Zindagi (2016), established
her as a ‘natural’ performer. The Mumbai
girl began her career as a child voiceover
artist, and later as a model for TV and print
Category Coordinators:
Kunal purandare and neeraj gangal
experts: ram Madhvani: filmmaker;
rajat Kapoor: Actor and filmmaker

30 | forbes india february 16, 2018

 3 0 30
uNdeR fashioN

Anti-Fit by Design
AlAn AlexAnder KAleeKAl 29

Founder, creative director, Kaleekal

b y the time Alan Alexander Kaleekal

finished studying applied electronics
and instrumentation, he knew that his
calling wasn’t in the world of engineering.
So, the then 21-year-old packed
his bags and left for Paris to study at
Studio Berçot, where he spent the
next three years learning fashion
design. “It was a big decision and my
parents were supportive of what I
was doing. I had always known this is
what I wanted to do,” says Alan, who
grew up in Thiruvananthapuram.
After training with some of the
biggest designers, including Jean-Paul
Gaultier, Azzedine Alaïa and Rick Owens,
Kaleekal returned to India in 2015, and
launched his eponymous label. The
funds came from his own pocket with
his work primarily focusing on Indian
artisanal crafts and handloom fabrics,
his design sensibility contemporary
and rooted in the idea of finding
“perfection in imperfection”. Due
to the experimental patterns and fits,
his clothes tend to be gender neutral.
Over the past couple of years, Kaleekal
has been showcasing at various events,
including Lakme Fashion Week.
“As a young designer, Alan has
been working with the artisans on the
ground level and, at the same time, has
developed a design language that is
NishaNt RatNakaR foR foRbes iNdia

appealing to the global audience. Very

few people have managed to do that,”
says Jaspreet Chandok, head of Lakme
Fashion Week and vice president and
head of fashion at IMG Reliance.
Now, Kaleekal is setting
up an experiential space in
Thiruvananthapuram, which houses
an art gallery, design space, library
and an experimental lab kitchen,
which is expected to open this year.
His company is yet to break even, but
Kaleekal has some serious plans for the
next few years, including collaborating
with Raymond for their menswear,
applying to international fashion
awards and eventually showcasing his
line at Paris Fashion Week. “I want
to take the brand international and
open up stores globally,” he says.
—manu balachandran

32 | forbes india february 16, 2018

 Art For the boDy
SuhAni PAreKh
Founder, creative director, Misho
s uhani Parekh trained to be a
sculptor at Goldsmiths, University
of London, but instead of placing her
sculptures on a plinth, she decided
to model them on the body. She
was working with metals and was
fascinated by how an object could,
as she puts it, “activate the space of
the body”. On her return to India,
Parekh did a stint with architect and
interior designer Ashiesh Shah, as
part of his design team. She continued
making jewellery, combining
traditional silversmithing with
contemporary techniques, and soon
found her niche in the intersection of
sculpture, architecture and design.
Parekh launched her label Misho
in 2016, and recognition and awards
soon followed. In March 2016 she
bagged the Grazia Young Fashion
Award followed by the Elle Graduates
award in January 2017. Parekh
and her brand also twice made it
to the pages of Vogue Paris and her
PriyAnKA ellA
speciAl mention lorenA lAmA 26
Founder and creative
director, P. E. L. L. A
W hen it comes to design, Priyanka
Ella Lorena Lama’s designs stand
out for their innovativeness—every
design is developed out of a single block
of fabric. The technique, along with her
choice of fabric, means there is a certain
fluidity to her garments. Besides, the
designs involve minimum sewing and
are painstakingly blind-hemmed.
She has also been championing
the cause of promoting indigenous
handwoven eri (peace/ahimsa silk) and
being sustainable by employing zero waste
26
jewellery, worn by Rihanna, was on
the cover of Vogue Arabia. She also
won the Elle Style Awards 2017.
“I feel I have overcome a
massive barrier in the way
toP: photo: aditi tailaNg foR foRbes iNdia; Location courtesy: shizusaN shoPhouse & baR, high stReet PhoeNix; styLing: eshaa amiiN & team;
aesthetics, fashion and jewellery
are perceived in our country. My
approach to design is experimental
and unconventional,” says Parekh.
From people saying, “It looks really
good, but I don’t know if I could pull
it off”, to a lot of people becoming
open to experimenting and wanting
Wardrobe courtesy: trench coat: buRbeRRy; heeLs: steve maddeN; hair and Makeup partner: JeaN Claude biguiNe
something unique and customised
has been a happy journey for Parekh.
Fashion designer Gaurav Gupta,
who got an ear cuff custom-designed
by Parekh, says, “I think Suhani is a
contemporary Indian designer with
a global outlook. I like her sense of
avant-garde, and there is an edge
to her sensibilities. The jewellery
she makes has a very simplistic
yet differentiated appeal to it.”
—benu joshi routh
pattern-making techniques in her designs.
Apart from eri silk, Lama sources pashmina,
cashmere, angora and other ethical fabrics
from weavers and she showcased a capsule
collection at the HUL Green Wardrobe
Week with Lakmé Fashion Week. “Lama’s
garments reflect a deep understanding
of technique and design, with great use
of textile, all sustainably,” says Narendra
Kumar, creative head, Amazon Fashion.
-benu joshi routh
Category Coordinator:
benu Joshi Routh
experts: david abraham: Creative
director, abraham & thakore; narendra
Kumar: Creative director, amazon fashion;
rajesh pratap singh: Creative director,
Rajesh Pratap singh
february 16, 2018 forbes india | 33
 3 0 30
under finance
THE QUEUE BUSTERS
AbhinAv PAthAk 24 SAketh bSv
From left: Yogesh
Ghaturle, Saketh BSV,
Sathya Narayanan
and Abhinav Pathak
I n 2015, Abhinav Pathak and Saketh
BSV, colleagues at Goldman Sachs in
Bengaluru, happened to be in New York
on Labour Day—a shopping bonanza
nishant ratnakar for forbes india
when retailers offer steep discounts.
But instead of returning with a bounty,
they came home empty-handed. “The
minimum checkout time was 45 minutes,”
recalls Pathak. That’s when they thought
of creating a DIY checkout solution.
But it wasn’t until another year that
they got cracking. With their Perpule
1Pay app, users can scan items in their
grocery cart using their smartphones
and directly pay for the purchase,
34 | forbes india february 16, 2018
25 YogeSh ghAturle
Co-founders, Perpule
circumventing the billing counter.
HyperCity was the first big customer for
the Kalaari Capital-funded Perpule. “We
thought it was a good innovation for our
kind of customer,” says the supermarket
chain’s CEO Ramesh Menon. HyperCity
has rolled out the solution in all of its 20
outlets across India and also launched the
country’s first self-checkout, cashier-less
store in Hyderabad. At `1,800, average cart
sizes are 45 percent more than those of
customers who queue up, claims Pathak.
Today, Perpule is in use across
chains like More, SPAR Hypermarket
and Max Hypermarket, has 100,000
22 SAthYA nArAYAnAn 26
active users growing at 30 percent
month-on-month and makes money
by charging retailers a fixed fee as
well as a percentage of every sale.
The quartet (Yogesh Ghaturle and
Sathya Narayanan joined as co-founders
shortly after the initial two started out)
is now leveraging the customer data
it has gathered to make the shopping
experience more personalised.
Even as ecommerce sales leap
ahead, as Pathak puts it, “offline
is a huge opportunity”. And
Perpule is just getting started.
—varsha meghani
 lET’s TalK DATA
AditYA ShArmA 29

Partner, McKinsey & Company

A ditya Sharma, unlike most others on Forbes

India’s 30 Under 30 List, has earned his
stripes by working as a professional. Less
than seven years into his stint at global
consultancy firm McKinsey & Company,
he has already risen to become a partner—
the only 20-something to do so in India.
He leads multiple teams and helps several
clients make big bets and build businesses,
leveraging his command over data and
analytics. Over the past 18 months, he has
helmed a range of projects, including creating

top: Photo: aditi tailang for forbes india; Location courtesy: shizusan shophouse & bar, high street phoenix; styLing: eshaa amiin &
the digital and analytics strategy of a private

team; Wardrobe courtesy: Jacket and Pants- hugo boss; shirt – gas; shoes - dune ; hair and MakeuP Partner: Jean claude biguine
sector bank and transforming the existing
digital business capabilities of a state-run
bank. “All of these projects ensured clients
are better placed to make big bets,” he says.
The seeds to success, for Sharma—an IIT-
Kharagpur chemical engineer, who also completed
an MBA-equivalent from IIM-Ahmedabad—
were sown early. He spent his childhood in
six cities in India, thanks to his banker father’s
transferable job. “Being constantly on the move
made me ready to face change,” he says.
Sharma began by working across financial
services, real estate, infrastructure and education
until over time, he saw greater scope to
specialise in banking and data and analytics.
“He [Sharma] has shown enormously
high levels of maturity and is keen to take on
responsibility,” says Renny Thomas, who heads
McKinsey’s financial services practice in India.
At a time of exponential growth of new
data, Sharma says he hopes to continue
to build McKinsey’s regional capabilities
in this space. That is true data talk.
—salil panchal

AnShul rAi 29 and now clocks over a million transactions

spEcial mEnTIon a month, with volumes estimated to be
Co-founders, Happay `250 crore monthly. Its investors include
Prime Venture Partners, Sequoia Capital,
Axiom Capital and AME Cloud Ventures.

T he IIT-Kharagpur batchmates
(Varun Rathi is 30) built an expense
management software, which corporates
—salil panchal

provide to their employees. The staff
can use the Happay prepaid Visa cards
for their official spends, which are then
VJn
CAteGorY CoordiNAtorS:
Varsha meghani and salil panchal
exPertS: Ajay Srinivasan: ceo, aditya birla
capital; Sandeep Singhal: co-founder, nexus

approved. Happay started off as a peer-to- Venture partners

Anshul rai with co-founder Varun rathi (left) peer transaction payment wallet in 2012

february 16, 2018 forbes india | 35

 3 0 30
under Food & hospitality
Twice As GooD
D on’t turn up your nose at the mention
of vegetarian Burmese food. Chirag
Chhajer can bet all of the `1.5 crore his
and his friend Ankit Gupta’s families
invested in their first restaurant that the
flavourful broth of the samuza hincho
(samosa soup) will make you forget the
missing meat. “Pieces of meat or fish don’t
enhance flavours; spices do,” says Chhajer.
(Gupta missed our cut-off by six months.)
Chhajer can brag, for Burma Burma,
his no-non-veg, no-alcohol restaurant,
Mexy xavier
not only broke even in 14 months, but
expanded to three cities—Mumbai,
Gurugram and Delhi—(a fourth soon in
36 | forbes india february 16, 2018
Chirag Chhajer
Co-owner, Burma Burma
Bengaluru) with a revenue run rate of `25
crore. With recipes from Gupta’s family (his
mother grew up in Myanmar) and frequent
trips to the country, Chhajer’s fare goes
beyond the usual khao suey, while making
authentic vegetarian Burmese dishes
fashionable. Rising footfalls at the first
restaurant in Fort, Mumbai, in its very first
week in May 2014 made him switch from
being an all-day diner to a lunch-and-dinner
format, shutting the kitchen for a break in
between. All this without publicity drives,
discounts, and keeping the menu off digital
platforms. “I want diners to come without
pre-conceived notions,” says Chhajer.
29
Anoothi Vishal, columnist and food
writer, says, “Burma Burma has navigated
the tightrope between being a restaurant
with an unusual story and serving
comfort flavours. Their model has been
successful even in the NCR, which has
a big non-vegetarian base, proving that
well-made food always has takers.”
Chhajer isn’t looking for either
capital or franchisees, but is open
to a strategic investor to take the
restaurant overseas. “The concept has
matured well here. Now, it’s ready for
any market in the world,” he says.
—kathakali chanda
 cleAn
BowleD
Shraddha BhanSali 25

Founder, Candy & Green

B eing vegetarian can often decide holiday

destinations. But for Shraddha Bhansali, founder
of Candy & Green, it hasn’t ruled her vacation picks.
Her experiences in the villages of China and Iceland,
relishing their vegetarian cuisine, have shaped
the idea of Candy & Green, an ingredient-centric
clean-eating vegetarian all-day restaurant and bar in
Mumbai that she started in 2017.
While at Boston University, studying hospitality
and business between 2010 and 2014, the local
surge in veganism fascinated her, as she observed
how chefs treated their vegetables and fruits: “It
was like how a butcher treats his meat; with utmost
care.” However, it was only after meeting an urban
farmer in Mumbai that the idea of a rooftop farm
was added to the mix. On the 400-sq ft terrace plot
that she leased in Breach Candy, her staff grows
microgreens like peppermint and Thailand grass.
Candy & Green isn’t as much about healthy
food as it is about clean eating. “We don’t shy away
from indulgent dishes, but the ingredients are
consciously sourced,” says Bhansali. Started with
money from her family, the restaurant decides on
the menu based on seasonal ingredients, and after
tasting sessions with insiders and industry experts.
It’s difficult to make vegetarian food exciting,

top: photo: Mexy xavier; hair and Makeup: rupesh parab and sangeeta paralkar
and to do that under one year, is a check-box
ticked twice, says Nikhil Merchant, food writer and
restaurateur. “She has set a precedent for others.”
Bhansali has plans to set up a casual version of
the restaurant, which will allow her to halve prices.
—ruchika shah

Priyam Chatterjee 29 roe. Having worked with top culinary

speciAl mention masters like Matteo Grandi and Jean
Head chef and director, QLA Claude Fugier, among others, Chatterjee
has brought to the table delicate European
touches along with bold flavours. He’s

P riyam Chatterjee had an early

inclination for art. When he became
a chef instead, he decided to create art
on the plate. At Delhi’s contemporary
European restaurant QLA, where he is the
head chef and director, he splashes paints
with coriander, orange and lime, celebrates
a winter flower garden with charred and
braised cauliflower, and recreates the
colours of the ocean with a plate of fresh
rock lobsters, cream of black cod, tiger
prawn tartare, tomato confit and salmon
been a Southeast Asia semi-finalist for
San Pellegrino Young Chef 2017 and has
also been voted by a popular food guide as
2017’s chef of the year.
—kathakali chanda
Category Coordinators:
ruchika shah and kathakali Chanda
experts: Zorawar Kalra: Founder and Md,
Massive restaurants; ranveer Brar: Chef
and tv host

february 16, 2018 forbes india | 37

 3 0 30
uNdeR health caRe
The docTor is
now on chat
S atish Kannan and Enbasekar
Dinadayalane were batchmates
studying electrical engineering at the
Indian Institute of Technology-Madras
from 2007 to 2012. While Kannan
NishaNt RatNakaR foR foRbes iNdia
joined Philips Healthcare in Pune,
Dinadayalane worked at the institute’s
Healthcare Technology Innovation
Centre to develop a patented device
that could detect diabetic retinopathy,
which is used in multiple countries.
In late 2013, they co-founded
Phasorz Technologies Private Limited
to build a mobile app that would connect
patients to specialist doctors. “The real
problem in health care was to make
38 | forbes india february 16, 2018
SatiSh Kannan
EnbaSEKar DinaDayalanE
Co-founders, DocsApp
specialist doctors accessible to people
across the country,” says Kannan.
In mid-2015, they launched DocsApp,
a digital platform with a curated list
of more than 2,000 specialist doctors;
its internal panel of doctors helps get
more doctors on-board, most of whom
work at large hospitals in the metros.
Patients can consult doctors through
phone calls or an in-built chat application
(the app does not allow a patient to
book a physical visit to the doctor). On
an average, 2,000 patients a day pay
between `150 and `500—about 20 to 50
percent less than a physical visit’s fees—to
consult doctors for a range of medical
28
28
Satish Kannan (left)
and Enbasekar
Dinadayalane founded
DocsApp in 2015
issues; DocsApp gets a commission. Close
to 40 percent of the patients are from
tier 3 cities and smaller urban areas.
The Bengaluru-based startup has
raised $8.4 million in venture capital
from top investors like Bessemer Venture
Partners and angel investors like Vijay
Shekhar Sharma and Anupam Mittal.
“It’s a matter of definite pride to be
associated with a company like DocsApp,”
says Mittal, founder and CEO, People
Group. “As they say, it is the people
that make a company and the team at
DocsApp has some of the smartest, most
passionate people I’ve come across.”
—anshul dhamija
The naTural way of thingS
DEEpanjali Dalmia 26

Founder, Heyday Care

B efore she spontaneously decided to

quit her job, Deepanjali Dalmia was
living the quintessential Indian dream with
a high-paying job as a financial consultant
at Ernst & Young in Manhattan. “I realised
there was a fire in me that needed to be
channeled in the right direction,” she says,
explaining her turn to entrepreneurship.
Dalmia returned to India in 2015 and
spent three months researching on her
area of work, before finalising on personal
hygiene. She learnt that nearly 87 percent
of women in India do not use sanitary
pads, and even among those who do, many
do not have any idea about its constituents.
“They are synthetic and plastic, which
causes cervical cancer,” she says.
Dalmia then put together a team that
developed a prototype of a sanitary
pad using bamboo fibre, which has
high absorbance levels, and corn,
for its soft texture. Much of the funds
came from her own savings, with
some support from her family. “We
wanted a product that was completely
organic and natural and wouldn’t cause
rashes or allergies,” says Dalmia.
Two years later, in September last
year, her company Heyday Care began
selling its sanitary napkins in New Delhi
and Mumbai, with plans to sell online.
“The product is doing very well since
its launch,” says Kunaal Kumar, the
managing director of New Delhi-based
retail chain, Modern Bazaar. “But it
has a strong potential to do even better
with improved awareness. She is doing
something remarkably different.”
The company manufactures the
products in China and Finland, and
packages them in India. “Our plants can
produce over 448 million units a year,”
Dalmia says. “We are now getting a lot
of interest from Bangladesh, Africa and
Russia. So we are looking to ramp up
our sales across India and globally.”
—manu balachandran

CAtEgory CoorDinAtorS:
aveek datta and manu balachandran
amit VeRma

ExpErtS: Suneeta reddy: md, apollo

hospitals; Vijay Chandru: chairman, strand
life sciences

february 16, 2018 forbes india | 39

 3 0 30
under LAw, poLicy And poLitics

Courting
challenges
Gautam Bhatia 29

Legal writer & Lawyer

a quick look at Gautam Bhatia’s work shows that

he has the chops to be part of the team that is
working on multiple challenges to the Aadhaar Act.
The 2011 National Law School graduate studied at
Oxford University on a Rhodes Scholarship. He then
went to Yale University to study constitutional law,
as he wanted “his legal education underpinned with
a sound understanding of constitutional philosophy.”
(Bhatia believes the Indian Constitution is a
transformative document and has written a book on
the Freedom of Speech in the Indian Constitution.)
Back in India, his earliest legal training was
in the trial courts where he assisted Advocate
Jawahar Raja in Delhi. Bhatia worked on the bail
petition of singers of the Kabir Kala Manch, a
cultural organisation that campaigns against social
inequality in 2015. From there, an introduction to
Advocate Arvind Datar, who was working on the
National Judicial Appointments Commission, made
Bhatia apply his constitutional law learnings.
In August 2017, Bhatia saw himself thrust into
the limelight as the second chair to Datar arguing
for the Right to Privacy. The issue had emerged
out of the multiple litigations challenging the
Aadhaar Act, in which Bhatia had made his entry
into the Supreme Court by working for Datar,
challenging the linking of an individual Aadhaar
number to the holder’s PAN card. While the Supreme
Court is still to decide on the validity of the Act,
Bhatia has managed to carve a niche for himself.
“Gautam’s sound understanding of constitutional law
has resulted in a lot of senior advocates relying on and
respecting his research,” says Nikhil Pahwa, founder
and editor of Medianama, who has been associated
with the legal challenges to the Aadhaar Act.
—samar srivastava

Category Coordinator: samar srivastava

experts: Lavanya rajamani: professor, centre for policy

Amit VermA

research; anup surendranath: professor, national Law

university

40 | forbes india february 16, 2018

 MuSic 3 0 30
under

Hitting tHe Right Notes

Jubin nautiyal 28

Singer, songwriter

D ehradun-born Jubin Nautiyal knew

he wanted to be a singer right from
a young age. To ensure that he learnt
singing, and learnt it well, he opted
for Hindustani Classical music lessons
in school and college. “It convinces
people around you that you are serious
about it,” says the singer who recently
brought in his own twist to the remix of
AR Rahman’s ‘Humma Humma’ for OK
Jaanu (2017). The song had garnered 222
million hits on YouTube at last count.
Although he has picked up skills from
various maestros—Pandit Chhannulal
Mishra in Benaras, an exponent of the
khayal and the thumri, R Prasanna, a
pioneer in Carnatic guitar—Nautiyal
has been focussed on being a playback
singer. “That was the first target, because
it is the biggest platform,” he says.
He got a break in Bollywood in
2014 and a chance to work with Shreya
Ghoshal (‘Samandar Main’ in the 2015
film Kis Kisko Pyaar Karoon) and Sunidhi
Chauhan (‘Tere Liye’ in the 2016 film
Fitoor), two people he had always wanted
to perform with. “I would have loved
to sing with Amy Winehouse,” he adds.
That will have to remain a dream.
Music composer Chirantan Bhatt,
who worked with Nautiyal for the song
‘Bawara Mann’ in the film Jolly LLB2, devotion. He sings with a soul.” Bhaijaan (2015), a song he says was
says, “More than getting a break in Nautiyal was awarded the Upcoming one of his most challenging since it
Bollywood, Jubin has always been Male Vocalist of the Year at the 8th went beyond the usual romantic ballad,
devoted to music. And the hits he Mirchi Music Awards in 2016 for and expressed emotions about life.
has delivered have not changed this ‘Zindagi Kuch Toh Bata’ from Bajrangi —jasodhara banerjee

Mumbai to train under Pandit Jasraj.

special meNtioN Having grown up amid a culture of
devotional music, Joshi took to this genre
naturally. However, she has expanded her
ankita Joshi 29
horizons to include ghazals and fusion
Singer music and is able to straddle multiple
genres with ease. It is this versatility that
has grown to be her biggest strength.

A nkita Joshi, from Maharashtra’s Joshi has collaborated with world music
Jubin nautiyal: Mexy xavier

Nanded district, comes from a family band Maati Baani to produce music
of kirtan singers, and started training that is classical in nature, but set within
under her maternal uncle from the young the cultural contexts they come from.
age of six. She subsequently moved to —jasodhara banerjee

Category Coordinator: Jasodhara banerjee

experts: praveen Kaushal, general manager, content, Saregama india

february 16, 2018 forbes india | 41

 3 0 30
uNder NGOs & SOciAl eNtrepreNeurShip

THE SCENT OF A RIVER

of temple waste—mostly rotting flowers.
Ankit AgArwAl 28 A solution to process the refuse held
business opportunities, besides helping
kArAn rAstogi 29 to save the river, he felt. Together with
friend Karan Rastogi, Agarwal launched
Co-founders, HelpUsGreen HelpUsGreen with an initial investment
of `72,000 in May 2015 in Kanpur.
Today, HelpUsGreen has an FY18
helping women in these cities find jobs.
For instance, HelpUsGreen employs
about 80 women at its Kanpur facility
and provides them with benefits such
as provident funds, health insurance
and transport to and from work.
“The best part about the business
is that they have healthy revenues. We

O h God! The boy has quit his job to

clean up temples, was his parents’
reaction when Ankit Agarwal told them
he was giving up his job at cyber security
firm Symantec to start up. He had apprised
them of his idea to process waste flowers
from temples to produce soaps, incense
sticks, organic fertilisers and styrofoam.
Born and raised in Kanpur, Agarwal
had seen the river Ganga turn into a heap
revenue run rate of `2 crore. Armed with
`4.2 crore in seed funding from Tata
Trusts’ Social Alpha, Greenfield Ventures
and Echoing Green, Agarwal and Rastogi
are planning to launch two more plants in
Varanasi and Mathura by June. Combined
with the Kanpur plant, the new facilities
will take their company’s processing
capacity to 38 tonnes of flowers a day.
In the process, the duo is also
have to remember that this is a very
touchy area. Religious places always
have sentiments attached to them,”
says Nagaraja Prakasam, angel investor
and partner at Acumen Fund.
Currently, the company is in the middle
of a rebranding exercise and the founders
have decided to halve the prices of their
products to gain traction in the market.
—sayan chakraborty

With HelpUsGreen,
Ankit Agarwal (left)
and Karan Rastogi
are also helping
women find jobs
Amit VermA

42 | forbes india february 16, 2018

THE RIGHT
VIBES
JAnhAvi Joshi 25
nupurA kirloskAr 25
Co-founders, BleeTech Innovations
T he prelude to Janhavi Joshi’s
and Nupura Kirloskar’s social
entrepreneurial journey came in 2014.
As students of industrial design at Pune’s
MIT Institute of Design then, they had
developed the prototype of a wearable
product that helped hearing-impaired
dancers feel music through vibrations.
Buoyed by the positive response, in
2015, they founded BleeTech Innovations,
which now manufactures what it claims is
India’s first wearable—a watch branded
BleeWatch—for the hearing impaired.
“Hearing aids could be stigma for some,
but not a wearable,” says Kirloskar.
BleeWatch can record sounds like
a doorbell, fire alarm, a baby’s cry, a
pressure cooker whistle or a dog’s bark
into a connected app. This is notified to
the wearer with unique vibration patterns,
colours and icons. The watch can also send
a help signal to five emergency numbers.
A basic version, priced around `2,500,
and a smartwatch version priced at `5,000-
7,000 is set for commercial launch. The
pilot form was distributed through the
charity EnAble India, Red Cross School for
the Deaf and Yuva Association of the Deaf.
Janhavi Joshi
(left) and
nupura Kirloskar
BleeTech’s investors are Social
Alpha and IIT-Bombay; it has also
received an R&D grant from Nasscom.
“We were looking for innovators who
could serve the bottom of the pyramid…
and BleeTech fitted the bill,” says
Dhruv Pandey, part of the portfolio and
SpECIal mEnTIOn
shiroi lily shAizA 28
Managing director, Aspora
Nagaland and advisor at
Entrepreneurs Associates
S hiroi Lily Shaiza, an alumnus of
Symbiosis International, Pune,
set up Aspora Nagaland in 2017. It
promotes entrepreneurship through
livestock training, particularly in
raising pigs and selling pork products.
Shaiza’s goal is to promote the
microenterprise model to ensure that
the youth of Nagaland are trained to set
Wardrobe courtesy: nupura: dress - mANGO; overcoat - mANGO; heeLs - chArleS ANd Keith; JeWeLLery - edeSiGNS; Janhavi: suit & shirt - mANGO; shoes- SteVe mAddeN
tOp: photo: Aditi tAilANG FOr FOrBeS iNdiA; Location courtesy: ShizuSAN ShOphOuSe & BAr, hiGh Street phOeNix; styLing: eShAA AmiiN & teAm;
innovation division at Social Alpha.
BleeTech also runs AskBlee a
platform that provides video content
in Indian sign language, and Blee
TV, an entertainment and education
platform for the hearing impaired.
—salil panchal
up their own ventures. This apart, Shaiza
is also an advisor to Entrepreneurs
Associates (EA), which runs an NBFC
called Ganpati Stock Ltd which lends
capital to the youth in Nagaland where
commercial banking operations are
almost non-existent. EA has financed
200 entrepreneurs and provided
microfinancing to 1,200 individuals. The
company also trains entrepreneurs for
business growth and basic business skills.
—sayan chakraborty
CAteGoRy CooRdinAtoRs:
Salil panchal and Sayan chakraborty
expeRts: nagaraja prakasam: Angel investor
and partner at Acumen Fund; pritha
Venkatachalam: partner at Bridgespan
february 16, 2018 forbes india | 43
 3 0 30
under science & green tech
In ProPulsIon Mode
rohan m GanapathY 25
Yashas Karanam 23
Co-founders,
Bellatrix Aerospace
T he research was supposed to get Rohan
M Ganapathy into an Ivy League
college but instead the technology for a
nishant ratnakar for forbes india
microwave electro-thermal thruster for
satellite propulsion in space took him and
Yashas Karanam the startup way, landing
their company, Bellatrix Aerospace, a
developmental order from the Indian
Space Research Organisation (Isro) in 2016.
“We are into two different areas—
satellite propulsion and rocket propulsion.
The Isro order is for a satellite propulsion
system, which is new and unique,”
says Karanam, COO, and an electrical
44 | forbes india february 16, 2018
engineer from Sri Jayachamarajendra
College of Engineering, Mysore.
Ganapathy, an aeronautical engineer
from Hindusthan College, Coimbatore,
started researching the technology
in early 2011. A `20 lakh grant from
JSW in 2013 helped them prove their
technology by the end of 2015. The
product is being tested along with Isro,
and is expected to be launched in 2019.
“It is a unique and unlikely field for
a startup—satellite propulsion, with a
technique never tried by anyone. It [the
technology] uses water as a propellant,
instantaneously heating it by microwave-
induced plasma,” says Dr Prem Shankar
Goel, former director, Isro Satellite
Centre, Bengaluru. “The physics was
known but no one had tried it.”
“Considering our age, no one
could believe we could come up
with something so technically
yashas Karanam (left)
and rohan M ganapathy
want to make space clean,
green and affordable
challenging. But you try more and you
get the results. That is the case with every
researcher,” says Ganapathy, CEO.
Bellatrix Aerospace, incubated at the
Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru,
is also working on Chetak, a two-stage
launch vehicle with a reusable first stage.
Both stages of Chetak, planned for a 2023
launch, will use liquid methane, a cleaner
fuel. “We want to make space clean,
green and affordable,” says Ganapathy.
The company is planning to
raise $3.5 million by May 2018.
—monica bathija
Category Coordinators:
Monica bathija and Pramod Mathew
experts: dr tV ramachandra: scientist,
iisc bangalore; CL gupta: Professor, sri
aurobindo international centre of
education, Puducherry; amber Maheshwari:
Vice President, infuse Ventures
 FannIng change
manoj meena 29

siBaBrata das 27

Co-founders, Atomberg
Technologies

F or decades now, fan manufacturers

everywhere have honoured the dictum, ‘if it
ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. The top brands in India
seem content with their `6,500-crore market,
growing at 10 percent year-on-year. The lack of
disruption has meant that the underlying design
of ceiling fans has remained unchanged for years.
But where top ceiling fan makers saw
precision, electrical engineer Manoj Meena
identified a lack of innovation. “A conventional
ceiling fan consumes 70 watts of power as energy

toP: photo: aditi tailang for forbes india; Location courtesy: shizusan shoPhouse & bar, high street Phoenix; styLing: eshaa aMiin & teaM;
is wasted inside the induction motor,” he says.
To change that, in 2012, Meena decided to
create fans that run on brushless DC motors

sibabrata das (left) and Manoj Meena were friends at iit-Bombay
Wardrobe courtesy: Manoj: jacket - diesel; shirt - brooks & brothers; tshirt - gas; shoes - dune, sibabrata: jacket - hugo boss;
(BLDC). “I was clear that I had to create an energy-
efficient product,” says Meena. The payoff for
three years of iterations was the 28-watt Gorilla
fan, which his company Atomberg Technologies
markets as India’s most energy-efficient fan.
“Priced above `3,500 a unit, convincing households
to switch to Gorilla fans might seem difficult,
yet Atomberg will close FY18 with sales of 1
lakh units,” says Sibabrata Das, Meena’s friend
from IIT-Bombay who joined him in 2016 and
has been responsible for scaling up the brand.
The company has a tie-up with Tata Power,
whose customers in Mumbai get a subsidy.
“Under Tata Power Demand Side Management
[DSM] programme, we motivate customers to
give up energy-guzzling appliances. Gorilla fans
provide huge energy savings,” says Shekhar
Khadilkar, head DSM & power management,
Tata Power, Mumbai distribution.
Atomberg, which has a manufacturing
unit in Navi Mumbai, has plans to apply the
BLDC technology to other home appliances,
too, starting with air coolers later this year.
—pramod mathew
hair and Makeup partner: Jean claude biguine

nelson VadasserY 29 generating the synthetic fuel biocrude

sPecIal MenTion
sri sailaja nori
sowmYa Balendiran
Co-founders, Sea6 Energy
from macroalgae (seaweeds). Backed
29 by several investors, including Biocon’s
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw and Tata Capital
29 Innovation fund, the laboratory-tested
concept is expected to be commercialised
in the near future. Meanwhile, to earn
revenue, the startup, based at the Centre
for Cellular and Molecular Platforms

B iotech company Sea6 Energy, started

From left: nelson Vadassery, sowmya
Balendiran and sri sailaja nori
by Indian Institute Technology,
Madras, students Nelson Vadassery, Sri
in Bengaluru, has been successfully
marketing its bio-fertiliser Jingo NXG,
also manufactured from
Sailaja Nori and Sowmya Balendiran seaweed, since 2016.
in 2010, is on the cusp of commercially —pramod mathew

february 16, 2018 forbes india | 45

 3 0 30
under Social media, mobile tech & communication
From left:
Vidit Aatrey
and Sanjeev
Barnwal
Distribution Redefined
vidit aatrey 27
sanjeev barnwal 28
Co-founders, Meesho
niShant ratnakar for forbeS india
A few years after graduating from IIT-
Delhi, batchmates Vidit Aatrey and
Sanjeev Barnwal founded a hyperlocal,
on-demand fashion marketplace, or
the “Swiggy for fashion” as they call it.
The startup failed, but in the process
the duo hit upon a key insight: Several
small businesses were selling their wares
online, but weren’t using their own
websites to do so; nor were they listed on
46 | forbes india february 16, 2018
Amazon or Flipkart. Instead, they were
leveraging the power of social media.
“But Facebook and WhatsApp lack
features for commerce,” says Aatrey.
Consider the separate notifications
that need to be sent on WhatsApp for
every new product, or that searches
or payments aren’t possible via these
channels. So the Y-Combinator alums set
up Meesho—short for “meri shop”—in
December 2015 to help merchants sell
more efficiently through social media.
Traders and manufacturers—or
“sellers”—create a marketplace on the
Meesho app, while “resellers”, mostly
housewives, promote and sell products
curated from this marketplace within
their social network. They simply link
their Facebook pages to Meesho to set
up a mobile store, chat with customers
via WhatsApp from the app and can
easily close sales by sending a payment
link on the messaging service. Meesho
takes care of delivery and monetises by
charging sellers a commission. About
1,000 sellers and 30,000 resellers are
listed on the platform, which is growing
by 40 percent month-on-month.
Says Mukul Arora of Saif Partners
which led Meesho’s $3.4 million series
A investment last year, “This is an
India-specific play, and if executed
well, is a huge opportunity.”
—varsha meghani
ExpErt mEDical aDvicE on the go
pawan gUpta 26

nipUn goyal 27

MUdit vijayvergiya 27

Co-founders, Curofy

i IT-Delhi alumni Pawan Gupta, Nipun

Goyal and Mudit Vijayvergiya are on a
mission “to help doctors diagnose and cure
faster”. Their company 911 India Healthcare
owns Curofy, a networking mobile app
where over 200,000 “verified” doctors
discuss more than 400 cases every day.
Launched in 2015, the premise of
Curofy is simple. Doctors coming across
unusual cases that require further
opinion can post anonymous images
and necessary details on the app. From
its database, Curofy identifies the right
doctors, who can see the cases in their
feeds or through push notifications. Within
a few hours, the doctors in need receive
an average of five to seven responses from
their peers across various specialties.
Going forward, the company aims
to “help other stakeholders use this
engagement and reach out to doctors”,
says Goyal. “All stakeholders who are
creating value for doctors could use
Curofy to create their own platforms or
devices; so an app inside [the app].”
With a credible network, Curofy aims
to scale up through brand promotions and
marketing of pharmaceuticals, medical
devices, and health-tech products and
services. “Pawan, Mudit and Nipun
bring a perfect combination of product
expertise and domain passion to scale up From left: pawan

amit verma
gupta, Mudit
this opportunity,” says Leo Capital’s Rajul Vijayvergiya and
Garg, who has invested in the venture. nipun goyal
—neeraj gangal

Launched in April and installed by 4

nav agarwal, CEO 24
spEcial mention million people, Clip allows users to
swapnil Upadhyay, CTO 23 create, watch, comment on and share
videos in 10 languages. Every new
ashish gUpta, CPO 23 dialect offers the co-founders a new
user base to expand their business.
Co-founders, Clip
—ruchika shah

t hree IIT graduates got together to

(From left) Ashish gupta, nav Agrawal and
Swapnil Upadhyay
launch Clip, a video-based vernacular
social media app created especially for
India’s non-English speaking population.
While Agarwal is from IIT-Bombay,
the other two are from IIT-Kanpur.
CAtegory CoordinAtorS:
neeraj Gangal, varsha meghani and
ruchika Shah
expertS: Anand Lunia: co-founder, india
Quotient; Arun tadanki: Startup investor

february 16, 2018 forbes india | 47

 3 0 30
unDer sports

Fast and
furious
Jasprit Bumrah 24

Cricketer

D uring the 2013 Indian Premier League,

a deadly bouncer from Jasprit Bumrah
hit his Mumbai Indians teammate Mitchell
Johnson (of Australia) on the helmet.
Recalling that net session, the India
cricketer says he was aware that he had
express pace, but as a 19-year-old then,
he could experiment with a delivery like
that only with a bowler since batsmen
didn’t like such stuff dished out to them.
That was then. Today, 24-year-old
Bumrah is known to bamboozle the best
of batsmen in world cricket. Ask South
African captain Faf du Plessis, who
was caught behind off an unplayable
ball from the pacer in the first Test
of the recently-concluded series.
The Ahmedabad-born Bumrah’s
meteoric rise over the past couple of
years has seen him make his Test debut
against South Africa this January. And
on the back of a stellar 2017—he took
39 wickets in 23 one-day internationals
(ODIs)—he was named in the International
Cricket Council’s ODI Team of the
Year. He’s especially proved to be
effective in T20s, using his unorthodox
action to bowl toe-crushing yorkers
at will in the death overs.
“Bumrah is a deceptive bowler who
is confident about his craft. His unusual
action makes it difficult for the batsmen
Ian Walton-IDI / IDI vIa Getty ImaGes

to pick him, as the angle from which he

bowls is different,” says former India
speedster and 1983 World Cup-winning
member Balwinder Singh Sandhu.
The emergence of Bumrah as a
fast bowler is a refreshing change in
a country like India, which is known
for its docile pitches. Given his skills,
he’s likely to have an ever improving
tally in the wickets column.
—kunal purandare

48 | forbes india february 16, 2018

The game changer
L ast July, India played a World Cup
final at Lord’s and the Virat Kohlis
and Rohit Sharmas had nothing to do with
it. Pan your focus, instead, to a 28-year-
old from Moga, Punjab, who, with a
blistering knock of 171 in the semifinal
against Australia, evoked memories of
Kapil Dev’s historic 175 not out against
Zimbabwe during the 1983 World Cup.
None other than those present on the
ground had managed to witness Dev’s
feat (BBC, the broadcaster, was on
strike), but with her unprecedented
heroics, batting all-rounder Harmanpreet
Kaur ensured the final India played
against England was one of the most-
watched women’s cricket match ever.
India lost the match after a nail-biter,
but with her performance throughout
the tournament, Harmanpreet
turned out to be a game changer
for women’s cricket, bringing much
recognition and a touch of glamour
that it deserves. Girls play cricket
too, and they play it damn well is what
Harmanpreet and her ilk proved in 2017.
Mithali Raj, captain of the One
Day International team and one of the
Harmanpreet Kaur 28
Cricketer
most successful women cricketers,
says, “It’s great to have a woman’s
cricketer on the list. She is one of the
Gary Prior-iDi / iDi via Getty imaGes
stronger batsmen in the team and a
good striker of the ball. But this is just
the beginning for Harmanpreet. I want
to see her more consistent in future.”
With her slam-bang game modelled
on Virender Sehwag’s, Harmanpreet is
the first Indian cricketer to sign up for the
Big Bash League, with Sydney Thunder.
She was also among the 17 sportspersons
named for the Arjuna Award.
—kathakali chanda
february 16, 2018 forbes india | 49
 3 0 30under sports

Last
Woman
StandinG
Savita Punia 27

Goalkeeper, women’s field hockey

G rowing up in a village in Haryana’s

Sirsa district, Savita Punia didn’t
care much for sports. Her family sent her
to the district headquarters for better
schooling; there she enrolled at a sports
academy at her grandfather’s insistence.
“He wanted me to play hockey, and not,
say, cricket, because he felt hockey would
toughen me up,” says the 27-year-old.
That Punia’s nerves were well forged in
steel was evident during the 2016 Hockey
World League in Belgium, where she
withstood a barrage of penalty corners
against Japan in the last 15 minutes to help
India hold on to its 1-0 lead. When the
final whistle blew, “it was a moment I’d
never forget”, for Punia’s resilience at the
goalpost had helped her team qualify
photo: nishant ratnakar for forbes india; hair and Makeup: Madhura iyli

for the Rio Olympics after 36 years.

At Rio, India crashed out early, but
it gave Punia an opportunity to regroup
for future challenges, the Asia Cup for
instance, where she once again proved to
be invincible. In a tense shootout against
China in the final, she made a stunning
save to help India win the match 5-4,
earning for herself the goalkeeper of the
tournament award and for her team a
slot at the 2018 World Cup in London.
Says Rani Rampal, captain of the
national women’s hockey team, “Punia
brings great work ethics to every single
training session and plays every match
like she’s playing for her life. She is calm
in pressure situations and has won us
many matches with her composure.”
With a number of big-ticket events lined
up for 2018, Punia would need to bring
all that and more to the table. If the past
year is any indication, she sure is up for it.
—kathakali chanda

50 | forbes india february 16, 2018

 special menTions
Dheeraj Singh
17

GUNNiNG
MoirangtheM

Football player

FOR (MORe)
GoLD
heena SiDhu 28

Pistol shooter

T he year 2017 began on a grim note

for pistol shooter Heena Sidhu.
A finger injury, for which she had to
undergo physiotherapy and painful
treatment, meant that her fingers
trembled while shooting. But the former
World No 1 says she had to prove to
herself that she could still succeed at the
sport, which she took to as a hobby.
“The injury was one of the best things
to have happened to me. I told myself
I know how to shoot. Eventually, there
were matches in which I exceeded
all expectations just because I did
T his Manipuri goalkeeper’s impressive
performance at the 2017 Fifa
Under-17 World Cup—with a save rate
of 64 percent—made former captain
Baichung Bhutia call him the find of the
tournament. He was picked by the Indian
Arrows squad for the 2017-18 I-League
season. The crowning glory was an offer
from Motherwell FC of the Scottish
Premiership for trials and training.
—kunal purandare

dhEEraj: Pal Pillai / FiFa via gEtty iMagES, raMKuMar: SuSaN MullaNE-uSa today SPortS / rEutErS
not give up,” says Sidhu, who holds a raMkuMar raManathan 23
bachelor’s degree in dental surgery.
Her belief in herself has worked Tennis player
wonders. The Arjuna Awardee
clinched gold at the Commonwealth
shooting championships in Brisbane,
Australia, last October. This came on

photo: hEENa: MExy xaviEr; Makeup: BhiMraM yadav; hair: SaNgEEta ParalKar
the back of three golds in mixed air
pistol global competitions with Jitu
Rai, including at the World Cup.
The two-time Olympian’s husband
and coach Ronak Pandit attributes her
success to her “beginner’s mindset and
humility to find faults even in a world
record-winning performance”. “She
is grounded, no matter how well she
performs or what title she wins. She is
i n 2017, Ramkumar Ramanathan not only
beat the World No 8 Dominic Thiem
in straight sets at the Antalya Open, but
always willing to learn. She respects the also qualified for the ATP 500 event in
game and knows that it is bigger than her.” Washington and made his masters debut in
Outside the field too, Sidhu made Cincinnati. He started the year with a tame
a statement when she refused to loss to Yuki Bhambri, but climbed over
travel to Tehran for the Asian Air 130 spots in the ATP rankings to No 136.
Gun Championships in 2014 and 2016 —kathakali chanda
because Iran had made wearing the hijab
mandatory for women participants.
Category Coordinators:
For now, she has set her sights Kathakali Chanda and Kunal Purandare
on the Olympics, but prefers to
take it “one match at a time”. experts: sharda Ugra: Senior editor,
ESPNcricinfo; ayaz Memon: Senior sports
—kunal purandare
journalist

february 16, 2018 forbes india | 51

 3 0 30
uNder techNology

ElEctrifying ScooterS
Tarun MehTa 28

Swapnil Jain 28

Co-founders, Ather Energy

W hen IIT Madras graduates

Tarun Mehta and Swapnil
Jain started Ather Energy in 2013,
they were betting that “electric
vehicles were inevitable,” recalls
Mehta. Now, the duo has a close-
to-commercial electric scooter,
called the S340, which they hope
to start selling later this year.
It will take an hour to charge on
a 15 ampere point, do a top speed
of about 70 kmph and have a range
of 70-80 km on a single charge.
It will likely be priced between a
Honda Activa and a 125cc Vespa.
A working prototype—and a
sleek looking one at that—was ready
as early as two years ago, but the
decision to design and engineer one
from scratch means progress has
been slower than CEO Mehta and
CTO Jain anticipated. For instance,
finding people with “enough exposure
to new product development or
exposure to electric vehicles has
been a challenge,” says Jain.
They have made significant
strides though, including putting
together a critical mass of 250
engineers, and finding a deep-
pocketed backer in Hero Motors.
They have a factory ready, which
will initially make a few thousand
scooters, but has the capacity for
a much larger run—eventually
about 30,000 scooters a year. A
photographs: NishaNt ratNakar for forbes iNdia

showroom is also being put together

in Bengaluru. And to date they’ve
raised about $43 million in funding.
“Two-wheelers are the lifeblood of
private transportation in the country,”
says Amit Somani, managing partner
at Prime Venture Partners. “To build
a smart, electric, green two-wheeler
is audacious in thought and action for
anyone, let alone a young under-30
team. It could be transformative for
the landscape in India and eventually
Tarun Mehta
emerging markets around the world.” (in front) and
—harichandan arakali Swapnil Jain

52 | forbes india february 16, 2018

 From left: Ranjeet
Pratap Singh,
Sankaranarayanan
Devarajan and
Prashant Gupta
languagE no Bar
29 Sankaranarayanan DevaraJan
ranJeeT praTap Singh
praShanT gupTa
Co-founders, Nasadiya Technologies / Pratilipi
r anjeet Pratap Singh, 29, comes
from Fattepur, a small village some
60 kilometres southwest of Kanpur
in Uttar Pradesh. His dad was a Naik
in the army, but Singh also had a tau
(uncle), who would often save money
to publish his own writings in Hindi.
That left an imprint on young
Singh’s mind, which would
influence him as a grown man.
“In India, you often end up paying
the publisher to publish your writing,”
Singh says. While his dad’s pay
was modest, the family’s bit of land
supplemented their income. Singh
worked hard and put himself through
CaTeGoRy CooRDinaToR: harichandan arakali
exPeRTS: ivaturi Vijaya Kumar: consultant cto, crayon data, and member, indian angel Network; amit Somani: Managing partner, prime Venture partners
28
29 rahul ranJan 28
engineering school and then an MBA,
finally landing a job at Vodafone.
“Suddenly, I felt life shouldn’t be so
comfortable so early in life,” Singh says.
He quit his job and along with four like-
minded friends, Sahradayi Modi (30),
Sankaranarayanan Devarajan (28), Rahul
Ranjan (28) and Prashant Gupta (29),
set up Nasadiya Technologies to build
Pratilipi, a web and mobile self-publishing
platform for Indian languages in 2015.
“We are a self-publishing platform
where people can come and share
their stories, without the barrier of
languages,” Singh says. The platform
today supports eight Indian languages—
Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil,
Telugu, Malayalam and Kannada.
In the three years since they started,
they have raised $5.3 million from
investors, including Norwest Venture
Partners. Pratilipi has about 15,000 users
writing on it, and some 1.3 million users
using it to read Indian language content.
“They are doing a lot of work to
get Indian authors and Indic language
content online. This is clearly a
rich, underserved space,” says Amit
Somani, managing partner at Prime
Venture Partners in Bengaluru.
They don’t make any money yet, but
that is a much longer-term goal. For
now, they’re building version 2.0 of the
recommendation engine on Pratilipi.
“Our big dream or goal is that people
should have the same opportunities
and access irrespective of their
language or geography,” says Singh.
—harichandan arakali
february 16, 2018 forbes india | 53
 3 0 30
UndEr LaSt yEar’S 30U30
THE CLASS OF 2017
In the year since they were recognised, most in our cohort of young achievers have
gone the distance. And those who have faced adversities, soldiered on. But for the
most part, the Millennials are alright, as this report card shows
Dhaval Shah and Dharmil Seth of Pharmeasy
EcommErcE
RAHUL JAIMINI, NANDAN REDDY
co-founders, Swiggy
Even as peers struggled to raise capital,
Swiggy added $80 million to its $75
million war chest, in a funding round
led by Naspers. The food delivery
startup claims to have serviced close to
4 million orders in eight Indian cities
last July and reduced its delivery costs
by 35 percent in 2017. Currently, it has
20,000-odd delivery personnel servicing
about 20,000 restaurants. To improve
margins, Swiggy is establishing its own
brands—The Bowl Company, House of
Dabbas and Punjabi Rasoi. It has also
partnered with restaurants to open
kitchens in localities that are underserved,
but with good business promise, under
mExy xaviEr
its Swiggy Access programme.
The Forbes India Impact: “Being
54 | forbes india february 16, 2018
Breakout StarS
part of the Forbes India 30 under
30 list has added another layer of
credibility to our vision of changing
the way India eats,” says Reddy.
RAGHAV CHANDRA,
VARUN KHAITAN
co-founders, Urbanclap
UrbanClap, the online marketplace for
service professionals, managed to raise
additional capital last year despite a
choking of the funding pipeline that
forced peers like Taskbob to fold up or
sell themselves (Zimmber was acquired
by Quikr). In July, UrbanClap raised
$21 million in a funding round led by
Vy Capital. A sharp focus on verticals
such as beauty and home repairs
has made the company attractive to
VCs and service professionals alike.
The company now claims to serve
3,00,000 service requests per month.
The Forbes India Impact: “Being
featured in the Forbes India 30
Under 30 list was a recognition of
our efforts, giving us a further push
to strive harder,” says Chandra.
EntErtainmEnt
TAAPSEE PANNU
actor
Pannu had a remarkable 2017 with four
releases to her credit, including the
immensely successful Judwaa 2, which
became the fourth-highest grosser of
the year with `138 crore in box office
collections. Pannu’s stock continues to
soar in the film industry and she continues
to bag plum projects. She’s just wrapped
up Soorma, directed by Shaad Ali and
starring Diljit Dosanjh, and has been roped
in for Anurag Kashyap’s Manmarziyan.
FinancE
ANKUR PANDEY, ANKIT
RATAN, ARPIT RATAN
Founders, Signzy
The startup, which uses AI and blockchain
to authenticate documentation and
identification of clients, had what its
promoters call a “breakthrough” year.
It built an application for ICICI Bank,
which carried out its first international
trade transaction and overseas remittance
using blockchain. In 2017, the Monetary
Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced
Signzy as a Global FinTech Hackcelerator
and FinTech Awards finalist. The company
has grown exponentially in 2017, with 35
clients, compared to just two in 2016. It
plans to expand to Singapore and other
regions of Southeast Asia in 2018.
The Forbes India Impact: “The
most valuable thing has been that
the introduction to our firm has
changed, people have heard of us
already,” says Ankit Ratan.
hEaLthcarE
DHAVAL SHAH, DHARMIL SHETH
Founders, PharmEasy
Over the last year, PharmEasy
expanded its business to 700 cities,
from five a year ago, and quadrupled
its headcount to 1,000. Close to a
million customers have registered
for the online pharmacy’s services till
date, says Sheth. PharmEasy is also
using a lot of automation in its services
to let registered customers purchase
medicines easily by automatically
replenishing their stock. The company
raised $17 million in a Series B funding
from Bessemer Venture Partners and
Orios Venture Partners in January 2017.
The Forbes India Impact: “A lot
of people, till last year, were not
aware of PharmEasy and it was
a challenge for us to convince
regulators, investors and customers.
The recognition from Forbes
India has given confidence to all
stakeholders,” says Sheth.
SociaL mEdia, mobiLE
tEch & commUnication
FARID AHSAN, BHANU PRATAP
SINGH, ANKUSH SACHDEVA
co-founders, Sharechat
The ShareChat app, which simplifies
access to vernacular digital content,
improved on many matrices last year:
App installations grew eight-fold to 20
million, daily active users multiplied
seven times to 2.1 million and the
app will soon be available in about
15 languages, up from five earlier.
The startup also closed a
$18.5-million Series B funding round
in a sedate environment, which
“elevated us from a startup to an
infant corporate”, says Ahsan. They
have made significant hires—Sunil
Kamath, former senior vice president
for Asia business at Opera Software
is the new chief business officer—
and strengthened their data science
and machine learning teams.
The Forbes India Impact: “As
founders of a startup catering to a
vernacular audience, it has become
much easier for us to navigate.
An effort to make an impact in
the vernacular world is now
considered ‘cool’,” says Ahsan.
tHe otHerS
art & cULtUrE
PRIYESH TRIVEDI
artist, animator
The artist behind Adarsh Balak, the
popular comic series with subversive
messages, had a year full of exhibitions,
appearances and accolades. Trivedi
showcased his work with the Shrine
Empire Gallery, at India Art Fair 2017,
and at the Contemporary Art Week in
New Delhi. Internationally, he had a
solo exhibition at L’agence en résidence,
Bordeaux, France. Other honours
included being a jury member for Design
Fabric’s Low-Res, a countrywide student-
focussed initiative aimed at selecting
and mentoring art and design students,
and being invited as a guest speaker
at the Delhi Comic Arts Festival.
PrIYeSH trIVeDI
The Forbes India Impact: “It
has helped me attract a fair share of
recognition and appreciation for my work
among peers and professional networks.
It will surely help me further down the
road as I develop and grow,” says Trivedi.
SAHEJ BAKSHI
Electronic music composer
In the past year, Bakshi forayed into
filmmaking. The idea, he says, is not to
move away from music, but to expand
his art into an audiovisual form. Moving
forward, he plans to focus on making
documentaries and non-fiction films
related to music, in addition to being a
music video director and editor. Bakshi
has decided to tour less in 2018 to focus
on making new music and to uncover a
new direction for the future. This would
mean spending more time in his Delhi-
based music studio, practising filmmaking
and experimenting with multimedia art
forms in ways that weren’t previously
possible while being on the road.
ALOK RAJWADE
theatre actor and director
Rajwade took his directing skills from
stage to screen with his first feature film
last year. The yet-untitled Marathi film
is now in the post-production phase,
with which he will remain busy until
March even as he directs a new play by
students of the Lalit Kala Kendra in Pune.
Kaasav, for which he had shot in 2016,
also released last year and went on to
win the National Award for Best Feature
Film. The film was also shown at the Brics
Film Festival in China, where Rajwade
won the award for the best male actor. He
also continued with shows of his earlier
plays through the year and has another
play in mind once his film is completed.
The Forbes India Impact: “It gave me
confidence, it’s a very good feeling when
someone recognises the work you do and
you work with more passion, you feel you
are on the right path,” says Rajwade.
dESign
SHIVA NALLAPERUMAL
type and graphic designer, illustrator
Nallaperumal has had an eventful year. He
completed projects with major brands
and institutions like ARCASIA, Indian
Institute of Architects and Fila. He
also collaborated with the Mumbai-
based Taxi Fabric to redesign the
Red Bull Tour Bus, and also designed
‘Geostickers’ for Snapchat. He spoke
at the prestigious Typographics
Conference in New York in June where
he unveiled and published a ‘pseudo-
artificially intelligent’ typeface called
Calcula (previously called Labyrinth)
with the type foundry and design studio
Typotheque. He also published another
typeface, Faction, with Lost Type Co-
op, towards the end of the year.
joShUa navaLkar
The Forbes India Impact: “Forbes
India’s mainstream appeal and
acceptance helped spread awareness
about the field and the importance of
typography,” says Nallaperumal.
february 16, 2018 forbes india | 55
 3 0 30
UndEr LaSt yEar’S 30U30
uJJaWaL DuBeY
MALAV SANGHAVI
innovator and Entrepreneur
Multiple prototypes of LifeCradle, an
incubator for newborns designed by
Sanghavi, were lab tested last year. In
the coming months, clinical trials will
be conducted and approvals sought.
Sanghavi is partnering with different
organisations and governments to launch
the product. Sanghavi’s second innovation
Creoto, a programmable smart socket
for amputees, has gone through a few
successful trials and will be launched soon.
The Forbes India Impact: “Being
in the Forbes India 30 under 30 cohort
has helped me win recognition among
mentors, investors and organisations.
It has helped me connect with different
youth communities and like-minded
individuals,” says Sanghavi.
EcommErcE
CHANAKYA HRIDAYA,
RAJESH YABAJI
co-founders, blackbuck
The online road freight marketplace
raised $70 million (`476 crore) in Series C
funding from Sands Capital Management
and existing investors such as Accel
From LEFt: amit vErma; joShUa navaLkar
Partners, Tiger Global, Apoletto and
Flipkart. The startup added close to
100,000 new truckers and shippers on to
its marketplace over the last year and its
revenue grew seven-fold to `566 crore.
EntErtainmEnt
TAHIR RAJ BHASIN
actor
His performance in his last two films,
56 | forbes india february 16, 2018
taHIr raJ BHaSIN
Mardaani (2014) and Force 2 (2016), won
him rave reviews, but Bhasin continues
to be choosy about the work he takes
on. He’ll next be seen in Nandita Das’s
Manto, a biopic on Pakistani author Saadat
Hasan Manto, which has Nawazuddin
Siddiqui playing the title role. The actor
also opted to act in a web series, titled
Time Out, which was widely appreciated.
SHUBHASHISH BHUTIANI
Writer-filmmaker
Bhutiani’s debut film Mukti Bhawan (Hotel
Salvation), which released in India last
year, won two National Award Special
Mentions (for Best Film and Best Actor).
Mukti Bhawan was also picked up in
over 40 countries for distribution,
including by the British Film Institute,
which released it all over the UK.
It has already travelled to over
50 festivals worldwide, garnering
applause and awards along the way.
The Forbes India Impact: “I felt
honoured to be on a list of young, talented
people. It inspires me to continue making
the kind of work I believe in and keep
searching for stories that need to be told,”
says Bhutiani. “On a personal note, my
grandfather, who has probably never
read a film magazine in his life, since
his background is in business, was so
happy to see me in a magazine like Forbes
India, which he recognises and values.”
FaShion
MASABA GUPTA
Founder & Creative Head,
house of masaba
Among the many achievements of last
year, Gupta counts among the top four the
launch of her store in Mumbai’s Palladium
Mall, the launch of a line of watches for
Titan Raga, being on the cover of Forbes
India and getting to interview the cast
of the TV series The Crown in London
as a guest of Netflix. Her plans for 2018
revolve largely around the expansion
of her label. “We have three new stores
opening [including a café-cum-store].
And we have plans for at least two more
in the latter part of the year,” she says.
The Forbes India Impact: “Fashion is
often seen as frivolous and is one profession
that needs a nod from the business heads…
so being featured on the list was a stamp
of approval. Also, it helps in worldwide
recognition for the brand,” says Gupta.
UJJAWAL DUBEY
Fashion designer, antar-agni
Dubey, whose clients include actors
Ranbir Kapoor, Arjun Kapoor, Sushant
Singh Rajput and Riteish Deshmukh,
was selected as the regional winner in
the men’s category of the prestigious
International Woolmark Prize. He
competed in the international final along
with 11 others for the A$200,000 prize.
Food & hoSPitaLity
MUNAF KAPADIA
Founder, the bohri kitchen
Over the past year, Kapadia hosted
some of the top Bollywood celebrities,
including Farah Khan and Rishi Kapoor,
at the weekend pop-up at his home, and
also ramped up his outstation catering
services. He won a reality show on TV,
Grilled, where he secured the mentorship
of noted restaurateur Riyaaz Amlani and
an investment of `1.5 crore. With the
money, he is finally on course to set up
a proper central kitchen, delivery and
catering infrastructure and significantly
scale up The Bohri Kitchen.
The Forbes India Impact: “I
was lucky to have received the
acknowledgement at a time when my
morale was the lowest. It revived my
faith in TBK’s potential,” says Kapadia.
KARAN TANNA
Founder & cEo, yellow tie hospitality
Over the last 12 months, Tanna has grown
his food franchise business at a scorching
pace: From seven franchised food outlets
to 42. The company’s largest franchised
brand, US-based Genuine Broaster
Chicken, now operates 31 outlets across
the country. Besides, Tanna added
two more international brands to the
company’s portfolio—UAE-based street
food brand Just Falafel and UK-based
Wrapchic. Tanna also went live with his
in-house food brand Dhadoom, which
presently has seven franchised outlets.
The Forbes India Impact: “After
the announcement, the confidence
among our franchise partners and
stakeholders increased drastically. I also
received a lot of emails from students
and aspiring entrepreneurs who want
to build a career for themselves in the
F&B industry. In fact, four of them are
currently working with us,” says Tanna.
LaW, PoLicy & PoLiticS
ANGELLICA ARIBAM
Former national general
Secretary, nSUi
The Forbes India 30 Under 30 recognition
prompted Aribam to take her learnings to
an academic level. She has spent the last
four months at Peking University, studying
public policy on a scholarship. She’ll be
back in time for the 2019 elections and
plans to work for the Congress either in
her home state Manipur or in Delhi.
ARPANA CHOUDHURY
associate, assam justice
Program, nazdeek
The last year has been an eventful one for
Choudhury. Nazdeek, the organisation
she worked for, has trained more than
50 adivasi women as paralegals and
explained to them the fineprint of the
Plantation Labour Act, Wages Act,
Right to Education etc. They can now
file reports documenting violations.
Nazdeek estimates it has reached over
1,000 adivasi women in Assam.
The Forbes India Impact: Choudhury
says the recognition was covered by
several local newspapers and news
channels that helped her connect with
a lot of people and grow her network.
ngoS & SociaL EntrEPrEnEUrShiP
PUNEET MANUJA, RICHA SINGH
co-founders, yourdoSt
Over the last year, the online counseling
and emotional support platform
YourDOST has been focusing on
scalability by experimenting with
various revenue models. It has also
started collaborating with institutions,
corporates and governments: YourDOST
is now associated with many premier
institutions such as IIT-Madras,
IIT-Delhi, and the Madhya Pradesh
government to ensure the emotional
well-being of their students and staff.
The Forbes India Impact: “The
world looks at us differently now. There
is a trust that is established, from people
across governments and institutions,
once we say we are part of the Forbes
India 30 Under 30 list,” says Singh.
VARUN SHETH
Founder & cEo, ketto
The business of crowdfunding only
became more engaging and profitable
for Ketto in 2017. Today, with a staff of
50, Ketto works with 15,000 non-profit
firms (up from 3,500 in 2016) and has
raised over `150 crore for various causes
karaN taNNa
aNGeLLICa arIBaM
through 50,000 campaigns (up 66 percent
from a year earlier). Its revenues have
doubled to `4 crore in 2017. Ketto has
also partnered with BookMyShow’s
charity initiative to create the biggest ever
online fund-raising event in India, for
NGOs. This campaign has so far raised
`1.82 crore through the participation
of 122 NGOs and 7,740 donors.
The Forbes India Impact: “For the
space in which we are, credibility is a
must… it [a place in the Forbes India
30 under 30 List] has helped us get
partners. The recognition has only
made our case stronger,” says Sheth.
SciEncE & grEEn tEch
ASHWATH HEGDE
Founder, Envigreen biotech
Hegde’s quest to take on the scourge
of plastic waste with his biodegradable
EnviGreen carry bags went through some
bottlenecks. Plans to shift EnviGreen
Biotech’s manufacturing base to India,
from Qatar, were deferred by a year
as “additional certifications for the
EnviGreen bags and approvals for the
[Bengaluru] factory took time”. Meeting
capital requirements, too, prolonged the
start of operations as Hegde resisted the
urge to dilute his stake in the company
when “approached by many VCs”.
Meantime, EnviGreen strengthened
its marketing presence by signing up
exclusive marketing partners in over 10
countries and inking export orders from
its channel partner in France, which
Hegde expects to fulfil “once the plant
achieves full capacity in February”.
The Forbes India Impact:
“Recognition from Forbes India was
a turning point as it helped me reach
out to global partners,” says Hegde.
SociaL mEdia, mobiLE
tEch & commUnication
SUCHITA SALWAN
From toP: mExy xaviEr; amit vErma
Founder & cEo, Little black book
Over the last year, Little Black Book (LBB),
which offers local discoveries for food,
shopping, lifestyle and cultural dos through
its website and app, expanded from three
to 18 cities. Salwan bolstered her senior
leadership team to look into revenue,
marketing and technology. A third round
of funding of `6.5 crore led by Blume
Ventures was also seen through, as was a
february 16, 2018 forbes india | 57
 3 0 30
UndEr LaSt yEar’S 30U30
user-generated content feature which lets
users directly post their recommendations
on the platform. LBB’s 1.5 million monthly
active users grew to 2.5 million.
The Forbes India Impact: “Vanity
metrics also matter…so from the
perspective of attracting talent and having
a better brand presence, the biggest impact
has been from the recognition we have
got from Forbes India,” says Salwan.
SPortS
DATTU BHOKANAL
rower
After a stellar 2016, where he clocked
India’s best rowing performance at the Rio
Olympics, Bhokanal spent 2017 without
any international exposure. While the
Rowing Federation of India isn’t giving
away much, reports claim that Bhokanal
was caught in a crossfire between the
RFI and the Army Rowing Node, where
he trains, due to which army rowers
are known to have stayed away from
nationals for the past two years. Bhokanal
returned to the 36th Senior Nationals in
Pune in December, winning gold in the
single sculls category. One can only hope
that egos take a backseat and India’s best
sculler is back to the waters gearing up
for a podium finish in Tokyo 2020.
MARIYAPPAN THANGAVELU
high jumper
Thangavelu, who leapt to fame after
clinching the gold medal in the T42 high
jump event at the Rio Paralympics in
summer of 2016, was awarded the Padma
Shri as well as the Arjuna Award in 2017.
After all, his Rio feat made him only the
third Indian to win the yellow metal at
the Paralympics and the first to do so
in high jump. Currently, Thangavelu is
training for the Asian Games in Jakarta
scheduled for August, and also has his
sights set on the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.
ADITI ASHOK
From toP: mExy xaviEr; amit vErma
golfer
In November, Aditi qualified for the
season-ending CME Group Tour
Championship on the Ladies Professional
Golf Association (LPGA), becoming
the first from India to play at the
prestigious meet. She also clinched
the Fatima Bint Mubarak Ladies
Open in November, her third Ladies
European Tour win in 12 months.
58 | forbes india february 16, 2018
Dattu BHokaNaL
SuCHIta SaLWaN
The Forbes India Impact: “Women’s
golf and golf in India doesn’t get much
recognition. Being featured in the
30 under 30 list was cool and pretty
awesome for the sport and helps in
taking it forward,” says Aditi.
ABHINANDAN BALASUBRAMANIAN
cEo & owner, Premier Futsal
In 2017, Premier Futsal became the second
Indian sports league to have ever gone
international after the Indian Premier
League. It partnered with Dubai Sports
Council and the UAE Futsal Executive
Committee to launch in the country. In
its second outing, they spent 30 percent
less to execute a season, which had seven
more match days, nine more matches
and an international venue. However,
increasing viewership and maintaining
product stickiness was the biggest
hurdle. “Traditional sports marketing
techniques of bringing celebrities to
become team ambassadors helped increase
the regional reach and the brand value
of the league,” says Balasubramanian.
The Forbes India Impact: “It improved
brand recollection for our business
development,” says Balasubramanian.
tEchnoLogy
DHRUVIL SANGHVI
co-founder & cEo, Loginext
LogiNext has expanded operations, adding
10 markets, and expects to finish FY18
with revenues higher by 300 percent
compared with the previous fiscal. In
addition to India, the logistics software
solutions venture now serves more than
700 customers in markets, including
Dubai, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Singapore,
the UK and the US. The venture also raised
an undisclosed amount in fresh funding,
at three times the valuation at which it
did its previous round. Profitability has
taken a tad longer than anticipated a
year ago, but isn’t too far, says Sanghvi.
The Forbes India Impact: “A lot of
things happened via the Forbes 30 Under
30 list. It brought us not only learnings but
also some business as well,” says Sanghvi.
SHASHANK KUMAR,
HARSHIL MATHUR
co-Founders, razorpay
Over the last 12 months, Kumar and
Mathur expanded their vision of
making payments a painless experience
for businesses. At the start of 2017,
Razorpay had over 20,000 businesses
using their platform, integrating some
100 different forms of payments. They
have doubled their client base since.
The volume of transactions has grown
20 times in the last 12 months, Mathur
had told the media in September.
The Forbes India Impact: “Being
featured in the Forbes 30 Under 30 list
not only reinstated Razorpay as a next-
generation digital payments company, but
also gave us the confidence to continue
working towards solving India’s payments
infrastructure problems,” says Mathur.
compiled and reported
by team forbes india
 Road to electric

EV(Er)
GrEEn Story
India’s Vision 2030 for electric vehicles has gathered momentum
and stakeholders are excited about a new journey

By Ruchika Shah

t
he Indian automobile industry is on the cusp of a revolution.
With the government keen on making a major shift to electric
vehicles (EVs) by 2030, Forbes India takes a 360-degree look at
what it means for the manufacturers of such cars, global players
and the necessary infrastructure to make India EV-ready. Energy
Efficiency Services Limited, an energy savings company, for instance, is
collaborating between four public sector companies and procuring EVs
that can be rented to the government. The likes of Tata and Mahindra
have already evinced interest. Maruti Suzuki, too, is preparing itself for
the transformation to clean and green technology, having commissioned
a survey to gauge customers’ perception of EVs. It also plans to launch an
EV in 2020. Besides, there are homegrown carmakers keen on building a
formidable portfolio of EVs. And even as they contribute to Vision 2030,
it’s the startups that have a lot going for them. Chetan Maini created
India’s first mass-produced electric car, Reva, and now with Sun Mobility,
he is re-entering the electric mobility space to produce smart batteries
for EVs. We also detail a Singapore-based company’s plans to set up an
EV manufacturing unit to make 10,000 EVs annually in North India. That
apart, conglomerates in India, led by oil companies and power suppliers,
are forging partnerships to set up a robust charging infrastructure to
ensure EV owners have a smooth ride.
 Road to electric maruti suzuki
photographs: amit Verma

Kenichi Ayukawa, MD and

CEO, Maruti Suzuki, says
the company is committed
to help develop the entire
lifecycle of EVs in India

60 | forbes india february 16 , 2018

 The Leader
PLugs in
While mass adoption of electric vehicles is still some time away,
Maruti is doing everything it can to prepare
a
s India prepares for
a future with electric
vehicles (EVs), for the
next few years at least
there is likely to be
more talk than action on the ground.
That’s because manufacturers are
still feeling their way around. They’re
working on understanding what the
consumer wants as also getting the
technology in place in a form and
price that will attract takers. “We
have commissioned a survey, to see
at the ground level, how customers
perceive EVs and what they want
from such vehicles. So far, nobody
has come out with any such survey,”
says Kenichi Ayukawa, managing
director and chief executive officer at
Maruti Suzuki. “Maruti will launch
an EV in India in 2020,” he adds.
How quickly this industry
transformation eventually plays out is
anybody’s guess, but three things are
certain. First, reports of the death of
the internal combustion engine are
vastly exaggerated. An engineering
head at an auto company predicts
that even by 2030, only about 40
percent of cars will be electric. Buses
and two-wheelers would, however,
be completely electric. Second,
the cost of a key component, the
battery, needs to see a significant
reduction—anywhere between 50
and 60 percent for the same amount
of power—for customers to bite the
bait. And, third, setting up a vast
charging infrastructure will require
government support and legislation,
By SAMAr SrIVAStAVA
which for the time being at least is
missing or being done in a piecemeal
manner at best. For starters, changes
to the Central Electricity Authority
Act will be required if anyone other
than electricity distribution companies
are to set up charging stations.
It is for these reasons industry
watchers say hybrids will be the
likely intermediate step between the
internal combustion engine and a pure
play electric engine. For now, the only
thing holding back greater adoption
of hybrids is the duty structure. Post
the introduction of the Goods and
Services Tax, hybrids are taxed at 43
percent. Compare that with the 29
Maruti’s EV GaME Plan
● Commissions a survey to figure what
consumers want in eVs
● Will showcase its first hybrid engine
model at auto expo
● First
eV will be launched in 2020
● Will work on a bouquet of hybrid
technologies in the journey towards
electrification
● effort will be to localise manufacturing
in eVs as much as possible
percent that small cars are taxed at
and the difference in cost is stark.
Unlike EVs, which would require
a significant rewiring of India’s
component ecosystem, hybrids can
be produced with no change. Fix
the duty structure and there is every
chance that there will be a significant
increase in sales of hybrids, point
out a section of carmakers who have
been lobbying for a duty reduction.
“Maruti Suzuki will work on a
bouquet of hybrid technologies that
will help accelerate electrification of
powertrains in India,” says Ayukawa.
So what’s holding back EVs? The
number one problem is what is loosely
referred to as ‘range anxiety’. Other
fuel types that have been tried out so
far like compressed natural gas (CNG)
result in cars that effectively work
on two fuels. A CNG car owner can
easily switch to petrol when required.
But electric cars with their electric
motors, lithium ion batteries, power
electronics and battery management
systems make the dual fuel option
impossible. At present, batteries
come with a 100-150 kilometre range.
“What happens when I need to
travel further on a single charge?” is
a question the customer often asks.
For now there is no easy answer and
many rightly think they would be
stranded in the middle of a highway.
Over the next decade, charging
infrastructure is likely to come
about both in homes and outside.
At home, a customer can expect his
car to charge for the whole night on
february 16 , 2018 forbes india | 61
 Road to electric maruti suzuki
alternating current (slow charge).
Think of it as plugging in your mobile
phone for the night. The only broader
question that governments need to
consider here is of grid capacity. With
3 kwhr per AC charge it would add
as much as 300,000 MW in power
consumption. (India generates 330
GW of power.) For those customers
who run out of charge while on the
road, there is a direct current (DC)
fast charge option that can charge
half the battery in 30 minutes. It is
here that manufacturers expect the
government to step in and facilitate
the setting up of a network of stations.
But creating charging infrastructure
still does not address the issue of
the cost of the lithium ion battery.
At present, an EV is a little more
than twice the cost of an equivalent
internal combustion engine car.
The Energy Efficiency Services Ltd
(EESL) priced the Tigor EV at `10.16
lakh excluding GST. The difference
is almost entirely on account of the
hybrids wiLL be The LikeLy
inTermediaTe sTeP beTween
The inTernaL combusTion
engine and a Pure PLay eV
cost of the battery, which on an
average stands at $227 per kwhr.
While the Indian government
expects this to fall to $75 by 2025, even
the most aggressive forecasts don’t
expect it to fall below $100. If it does
fall to $100 per kwhr, we can expect
a significant reduction in the price of
the car. It is based on this assumption
that rest electric vehicle future pricing
projections. Sure battery costs have
fallen from $1,000 per kwhr in 2010 to
sameer paWar
$227, but if the fall abates or slows for
any reason the projections get tossed
out of the window. Also day-to-day
running costs are dependent on the
62 | forbes india february 16 , 2018
cost of power. At 3 kw/hr, a seven
hour charge would cost `105 assuming
`5 per unit as the electricity cost. At a
range of 80 kilometres for a full charge
this works out to `1.3 per kilometre
of running versus `4 per kilometre of
running assuming a mileage of 20 km
per litre and fuel cost of `80 per litre.
Once again, manufacturers have
complaints about the duty structure,
which makes it cheaper to import
batteries than manufacture. The
raw materials lithium and cobalt
are available only in Africa and
Latin America where the mines are
controlled by the Chinese. “We need
to see whether we are comfortable
with this in the long term. Else we
would be trading one type of energy
dependence with another,” says an
auto industry insider. Market leader
Maruti’s parent Suzuki has taken the
first step and is setting up the first
lithium ion battery plant in Gujarat in
partnership with Denso and Toshiba.
In addition to the battery, auto
component manufacturers will have to
get up to speed on other components
like the battery management systems
and other electronics within the
vehicle. “Our efforts would be to
localise manufacturing in EVs as much
as possible which is in line with the
Make in India mission,” says Ayukawa.
In sum, an electric car has only
half the components of an equivalent
internal combustion engine car.
These cars won’t require regular
servicing and routine maintenance
jobs like oil changes. Once a car is
bought, it is mainly the software
that runs these systems that would
Maruti by thE nuMbErs
ToTal sales uv sales
voluMes in FY17
15,68,603 195,741
sMall car sales
10,95,891
Mid-sized sedan
sales
64,448
MarkeT share
50.4%
need regular updates. Think of the
ancillary jobs that the auto industry
generates at present. They’d be gone.
And finally there is the issue of
disposal of batteries. While recycling
has made it possible to recover nickel
and cobalt in a cost-effective manner,
there is still no answer as to how
to make it economically profitable
to recover lithium. It costs three
times more than its value to recover
lithium. Unless that equation changes,
it is likely that governments would
have to force battery manufacturers
or car makers to add the cost of
recycling to the initial sale price.
The European Union is actively
considering legislation in this regard.
Maruti is making the right noises
and has the right intent. It plans
to showcase its first hybrid engine
model at the Auto Expo and will
elicit consumer feedback. While a lot
needs to be done by the government,
Ayukawa is doing everything to
make sure he’s ready for the long
road ahead. “The company is
committed to help develop the entire
lifecycle of EVs in India, including
local manufacture of components,
charging infrastructure, skilling and
recycling of batteries,” he says.
 Road to electric new ventures

AheAd of the GAme

How startups are turning out to be the torchbearers of the big
Indian electric vehicle revolution

By Ruchika Shah

Jeetender Sharma,
founder and MD,
Okinawa autotech, says
since January 2017, the
company has sold
5,000 units of Ridge,
its first e-scooter

I
n 2010, when Raja Gayam was
converting his father’s bus body
building unit in Hyderabad into
an autorickshaw manufacturing
plant, he also decided to set
up Gayam Motor Works (GMW) to
manufacture electric autorickshaws.
His brother Rahul, who joined
him in 2013, was then working
in the clean energy space in the
US. They wanted to accelerate
the world’s transition towards
smart and sustainable mobility.
This was way before the Indian
amit verma
its plan to turn India 100 percent
electric by that year. The Gayam
brothers sensed a huge market in
India, the world’s third largest three-
wheeler producer and exporter,
and set out to create a product and
service that would overcome the
vast limitations of the EV ecosystem:
Lack of charging infrastructure,
long charging time, limited battery
range and unreliable power grids.
“Gayam Motor Works is the
manufacturer of India’s first
electric three-wheelers powered
Power Solutions Limited launched
its e-rickshaws, Kinetic Safar, with
Li-ion batteries only last year) and
an e-cycle called LIMITLESS,”
says Sri Harsha Bavirisetty, chief
operations officer at GMW. Using
imported Li-ion batteries, it has
developed proprietary Li-ion battery
technology and intelligent Battery
Management Systems (BMS) for
e-mobility and charging points, he
adds. Eight years on, the company
exports its e-autorickshaws and
e-cycles to 15 countries, including

government announced its policy by lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries the US and markets in Africa, Asia,
to incentivise electric vehicle (EV) with a swapping system (Pune- Central America, and Europe,
buyers in 2015 and Vision 2030— based Kinetic Green Energy and apart from selling them at home.

64 | forbes india february 16 , 2018

 The firm primarily caters to the electric power on two wheelS
last-mile connectivity segment. For its Indian startups are venturing into the EV space and offering a range of two-wheelers
e-autos, it has clients like BigBasket, range on Single top charging launch
Amazon India, and Flipkart’s logistics charge (Km) Speed time StatuS
arm e-kart (pilot phase in Hyderabad), 60 regular charger: Delhi Auto
while for its e-cycles, it has clients like 0 80 200
kmPH 5 HOuRS Expo in
kM kM Fast charger:
UberEats in Singapore, Hong Kong, 80% in 30
FebRuaRy
22Motors 2018
and San Francisco, as well as Swiggy FLOW
minuteS
(pilot phase in Bengaluru) in India.
“Charging batteries at stations and
swapping batteries within minutes 72 regular charger:
0 60 200 kmPH 3 HOuRS yet to be
rather than waiting for them to kM kM Fast charger: announced
charge for hours sounds like a great 80% in 1 HOuR;
AtHEr EnErgy 100 in 1.5 HOuRS
way to defeat range anxiety. In two S340
to three minutes, a driver can drop
off his discharged battery and have 55 regular
a 110 km range to get back on the 0 70-80 200 kmPH charger:
road,” says Bavirisetty, adding that kM kM 6-8 HOuRS On sale
Fast charger:
since they service B2B logistics, okInAwA 1-2 HOuRS
they use company warehouses, Ridge
where the vehicles are loaded
and unloaded, as charging points 75
and battery swapping bunkers. 0 170-200 200 kmPH same as
kM kM
above On sale
GMW—where Raja, with his
okInAwA
automobile manufacturing expertise, PRaiSe
is CEO and Rahul, with his technical
background in EVs, is CTO—is now
planning to build infrastructure for (R&D). It’s difficult to just give up managing director, Okinawa. The
the retail market after a $15 million on the fossil fuel legacy and diversify scooter is powered by valve-regulated
Series A funding round. It is also assets, plans and production into lead acid batteries, and the Praise
planning to get into bike-sharing at a nascent space,” says Sanjay Puri, will get a Li-ion battery option soon.
resorts, resident areas, ports areas founder, AutoNebula, a Pune-based Okinawa has a manufacturing
and IT parks and is in talks with connected mobility accelerator. It is facility in Bhiwadi, Rajasthan, which
Microsoft, Adani and Art of Living. this latency that provides startups churns out 300 units per shift, making
The Asian Development Bank is also the headspace to dive into a new 600 units in a day. The 40,000 sq ft
doing a technical evaluation with market. “Many innovative leaders facility was started with an investment
them to set up a battery-swapping are leaving their companies to start of `30 crore and has an annual
mechanism in Afghanistan. their own ventures in the EV space—a capacity of 1.8 lakh units. “We plan to
Whether it’s ecommerce, fintech, trend that a US-based [then] startup invest `250 crore over two years in the
ride-hailing or food delivery, the Tesla made mainstream,” he adds. plant and manufacturing processes,
largest disruptions in the last decade Take Gurugram-based Okinawa R&D, new product development
in the Indian market have been driven Autotech, for instance, which started and sales and marketing for dealer
by startups. The same seems to be the in 2015 with the aim of offering an EV expansion,” says Sharma. Okinawa
case with the automobile industry. that combined power, range, safety will also soon set up a second plant
Even as most legacy carmakers— and environmental sustainability. to introduce “a variety of vehicles”.
barring Mahindra—are busy chalking Since its launch in January 2017,
out their EV plans, several Indian Okinawa has sold 5,000 units of SmartphoneS on wheelS
infographics: sameer pawar

startups are taking the lead in creating
an EV ecosystem in the country.
“In every industry, traditional
players have vested interests in
maintaining status quo. They have
invested billions of dollars over several
decades in research and development
the Ridge, its first e-scooter. In
December last year, the Ridge was
followed by the longer-range and
higher-top speed Praise. “We have
received 2,000 bookings so far and
expect to sell 25,000 units in 2018,”
says Jeetender Sharma, founder and
Gurugram-based 22Motors and
Bengaluru-based Ather Energy are
not stopping at an e-scooter but going
further—they are in the race to launch
India’s first smart scooter. Li-ion
batteries, SIM card, Google Maps,
GSM, touchscreen, apps, notifications,

february 16 , 2018 forbes india | 65

Road to electric
in the faSt lane
some Bengaluru-based startups that are building performance e-bikes
orxa energieS
CO-FOundeRS
dr PRajWaL SabniS (31)
CEo
Ranjita Ravi (31)
Director
this Bengaluru couple developed the Mantis
trike and Mantis Bike prototypes “to make its
customers feel the performance and
efficiency of e-bikes without any compromises
on daily habits and lifestyle,” says ranjita ravi,
one half of orxa Energies. they have poured
all their savings to bootstrap the EV company
that was set up in August 2015.
top Speed: 120 kmph
range: 200 kmph in single battery charge
launch: 2019
smart features, Artificial Intelligence,
user profiles, security features—the
features of the electric scooters in
development by these two homegrown
startups sound less like vehicles and
more like smartphones. Both the
e-scooters will use data collected from
multiple sensors on nearly each part of
the connected vehicle to learn about
the rider’s riding technique and allow
the owners to customise their vehicles.
“EVs lend themselves to offer
use cases in intelligent connected
mobility. With all the data from the
vehicles, data scientists can help
customise the e-scooter and every ride
for the rider,” says Tarun Mehta, co-
founder and CEO, Ather Energy. The
company was set up by IIT-Madras
alumni Mehta and Swapnil Jain,
co-founder and CTO, in 2013, and
they have been perfecting their smart
66 | forbes india february 16 , 2018
new ventures
emflux motorS
CO-FOundeRS:
vaRun mittaL (31)
Co-founder and CEo
vinay Raj SOmaSHekaR (31)
Co-founder and chief design officer
ankit kHatRy (29)
Co-founder and chief operations officer
Emflux Motors was launched in 2016. while
they will concentrate on premium EVs,
partnerships will be forged with oEMs to
produce 10 million mass market EVs. they
count samar singla, co-founder, Jugnoo and
Click Labs, as an investor. they are looking
to raise another round to bring the bike to
market next year.
top Speed: 200 kmph
range: 200 kmph in single battery charge
launch: unveil at auto expo; 2019 launch
and connected S340 for the last four
years. “Matching the performance
of existing petrol scooters was our
primary focus; we can’t rely on
altruism alone for sales,” says Mehta.
The S340 will be connected to the
cloud and “will keep learning and
improving with usage”, he adds.
Ather plans to set up an assembly
line in Bengaluru to make its own
battery packs that will cater to the
needs of its vehicle perfectly. “We
built the first one three years ago. We
finally feel good about its performance
and quality,” says Mehta. The S340
is currently running production
rounds though a launch date
announcement is still some time away.
Parveen Kharb, co-founder and
CEO, and Farhaan Shabbir, co-
founder and president, 22Motors,
say they set up the firm in 2016 as
ultraviolette
automotive
CO-FOundeRS:
naRayan SubRamaniam (31)
CEo
niRaj RajmOHan (31)
Cto
It was set up with the vision to influence and
accelerate the adoption of EV technology in
India. Ultraviolette Automotive is developing
“a high-performance electric motorcycle with
a long range with a focus on design and user
experience”, says narayan subramanian, CEo,
Ultraviolette. they will also be developing a
state-of-the-art energy infrastructure
network. tVs Motors bought a 14.5% equity
stake in the company for `5 crore last year.
top Speed: in testing phase
range: in testing phase
launch: jan-mar 2019
a technology company and not just
a vehicle manufacturer, to develop
electric mobility for the 22nd century.
“We don’t want to reinvent the
wheel by making plastics and metal.
A scooter has to go from point A to
B; doing that smartly is our job,”
says Kharb. The connected, smart
e-scooter FLOW will launch at the
Delhi Auto Expo this month at an
estimated price of `65,000-70,000
(ex-showroom price) and deliveries
are expected to start in May-June.
At a price point only slightly higher
than the petrol-fuel two-wheeler
market leader Honda Activa despite
the expensive Li-ion battery, and
several smart features like geofencing,
cruise control, and drag mode, which
enables the scooter to ‘walk’ alongside
the rider, reverse and connected
mobility, it is likely to turn heads.
 “Making our own battery packs
helped us reduce the cost by about
30-35 percent,” Kharb says. Its
factory in Bhiwadi will initially make
200 scooters per day, increasing it
to 300 a day. The company aims to
manufacture 2 lakh EVs in three years.
22Motors will also add an assembly
line for its battery packs at the unit.
Kharb boasts of their unique wireless
battery packs that use the ‘pack well’
technology, i.e. ultra-thin strips to
transmit current that can detect a
problem before a part malfunctions.
people moverS
Startups like Uber and Ola are
also riding the EV wave. Ola took
the plunge in 2017 by launching a
multimodal EV initiative in Nagpur,
Maharashtra, with an investment of
`50 crore, an Ola spokesperson tells
Forbes India. In November 2017,
Uber announced a partnership with
Mahindra “to provide hundreds of
EVs in New Delhi and Hyderabad in
the pilot phase; to be later extended to
other cities”, Uber India had said in a
statement. Zoomcar too has plans to
add 12,500 EVs to its fleet in two years.
Bengaluru-based Lithium Urban
Technologies, India’s first all-
EV fleet for corporates, set up by
Sanjay Krishnan, CEO, and ex-Nasa
scientist Ashwin Mahesh, in 2015,
has over 400 e-vehicles in its fleet.
They plan to expand this to 10,000
vehicles in the next 36 months. “We
see ourselves at the intersection of
battery and vehicle technology, urban
and energy infrastructure and fleet
management,” says Krishnan, adding,
“We sell productivity based on data
analytics.” It provides fleet services
to Accenture, Tesco, VMware,
Adobe Systems Inc and Epsilon.
Ola’s electric fleet in Nagpur has
200 vehicles, including Mahindra
e20s and Veritos, and cars from
OEMs like Tata Motors, Kinetic,
TVS and China’s BYD Auto. It
also has e-rickshaws. Indian Oil
Corporation and Ola set up a
charging station in the city, while
Hindustan Petrochemicals Company
has also ventured into setting up
charging infrastructure in the city.
Mahindra’s EVs on the Uber
platform will include the e2oPlus
hatch and the eVerito sedan. “We
aim to build a more sustainable
future of mobility by moving more
people needing on-demand services
with fewer, fuller, and more efficient
vehicle trips,” says Madhu Kannan,
chief business officer, Uber India &
Emerging Markets. Mahindra and
Uber India will also work closely with
public and private players to set up
common use charging ecosystems
at multiple locations in the cities.
Serial entrepreneur Bhupendra
Kumar Modi-led Singapore
Electric Vehicles (SEV) has an
extensive plan to enter the EV
space in India. “We plan to set up
an EV manufacturing unit, charging
the centre And stAtes must
motIvAte stArtups to stAy the
course for the lonG hAul
infrastructure and maybe even a
fleet management system in India,”
says Maneesh Tripathi, executive
director and Group CEO, Si2i Ltd,
of which SEV is a subsidiary.
The plant will be set up in
ModiCiti, near Rampur in Uttar
Pradesh (UP), which is owned by
Modi’s Smart Group. Plans are afoot
to produce 10,000 cars per annum
initially, increasing it to 1 lakh cars
per year in phases, says Tripathi.
The EV unit in India, which may
become the first independent electric
car manufacturer when it goes
on steam, is planning to first start
manufacturing e-SUVs and follow it
up with e-sedans and e-hatchbacks.
The company plans to pump in
about `200-500 crore in 2-5 years
to set up the factory, says Tripathi,
adding that they are in talks with
the UP government, with a target
of 12-18 months to start operations.
The cars manufactured at the
ModiCiti plant will also be exported
to Asean and other world markets.
SEV may also venture into
retail sales of its EVs in India, says
Tripathi. Charging points and
after-sales service will be set up
in Lucknow, Agra, New Delhi and
NCR Region and expanded later.
into the future
Startups are pulling out all the stops
to bring about the disruption of the
next decade. Potential customers
expect long-range EVs, freedom
from range anxiety, higher top
speeds, faster charging time and
a robust charging network to
make the shift to EV viable.
“The EV market is a wild
guess right now. There is a lot of
uninformed optimism, earlier seen
in dotcom. As time goes by, there
are bound to be a lot of dead bodies
left behind and the ones that survive
will do well,” says Krishnan.
While these companies work
hard, the Centre and states need to
motivate them to stay the course for
the long haul. “The optimism will
be lost if there is no early success
for startups. Given the right climate,
resources and policy interventions,
startups can do a wonderful job. If
done, they can become an integral part
of the ecosystem,” says Sohinder Gill,
director, corporate affairs, Society of
Manufacturers of Electric Vehicles.
What will happen when the big
boys enter the field? “It will be a
win-win situation if the big players
can incubate startups,” says Gill. “The
combined forces can help create a
big and positive environment for
the Indian EV ecosystem.”
february 16 , 2018 forbes india | 67
 Road to electric mahindra electric

first mover & shaker

Mahindra & Mahindra placed its bets on electric mobility as early
as 2007. A decade later, the move appears to be paying off
By Aveek DAttA

m
ahesh Babu S is a
sought-after man these
days. In the last 2-3
months, the 46-year-
old chief executive
of Mahindra Electric Mobility has
received a multitude of requests from
startups that want to launch a mobility
solutions venture using electric
vehicles (EV). “Earlier, it was probably
SELVAPRAKASH LAKSHMANAN FOR FORBES INDIA
one request a month; now it is five
to 10,” says Babu, whose company is
a pioneer in the Indian EV space.
The heightened interest among
startups looking to partner with
Mahindra Electric—an arm of the
$19-billion conglomerate, Mahindra
and Mahindra (M&M)—isn’t
surprising. It is logical considering
the government has made up its
mind to boost the adoption of EVs in
the country through policy support
(which opens up new entrepreneurial
possibilities) and Mahindra Electric
is a distinct first mover in this space.
The watershed moment for
the future of EVs in India came in
May 2017 when the government
announced that it wants to ensure
that all vehicles sold in India by

Mahesh Babu S, CeO,

Mahindra electric
says India can
become the second
largest ev market in
the world between
2030 and 2040
2030 would run on electricity, as
opposed to the internal combustion
engine-driven cars plying at present,
which burn petrol and diesel. The
rationale behind switching to EVs is
the worsening air quality of top Indian
cities, including the National Capital
Region and Mumbai, as well as a rising
import bill on account of crude.
The aggression with which the
Indian government is promoting
battery-powered EVs is evident from
the deadline it has set, which is a
decade earlier than the year by which
Britain aims to make a similar shift.
“If the policy actions that are being
contemplated materialise, India has
the potential to become the second
largest EV market in the world
between 2030 and 2040,” says Babu,
who has spent 19 years with M&M.
M&M chairman Anand Mahindra
and its managing director Pawan
Goenka had perhaps anticipated this
inevitable shift towards newer and
cleaner automotive technology in
2007. That was the year when M&M
decided to acquire a majority stake in
Bengaluru-based Reva Electric Car
Co, a small-yet-ambitious EV company
started by Chetan Maini, which rolled
out its eponymous car in 2001.
Though EV sales in India have
been subdued due to lack of charging
infrastructure, high-cost batteries
leading to expensive vehicles, and
range anxiety (a concern on the part
of an EV user that the battery will
run out of charge before reaching a
charging station), M&M persisted
with its investments in Reva (which
was first rebranded as Mahindra
in fY17, mahindra electric
sold 1,500 cars and it
expects the figure to touch
2,000 in the current fiscal
Reva Electric after the acquisition,
and then Mahindra Electric in 2016).
According to reports, Mahindra
has committed close to $700
million for its EV project—which
includes manufacturing vehicles,
drivetrain and assembling battery
packs—which is further to the
carmaker’s goal of ensuring zero
tailpipe emission in the country.
In FY17, Mahindra Electric sold
1,500 cars and it expects the figure
to touch 2,000 by the end of FY18,
according to Babu. Though the
volumes aren’t significant yet (M&M
sold 2,42,047 vehicles in the first half
of the current fiscal), there is every
indication that Mahindra is gearing
up for a disproportionate rise in the
number of EVs it sells in India going
forward. “We expect volumes to
pick up and I am confident that it is
possible for us to achieve 5x growth
in FY19,” Babu tells Forbes India.
Suman Jagdev, senior director
with consulting firm Alvarez &
Marsal, says Mahindra is well placed
in the EV space, having been a first
mover. As the EV ecosystem and
infrastructure evolves, Mahindra
is expected to capitalise on future
growth opportunities. “They seem
quite focussed on the direction
and capabilities required to build
the EV business,” Jagdev says.
At present, Mahindra Electric has
five offerings in its stable. There are
the three passenger vehicles—the E2O
and E2O Plus (hatchbacks) and the
e Verito (the electric version of the
Verito sedan)—apart from eSupro (a
commercial van) and e-Alfa Mini (an
electric three-wheeler). Mahindra
Electric is also working on plans
to launch electric versions of other
petrol and diesel cars in M&M’s
portfolio and intends to launch six
products by 2020, including those
for last-mile connectivity (like
vans and e-rickshaws) in cities,
SUVs and public transport buses.
“Our strategy would be to electrify
some of our existing products that
fit well with customers’ needs,
make an electric version of all new
platforms that Mahindra develops
in the future, and then look at how
aspirational products with partners
like Pininfarina and others will
make business sense,” says Babu.
A significant portion of the
incremental volumes that Mahindra
february 16 , 2018 forbes india | 69
Road to electric
expects, in the short-term, is likely
to come from a government tender
to procure EVs. In August 2017,
state-run Energy Efficiency Services
Ltd (EESL) had floated a tender to
procure 10,000 EVs for government
use. Tata Motors was the lowest
bidder for the project (bidding an
all-inclusive price of `11.2 lakh). In
the first phase of 500 cars, for which
deliveries are ongoing, Mahindra
agreed to match Tata Motors’ price
and supply 150 cars. In the second
phase, out of the remaining 9,500
cars, Tata Motors will be supplying
around 4,500 vehicles. Mahindra
Electric and other carmakers will have
the option of matching Tata Motors’
price to pick up the remaining portion
of the order. Mahindra has already
stated its intention of matching Tata
Motors’ price, but the quantum of cars
it is willing to supply isn’t known.
Government orders are only a part
(L to R) Mahindra electric’s eSupro commercial van, e2O Plus hatchback and the e verito sedan
of the EV growth story that Mahindra
is betting on. Mahindra Electric’s
keenness to work with startups and
large cab aggregators arises from
its belief that the adoption of EVs
in the country will be led by fleet
operators who offer mass mobility
solutions. Which is why on the one
hand it is working with established
players like Ola, Uber, Zoomcar and
BigBasket by supplying EVs for use
in cities like Delhi, Nagpur, Mysore
and Hyderabad and on the other
it is partnering with startups like
Lithium Urban Mobility in Bengaluru,
which uses E2O and E2O Plus cars
and fast charging stations provided
by Mahindra Electric to run an
70 | forbes india february 16 , 2018
mahindra electric
electric cab service for office-goers.
“The easiest way for EVs to become
viable is when they are used as part
of a fleet,” says Babu. “The operating
expenditure is low and even if the
capex to acquire these cars is high, it
can be recovered in one to two years.”
Though sceptical of the adoption
of EVs on the part of private car
owners in the near future, Gaurav
Vangaal, senior analyst, automotive
forecasting–light vehicles, IHS Markit,
agrees that targeting the cab market
with EVs makes sense. “There are
battery and infrastructure issues when
it comes to EVs around the world,
which is why their penetration isn’t
100 percent anywhere,” Vangaal says.
“But owning and operating EVs makes
sense for cab aggregators since they
purchase in bulk. But even though
running costs are lower, cab owners
will look at them seriously only if they
get incentives from the government.”
Vangaal says for EVs to become
successful in India, domestic
carmakers will need to look at “frugal
innovation”. Mahindra knows this.
It is aware that for its business to be
sustainable, an entire ecosystem needs
to be developed, which will make
EVs affordable and convenient for
owners. And this is where Mahindra
Electric’s EV 2.0 strategy fits in.
In May 2017, Mahindra unveiled its
new strategy for electric mobility that
entails the development of innovative
solutions under three pillars: Products
(explained earlier), technology and
mobility solutions. Under technology,
Mahindra Electric seeks to develop
new drivetrains with higher efficiency,
batteries with higher density (leading
to higher performance) and fast
charging mechanisms (which can
reduce the time taken to fully charge
the battery to under an hour). Vis-
à-vis mobility solutions, Mahindra
Electric is working with other
stakeholders such as SIAM (Society of
Indian Automobile Manufacturers),
mall and office developers and the
government to develop and connect
charging stations, traffic management
systems, vehicles and drivers.
Babu says one way by which EVs
can be made more appealing is to
create charging spots across cities
where car owners won’t have to waste
their time. “For instance, can we get
restaurant owners or mall and office
developers to reserve a certain portion
of their parking space, equipped with
charging stations, for EVs,” he says.
Babu observes that any sunrise
business reaches a tipping point
when a few factors fall into place
simultaneously. That seems to be
happening. The cost of lithium-ion
batteries is coming down globally.
Jagdev states that these batteries
have become 40-50 percent cheaper
in the last three to four years owing
to technology improvements and
economies of scale. Prices are also
expected to reduce further to $100
per kilowatt-hour in the next decade,
which is when EVs as a proposition
start to become competitive with
conventionally powered vehicles.
The cost of these batteries is
currently estimated at $180-200.
Simultaneously, the impending
government policy on EVs and the
potential incentives therein will also
play a role in helping such vehicles
find favour. Vangaal points out that
an attractive EV policy will drive
foreign carmakers, especially the
Chinese, to look at India seriously,
leading to heated competition. When
that happens, well-entrenched local
players like Mahindra will hope to
protect their home turf on the back
of their present investments.

EVs and IndIa:
a GoldEn
opportunIty
An entire ecosystem can be built around electric
vehicles, like the one for smartphones
By Sanjay Puri
E
lectric vehicles (EVs) have
been around for over a
decade with consumer
interest enabling steady
growth across the globe, including
India. Government policy changes,
combined with ongoing, exciting
new tech developments, have helped
mainstream EVs in the automotive
sector. Here are a few reasons why the
EV market share continues its ascent:
1) Tesla: It has made owning an EV
cool across demographics. It has
created a huge buzz in the US, which
is reflected in its market cap. Although
its sales numbers are relatively low,
Tesla is an influencer brand that has
changed the dynamics of the game.
Tesla’s edge has forced other auto
companies to rethink their EV plans.
2) China: They decided to push EVs as
a way to reduce dependence on fossil
fuel. Today, China has the largest
number of EVs on the road. Due to
the size of their market, every OEM
(original equipment manufacturer)
has announced plans for EVs for
China, motivating dynamic changes
within the EV marketplace.
3) Battery price: Battery prices
dropped by 80 percent between 2010
and 2016. An additional decrease
is expected due to innovation. This
will bring a pricing parity between
EV and ICE (internal combustion
engine), around $6,000.
With the Indian government
pushing for EVs, there is a significant
opportunity for an entire ecosystem
to be built similar to the one for
smartphones. This ecosystem
will comprise the following:
OEMs
Indian OEMs are already feeling
the pressure–as indicated by
announcements from Tata Motors,
Mahindra and even Maruti–as
to how they intend to tackle this
opportunity and challenge. Mahindra
is ahead of the game by virtue of
its acquisition of Reva in 2010 and
having a technical partner in Tech
Mahindra. Tata, Maruti and TVS
should not be discounted due to
their size, especially as Tata has
Tata Consultancy Services and other
tech collaborators in its orbit.
TyrE suppliErs
Tomorrow’s vehicles will be designed
differently and these companies
need to innovate and change for the
domestic market as well as support
their global client base. This is an
opportunity for tier suppliers to
leverage their technical skills to
become global innovation leaders.
ridE-sharing cOMpaniEs
Ola just announced it will procure
electric autorickshaws for its users.
Ola and Uber are driving the design
and fuelling consumption of vehicles.
This has auto manufacturers excited.
opinion
If Ola wants 10,000 EVs, there are
10 OEMs ready to work with them.
sTarTups
These companies are the ones that
will be pushing the cycle of innovation
assuming funding is forthcoming
from OEMs and tier suppliers. If the
OEMs/tier suppliers partner with
startups, India could become a hub of
EV innovation like China has become.
China is currently dominating in the
EV and battery space (25% of world
production) due to government
policies, incentives etc. There are
many well-funded Chinese entities
producing EVs. This needs to happen
in India as well with startups in the
batteries, charging stations and other
spaces for the ecosystem to flourish.
They will also require IP protection,
investment support and mentorship.
pOlicyMakErs
Policymakers need to be innovative,
visionary and practical. A grand vision
also needs to be practically linked to
the reality of existing infrastructure
like charging stations, costs and
incentives. Given the technological
expertise that exists in India and its
growing market for automobiles and
vehicles, there is a unique opportunity
for its innovators to carve a place
for themselves in the EV market
domestically and globally.
(The writer is founder of AutoNebula,
an accelerator incubating connected
mobility startups)
february 16 , 2018 forbes india | 71
Road to electric
The Big SwiTch
World over, carmakers are shifting gears towards electric vehicles
and ecosystems, with some planning to go all-electric in a few years
NissaN
there are about 3 lakh nissan leafs
on the roads in 49 markets, says Bruno
Grippay, vice president of product
planning, design and EV business at
Nissan Motor India. “Renault-Nissan
plans to launch 12 new electric vehicles
by 2022.” In Q1 FY17, Renault-Nissan EVs
(priced around $38,000) outsold Tesla’s
toyota
launched in 2010, Prius was the
world’s first mass market hybrid vehicle.
“Toyota-Lexus has been leading the
movement towards electrification,” Toshio
Asahi, chief engineer, Lexus, tells Forbes
72 | forbes india february 16 , 2018
global players
By Ruchika Shah
EVs (around $40,000) by nearly
50 percent.
The Yokohama-based carmaker has
been working with EVs for decades,
with its four-seater Tama Electric
Car, which ran on lead acid batteries,
debuting in 1947. Its first generation
Leaf was launched in 2010, and the
India. Toyota plans to manufacture only
electric vehicles by the year 2020, and
will introduce 10 new models by then. It
will also focus on the Chinese and Indian
markets for these vehicles.
second generation—with better design,
longer range (400 km, compared to the
earlier 225 km) and improved driving
experience—in 2017.
Nissan is one of the founding members
of CHAdeMO Association, proponents of
fast charging protocols, with 16,700 quick
chargers in the US, Europe and Asia.
bMW
the bMw GrouP’s Project i was
launched in 2007, with an initial
investment of $100 million to set up BMW
i Ventures, says Vikram Pawah, president,
BMW Group India. The German carmaker
started making EVs in 2013, and today has
a range of five electric vehicles, of which
the i8 is available in India. Globally, it has
sold 2 lakh EVs so far.
The group will set up a 500-million
euro venture capital fund over 10
years to invest in electric mobility,
autonomous, digitalisation and other
future technologies. It recently invested
400 million euros to produce BMW i
models at its plant in Leipzig, Germany.
An additional 200 million euro investment
will be made over the next four years to

VolVo
in 2017, VolVo announced its
plans of going all-electric by 2019; at
present it makes four plug-in hybrids,
of which the XC90 T8 is available in
India. “Every new Volvo [from 2019]
will have an electric motor, marking
the historic end of cars that only have
an internal combustion engine and
placing electrification at the core of
our future business,” says Charles
Frump, managing director, Volvo
Auto India. India will get the first full-
electric Volvo by 2020, with a target
to have one million EVs running in the
world by 2025. In India, the Swedish
carmaker wants to be “an electronic
luxury leader, with EVs in various
body shapes and price segments to
differentiate us from other luxury car
brands”, he adds.
set up a battery technology concentration
centre in Munich. The centre will open in
early 2019. BMW manufactures electric
models at 10 plants globally, and has
invested more than 100 million euros in
electric mobility.
Mercedes-beNz
the GerMan carMaker had introduced
the B-Class Electric Drive in 2013, but it
failed to entice buyers. Mercedes-Benz
now has a dedicated brand—Concept EQ—
for its EV segment, says Roland Folger,
managing director and CEO, Mercedes-
Benz India. “The EQ brand will offer EVs
to wallboxes, charging services, and home
energy storage units.” The first Mercedes-
others
ford Plans to introduce 24 hybrid
cars and 16 all-electric cars by 2022, and
has a $11 billion investment plan. Early in
2017, General Motors announced it will
go all-electric with 20 EVs by 2023. Its
Chevrolet Volt, launched in 2010, was the
first mass produced plug-in hybrid.
Volkswagen approved an investment
of $40 billion to become a global leader in
EVs by 2025. Its group brand Audi plans
to develop 20 cars with an electric motor
by 2025.
chevrolet Volt
chiNa
seVen chinese carMakers—the
Warren Buffett-backed BYD, SAIC, FAW
Group, Geely (owners of Volvo), Great
Wall Motors, BAIC and Dongfeng—are
formidable players in the EV market.
FAW, China’s oldest carmaker, is one of
the country’s ‘big four’; BAIC is Daimler’s
Chinese partner, while Dongfeng has an
Benz to wear the EQ badge will be an SUV
built at the company’s Alabama plant.
Ten more all-electric models are likely by
2025; in India, they will be launched in a
staggered manner.
The company has also invested about
500 million euros to set up Accumotive,
“one of the largest and modern battery
factories”, in Kamenz, Germany.
Instead of targeting longer range,
Honda is researching how far it can go on
15 minutes of battery charge. The target is
150 miles on 15 minutes of charge by 2020.
Tesla, the California-based company,
that manufactures the S, 3, X and Roadster
models, is setting up a factory, the
Gigafactory, in Nevada to make batteries.
Its network of superchargers has 1,130
charging stations with 8,496 chargers
in Asia, North America, Europe and the
Middle East.
Tesla S
alliance with Renault-Nissan; BYD is the
world’s largest EV maker.
China’s biggest electric carmaker
Beijing Electric Vehicle Co—valued at $4.5
billion, and with 1.03 lakh EVs sold last
year—is on its way to become the first
state-backed new energy carmaker to get
listed on a mainland stock exchange.
february 16 , 2018 forbes india | 73
 Road to electric
Paving the Way
Many conglomerates are dipping into their resources and technical
expertise to build supporting infrastructure like charging stations, which
will ensure electric vehicles have a smooth ride on Indian roads
W
ithout supporting
infrastructure, an
electric vehicle
(EV) is just a
showpiece—
an innovation sitting pretty in
a garage. Even as governments
push to replace polluting internal
combustion engines with cleaner
photographs: amit Verma
EVs, the major impediment to their
adoption is ‘range anxiety’—the
fear that an electric vehicle will run
out of power before it reaches its
destination or a charging point.
According to the Society of
Manufacturers of Electric Vehicles
74 | forbes india february 16 , 2018
conglomerates & eV infra
By Ruchika Shah
(SMEV), there are about 4.15 lakh
electric two-wheelers, 18 lakh
electric three-wheelers, 6,100
electric four-wheelers and 21 electric
buses plying on Indian roads.
The public charging infrastructure,
which alone will ensure they stay
on the road, is, however, negligible.
There were just 353 public charging
stations in India till 2016 (100 in
Bengaluru alone), of which less than
a tenth were fast charging stations,
according to market research and
advisory firm BIS Research.
To that end, Indian conglomerates,
with legacies spanning 18 to 100
having charging
points at the right
locations and
informing the public
about the same is
essential to make
india EV-ready
years, have now assumed the
mantle of making India EV-ready.
Tata Power, Tata Power Delhi
Distribution Limited (TPDDL)—a
joint venture between Tata Power
and the Delhi government, where
the former owns 51 percent—NTPC
Limited, JSW Energy, Bharat Heavy
Electricals Limited (BHEL), Oil and
Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC)
and Power Grid Corporation
of India (PGCIL) are digging
into their resources, technical
expertise and experience to build
charging networks and supporting
infrastructure in the country.
 The companies Forbes India spoke
to say they are working at a slow
but steady pace, with one eye on
government policies and the other on
the type of EVs and charging points
that emerge from manufacturers.
“We are working on three
aspects: 1) Creating the necessary
grid infrastructure to provide
electricity on demand; 2) Physical
charging infrastructure for different
types of e-vehicles and chargers;
and 3) Software to help customers
access the charging network,” says
Praveer Sinha, CEO, TPDDL.
Grid and CharGinG StationS
The most important aspect is grid
stability, to ensure it can endure
any demand. “For EV charging,
power is required in large
quantities for a short span and
that will need necessary grid and
charging solutions,” says Sinha.
TPDDL has plans to set up
1,000 charging stations over the
next five years in New Delhi, with
an investment of `150 crore. It
is in talks with certain shopping
malls and the Delhi Metro Rail
Corporation (DMRC) to set up
charging points in their parking lots
so that shoppers can charge their
EVs while they’re parked there.
For charging points, choosing
the right location is as important as
setting them up. “Availability and
cost of locations, especially in large
cities where real estate is expensive
and limited, can become a deterrent
in creating charging infrastructure,”
says Manasvi Manas Sharma,
head of strategy at Tata Power.
In Mumbai, the Tata group has
set up three charging stations:
One in Vikhroli and one each
at Phoenix Market City mall in
Kurla and High Street Phoenix at
Lower Parel to ‘charge-as-you-
shop’. “The government can help
earmark important locations. Some
state governments are already
addressing this,” adds Sharma.
LoCatinG a CharGinG Point
But what is the use of a robust
network if it’s not easy to locate or pay
for? Unlike petrol pumps, charging
stations are likely to be unmanned
operations. So it will be important
for the customer to be equipped
with all the information necessary to
make optimum use of the services.
The UK and Ireland have the
Zap-Map app for Android and iOS
users that gives real-time information
about 5,000 locations, 8,000 devices
and 14,000 connectors. “Fortum,
the leading electricity retailer and
charge point operator (CPO) in the
Nordics, has user interface clubbing
real-time charging station availability
tracker with flexible payment
“it is critical to define
Whether Providing charging
solutions Will be construed
as a free market-driven
service or Will it be under
regulated license-driven
sale of PoWer.”
—manasvi manas sharma,
options—a benchmark solution that
can simplify end-user EV adoption,”
writes Prashant Mittal, strategist,
Ambit Capital, in a research note.
Fortum and the Navratna company
NBCC have signed a memorandum
of understanding (MoU) to develop
charging infrastructure across India.
TPDDL is developing an app
that will provide information about
charging points, cost, consumption
and how much distance the EV
can travel with available battery
juice. This is so important that the
government authorities developing EV
infrastructure protocol are building
this requirement into charging
standards, according to Tata Power’s
Sharma. The Tata group company’s
charging points allow users to check
charging status and units consumed.
the CoSt of CharGinG
The cost of charging will be
calculated on two parameters. One,
the fixed component, or the type of
infrastructure deployed and, two,
energy charge, which is the amount
of energy consumed in charging the
vehicle, explains TPDDL’s Sinha.
TPDDL is planning to implement
a variable tariff structure, where
charging during peak hours will cost
more. “We want to discourage the use
of chargers during peak hours when
electricity consumption is high,” he
says. Afternoons in the summer when
tata Power, head of strategy
air-conditioners take up maximum
grid load and mornings and nights
in winter when most households use
geysers and heaters are considered
peak hours. Sharma says, “A time-
of-the-day tariff structure can
control charging behaviour.”
NTPC, which is evaluating
its foray into the EV value chain
to set up infrastructure for all
vehicle segments, says its charging
tariff will be different in each city
based on the input power prices,
battery capacities, customer price
sensitivities and charging demand.
Electricity apart, major costs
include installation, operations and
maintenance of chargers, cost of land
february 16 , 2018 forbes india | 75
Road to electric
and even back-end power supply
infrastructure. NTPC recently signed
an MoU with the Jabalpur Smart City
authority to cooperate on e-mobility in
the city and is in talks with other city,
municipal and transport corporations
and potential partners like airports
and metro corporations for last-mile
connectivity space. “You can expect
some pilot projects in the near-term,”
says an NTPC spokesperson. “Given
our ability to mobilise cheap capital
from multiple sources, investment
planning is not a big challenge.”
Like TPDDL and Tata Power,
NTPC too prefers a time-of-the-day
tariff structure. “To encourage early
adoption of EVs, the power tariff
needs to be structured at the lowest
slabs. Being a regulated entity, NTPC
will be able to pass on the benefits
of reduced power tariffs to end
consumers,” says the spokesperson.
“It is critical for the government to
there Were just 353 Public
charging stations in india
till 2016; less than a tenth
Were fast charging stations
define whether charging solutions will
be driven by the free market forces
or if it will be licence-driven,” says
Sharma. This policy can set the level
and pace of proliferation of charging
networks in the country, he adds.
Hyderabad-based Goldstone
Infratech, which assembles electric
buses in partnership with China’s
BYD, has supplied six e-buses
to the Brihanmumbai Municipal
Corporation and also fulfilled a part
of its 25-bus order to the Himachal
Road Transport Corporation. It
forged a partnership with BYD, the
world’s largest electric vehicles
maker, two years ago “sensing an
acute need for such vehicles”, says
NK Rawal, MD, Goldstone Infratech.
76 | forbes india february 16 , 2018
conglomerates & eV infra
CoSt to Set uP
a CharGinG Station
● slow Charging: `50,000
● Fast Charging: `10-15 lakh
While Goldstone imports
its electric motors, chassis and
controllers from BYD, the bus
body is designed in India. To meet
charging requirements, it provides
fast chargers at depots. Going
ahead, “we would be very keen to
provide e-chargers for the public
when the demand develops,” adds
Rawal. Goldstone is also planning
to set up a greenfield electric bus
manufacturing facility in South India
with an investment of `500 crore. Its
current capacity of 500 buses will be
scaled up as EV adoption increases.
Goldstone is not the only Indian
company to realise the potential of
manufacturing EVs. JSW Energy
has received a go-ahead from
its board of directors to venture
into EV manufacturing, energy
storage and charging infrastructure
either directly or by setting up
subsidiaries. With a target to
launch its own “futuristic” EV by
2020, it expects to incur a capital
expenditure of `3,500-4,000 crore.
JSW Energy had earlier signed an
MoU with the Gujarat government
to set up a factory to manufacture
EVs and its ancillaries. While much
hasn’t been said about its upcoming
car, reports suggest it may make a
sedan in the `10-12 lakh range. It
is also studying off-grid solutions
which will allow people to integrate
rooftop solar power generation at
home with batteries, once prices
drop significantly, to take EV
charging off the grid completely.
Likewise, Anil Agarwal-led
Vedanta Resources is looking at
cobalt, a byproduct of its copper
mines, to aid its energy storage plans.
Other state-run entities in the EV
fray include ONGC which has plans
to venture into battery manufacturing
units, storage facility and charging.
It may use Hindustan Petroleum
Corporation Limited’s (HPCL)—
ONGC recently agreed to acquire 52.5
percent stake in HPCL for `36,915
crore—13,000 petrol pumps to set up
its charging points. PGCIL and BHEL
are eyeing charging infrastructure and
building electric buses, cars, two-
wheelers and boats, respectively.
An ideal electric vehicle ecosystem
is where the EVs are charged using
renewable energy, many experts
believe. NTPC, which has a large
solar power capacity says, “if we
can own and operate the charging
infrastructure and supply power from
renewable sources, the whole effort
will become environment friendly”.
But given the fact that India’s EV
sector is in a nascent stage, idealism
isn’t realistic. What will be important
is to achieve the task at hand—creating
a supportive infrastructure network
with urgency—and doing it right.

Here comes tHe sun
Chetan Maini had bet on electric mobility much before its time. Now,
with the Centre looking to go all-electric by 2030, Maini and his Sun
Mobility will play a key role in building the right ecosystem
c
hetan Maini isn’t new
to the electric mobility
space in India. In 2001,
Maini, then founder and
MD of Reva Electric
Vehicle Company, launched Reva,
India’s first mass-produced electric
car. The dinky car, however, wasn’t
a hit with consumers as only 3,500
units were sold between 2001 and
2010, when automaker Mahindra &
Mahindra bought a controlling stake in
Maini’s company. “The idea of electric
vehicles (EVs) was always right. But,
I think the timing was early for India
as well as the world, because when we
launched in the UK, Norway and other
countries, we were one of the first
players over there too,” says Maini.
He adds that the Reva was among
the cheapest cars, at `2.5 lakh on road,
when it was launched. It would have
been even cheaper if the then Union
government hadn’t abolished a subsidy
of `75,000 and doubled the excise duty
on electric cars two months before
it launched. “It would have been
cheaper than even a Maruti,” he says.
Seventeen years on, electric
mobility is now the buzzword in
India. The Narendra Modi-led NDA
government wants all new passenger
car sales to go electric by 2030. Even
Karnataka—Maini’s home state—offers
tax benefits to EV manufacturers.
But mere intention may not be
good enough for Goal 2030. “There
are 3 million passenger vehicles sold
annually in India and to replace those
with EVs an ecosystem needs to be
built,” says Sridhar V, partner at
advisory firm Grant Thornton India.
By Anshul DhAmijA
Enter Maini again, this time with
his new venture Sun Mobility, after
having quit as the CEO of Mahindra
Reva in 2015. (A year later, he and
his family sold their residual stake
in the company.) Having spent two
decades in the electric mobility
space and having built an electric
car from scratch, Maini set out to
solve one simple question: If EVs
are four times more efficient than
traditional internal combustion (IC)
engine vehicles, why did they not
take off in India in the first place?
Government policies apart, Maini
sun mobility is developing
smart batteries to power
evs and battery cHarging
and swapping stations
concluded that three pertinent
issues needed to be addressed for
EVs to succeed: Cost of vehicles (of
which the cost of the battery was
significant), customer concerns
over mileage and battery charging
stations, and battery charging time.
Unless these are addressed, “I think
it will be difficult to have mass
deployment of EVs”, says Maini.
Started in April 2017, Sun Mobility
is developing smart batteries to
power EVs—two-, three- and four-
wheelers, and buses—and battery
charging and swapping stations. “We
will own the lithium ion batteries
and swapping stations and build our
sun mobility
own [electric mobility] infrastructure
network in the country. We’ll also
be working with multiple OEMs
(original equipment manufacturers)
to integrate our solutions into
their products,” says Maini.
Sun Mobility is a joint partnership
between Maini and Uday Khemka,
vice chairman of the London-based
Sun Group that has business interests
in the clean technology and renewable
energy sectors. “Electric mobility is
one of the greatest inter-generational
opportunities of our time. We do not
believe that there is anyone else in
India that has his [Maini’s] knowledge,
passion and understanding [of the
space],” Khemka tells Forbes India
over telephone from London.
To begin with, Sun would focus
on electric three-wheelers and buses,
in particular in the shared mobility
space given that there is already some
momentum on those fronts. According
to Maini, there are already over 1
million e-rickshaws plying in parts
of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi.
Furthermore, battery-operated buses
are a key component of the Modi
government’s ambitious Smart Cities
mission. And Sun has already struck a
partnership with India’s second largest
february 16 , 2018 forbes india | 77
Road to electric
commercial-vehicle manufacturer
Ashok Leyland to build electric buses—
it would provide smart batteries and
swapping station infrastructure.
“Customers buy the electric
bus without the battery, while the
battery and infrastructure will come
as a service on a pay per use basis,”
explains Maini. “We bundle all our
costs on per kilometre basis.” The
concept would be the same for three-
wheelers. This combination of battery
and infrastructure, says Sridhar, is
necessary to create an environment
for people to be confident about EVs.
The lithium ion batteries that Sun
is developing would be about 30 to
40 percent lighter compared to the
batteries that Maini had developed
at Reva Electric. Maini also claims
that the new batteries could be
recharged faster and would operate
sun’s batteries would
be about 30-40% ligHter
compared to tHe ones tHat
were developed at reva
more efficiently in hot regions like
India. And with a lot of in-built
electronics, such as GSM and GPS, the
batteries are a lot smarter, he adds.
Then comes the critical swapping
stations where people could drive
in, remove the battery from their
vehicles and swap it for a fully-
charged battery. The customers do
not, however, pay for the fully-charged
battery. Instead, they pay for the
battery they are swapping and for only
the amount of charge consumed.
In the case of a three-wheeler,
Sun’s “lightweight” batteries, says
Maini, could be swapped manually
and would take under two minutes
as compared to a regular battery
charging time of five to eight hours.
For buses, the batteries would be
swapped by robots given that they
78 | forbes india february 16 , 2018
sun mobility
would weigh approximately 600 kg.
Sun would initially own and
operate these swapping stations
but, in the long run, would move
to a franchise model. Real estate
costs are not a concern for Maini as
he does not need a gasoline station
type of infrastructure. For example,
since public buses move in and out
of dedicated depots, the swapping
infrastructure would be set up at the
depot. Likewise, such infrastructure
can be set up at business parks. The
company will start pilots of this
technology (batteries and swapping
stations) by the middle of this year
and plans to scale up its production
and infrastructure by the last quarter.
At this juncture, Maini does not
wish to disclose the per kilometre
operating cost of either a three-
wheeler or a bus. But he does indicate
that the cost of power could be well
under `5 per unit, given that the cost
of renewable energy, which would
primarily be used to power Sun’s
swapping stations, is cheap. “Deals
have been done for `2.44 per unit (for
solar energy) and `2.75 per unit (for
wind energy). So even with wheeling
charges (for energy transmission), it’s
possible that you could pick up energy
at under `5 per unit,” says Maini.
The concept of battery swapping
is not new and has been around ever
since the first electric cars were made
back in the late 1800s and continued
to exist till about 1910. “There were
more electric cars on the road than
gasoline cars. It was only when the
electric starter came [for IC engines]
that they lost out,” says Maini, an
engineering postgraduate from
 Stanford University. The concept, at
present, has been adopted successfully
in certain parts of China with buses
and in Taiwan with scooters.
Taipei-based Gogoro, which
has raised close to $500 million in
venture capital, manufactures electric
scooters and has set up over 500
battery swapping stations around
the city since 2015. As of September
2017, Gogoro claims to have sold over
34,000 scooters and swapped around
17,000 batteries a day. This has saved,
says the company, 4.13 million litres
of gasoline and reduced 8 million
kg of carbon dioxide emission.
Maini is looking at creating a
similar impact with Sun, but there
is a difference to his approach.
“Our solutions are more modular
and more open architecture,”
he says. Is it scalable?
In India, the adoption of a third-
party electric technology for three-
wheelers would be a lot easier
because the “three-wheeler OEMs
have very rudimentary technology”,
believes Sanjay Krishnan, founder,
Lithium Urban Technologies, an
EV cab aggregator for corporates in
Bengaluru and Delhi-NCR. When it
comes to four-wheelers, the adoption
could be tougher. “It’s like Toyota,
Honda, Maruti and Mahindra trying
to agree on one stand—it’s going to
be tough as most of the OEMs are
fairly evolved,” says Krishnan.
But that’s not a priority for
Maini now. What is, though, is
getting the idea of battery swapping
kickstarted and proving that it
could work. While the Niti Aayog
has mooted for a battery swapping
policy, Nitin Gadkari, minister for
NishaNt RatNakaR foR foRBes iNdia

road transport and highways, thinks

the concept is “not appropriate”
for the country. Given Maini’s
credentials, many believe he could
Chetan maini, co-founder pull it off. “I consider him as one of
and vice chairman,
sun mobility, claims the best engineers to have walked
the new batteries will on this planet. And if there is one
operate efficiently in hot
regions like india person who can probably make it
possible, it’s him,” says Krishnan.

february 16 , 2018 forbes india | 79

 Road to electric eesl

Leading the charge

Energy savings firm EESL is procuring electric vehicles that
can be rented to the government. And it has already received
bids from Tata and Mahindra

By Manu Balachandran

at a charge of about `8-9

per unit, the operational
cost of EVs would be less
than `2 per kilometre,
lower than cnG

F
or a few years now, Energy
Efficiency Services Limited
(EESL) has made winning
a habit. The Noida-
headquartered energy
savings company, a collaboration
between four public sector entities,
identifies an area where energy
MADHU KAPPARATH
about an LED lamp boom in India;
prices of LED lamps have fallen from
about Rs 310 to Rs 38 apiece. EESL
procured bulbs en masse from private
companies and sold them to state
governments, effectively helping
bring economies of scale and bringing
down prices for consumers over time.
world’s biggest automobile markets.
India aims to move completely to
electric vehicles (EVs) by 2030,
which will help cut the country’s
oil bill by some $60 billion and
reduce emissions by 37 percent.
Just as it did with the LED lamps,
EESL is now procuring electric

savings are feasible, and then EESL had previously done the same vehicles, initially to rent them to
throws its weight behind it. with fans and irrigation pumps too. the government. The company
Between 2015 and now, the Now, the company has turned its has already received bids for
company has single-handedly brought attention to transforming one of the 10,000 electric vehicles from Tata

80 | forbes india february 16 , 2018

Motors and Mahindra, and plans
to procure another 10,000 vehicles
during the course of the year.
“If you look at the operational cost
of electric cars and, say, you charge
at about `8-9 per unit, the cost of
operating a vehicle is less than `2 per
kilometre compared to `6.5 and `7
for petrol and `5.5 and `6 for diesel,”
Saurabh Kumar, managing director
of EESL, tells Forbes India. “Even
CNG is about `4. So there is economic
viability for the consumer at large.”
Tata Motors, India’s largest vehicle
maker by revenue, bid `10.16 lakh
per vehicle for 500 cars in the first
phase of the government’s electric
mobility mission. Mahindra, which
bid a little over `2 lakh more than
Tata Motors, was eventually forced
to match the bid. EESL expects
the mass procurement process to
bring down electric vehicle costs
in India by at least 25 percent.
“We believe there is a demand
for at least half a million vehicles
in the government sector alone,”
says Kumar. “Many of these cars
do intra-city travel. This is the
sector where you can stimulate
the market and the rest can work
after the regulatory changes.”
What is EEsL?
EESL is a joint venture of the NTPC
Limited, Power Finance Corporation,
Rural Electrification Corporation,
and Power Grid Corporation of
India. The company was set up in
2009, but started making a mark
only in the past few years.
It began with the Indian
government’s UJALA scheme in
2014, a programme to distribute
770 million LEDs by March 2019
across 100 cities along with energy-
efficient fans. Since then, EESL claims
to have helped save over `14,000
crore in energy costs. During that
time, the company’s revenues have
grown over 46 times while profits
have jumped more than 50 times.
“We see demand picking up in
the next few years as far as electric
vehicles are concerned,” says Kumar.
EESL is now gearing up to make a
recommendation to the government
to bring in a policy that makes it
mandatory for the government to
use electric cars. The company
believes such a shift (nearly 500,000
vehicles) could save over 5,000
million litres of fuel and `28,000
crore. It will also give a big boost
to the Make in India programme.
“All that the government has
to do is to make sure that PSUs
and government organisations
use electric cars,” says Kumar.
What nExt
EESL’s decision to foray into
the EV industry could have a big
impact on India’s migration to
electric vehicles. Apart from the
reduction in vehicle costs, the
eesL has aLso set up 200
charging stations across
deLhi and invited tenders to
set up 2,000 charging units
across india
company believes its initiatives
could lead to the entry of new EV
manufacturers, including global
ones. Representatives from Hyundai,
Renault and Nissan had already met
the company during the pre-bid
meeting for the e-vehicle tender.
Alongside, EESL has also been
setting up charging stations in Delhi
on its own. “One of the biggest
challenges to the EV transition is
the problem of range. Most of these
vehicles run about 130 kilometers
on a single charge,” says Kumar.
“Once we have the necessary
infrastructure in place, buyers will
be keen to adopt the technology.”
The company has put up
approximately 200 such units
across Delhi. They are installed
at government offices with the
units connected to the meter.
“Under the Electricity Act, no one
apart from a distribution company can
sell or resell power,” explains Kumar.
“So that is the first gap that exists and
the power ministry is looking to fill
that gap through an amendment to
the act. That will enable regulations.”
Meanwhile, even as the government
considers changes to laws, EESL
has invited tenders to set up 2,000
charging units across India.
The company has also begun talks
with various state governments to
seek their participation in the shift
towards electric vehicles. In the
next phase, apart from government
institutions, EESL is also looking at
selling vehicles to private institutions.
“I think more than buying
vehicles for its use, the government
should look at setting up the
necessary infrastructure,” says
Deepesh Rathore, co-founder of the
automotive consultancy Emerging
Markets Automotive Advisors.
“China did not go about buying
cars for the government. Instead,
building charging points and better
awareness are the only ways to
lure customers into embracing a
technology such as electric vehicles.”
Will turning to public transport
such as buses help in the electric
vehicle transition? “We did evaluate
the role of buses. But they are capital
intensive and getting various state
transport boards to agree would
take time,” says Kumar. “That’s
why we turned to cars.”
february 16 , 2018 forbes india | 81
 cross border

COMPETITION
IS THE
NEW UNION
American corporations have spent decades slashing
jobs, cutting benefits and putting shareholders before
employees. But guess what: The Just 100 companies
that pay and treat their workers well outperform
those that don’t. With unemployment near 4 percent,
the pendulum is swinging back to the workers. This
time, it should pay off for investors, too

By MaggIE MCgraTH, WITH LaUrEN gENSLEr & SaMaNTHa SHarf

A
lmost two years ago, Intel CEO
Brian Krzanich made the kind of
headlines no company wants: In
the process of restructuring the
storied chipmaker, he was eliminating 11 percent
of its workforce—12,000 jobs. But far more
quietly, Krzanich was focusing on something
seemingly contradictory: Cranking up a
programme to prevent the workers the company
wanted to keep from walking out the door.
The retention initiative was launched as
part of a diversity push. In 2015, Krzanich
had pledged some $60 million a year to boost
analytics, was keen to acquire data to figure
out why employees left—before they did.
Thus was born WarmLine, whose touchy-
feely name hasn’t prevented more than 10,000
workers from reaching out. More than just a
data-collection operation, WarmLine quickly
developed into a way to address problems such
as finding colleagues for isolated workers to
bond with, mediating management disputes,
arranging transfers and even asking for
raises. And it also became an outlet for the
entire company—roughly half of WarmLine’s
users have been white and Asian men.
Tim Pannell for forbes

underrepresented groups at Intel, yet in that
year, the company treaded water: 584 African-
Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans were
hired, and 580 from those groups departed. Ed
Zabasajja, a Ugandan-born, Auburn University-
trained engineer who oversees internal diversity
“There’s a limited number of people who
can do many of these technologies,” Krzanich
says. His product, ultimately, relies on talent.
Zillow, the online real estate marketplace,
has gone even further to keep its key employees.
CEO Spencer Rascoff sees recruitment and

82 | forbes india february 16, 2018

 after worker
feedback, Zillow’s
Spencer rascoff
has increased
sabbaticals and
bereavement leave
cross border
retention as the company’s leading priority and has a new
“internal mobility” team focussed on top performers.
After one star recently decided during a six-week paid
sabbatical (yep, Zillow grants one every six years) that
he needed to leave and pursue a big change, Zillow kept
in touch. Within two months, the defector was back
in a new role. “It’s much more economical to just keep
people motivated and engaged over a long period of time
rather than churning and burning people,’’ Rascoff says.
Conventional wisdom holds that employees have
less power than they’ve had in decades, with a growing
share of jobs vulnerable to automation or offshoring and
just 6.4 percent of US private-sector workers in unions.
Exhibit A is the recovery from the Great Recession: As
Intel CEO Brian
Krzanich: “I’ve
never been asked
[by analysts],
‘How do you treat
employees?’”
corporate profits set new records, median wages barely
budged until last year. That anxiety is reflected in the
Just 100, the first-ever ranking of companies based on
what Americans expect of a good corporate citizen.
Some 80 percent of the 72,000 Americans surveyed
over the past three years by Just Capital say companies
aren’t sharing enough of their success with employees.
Asked to cite what a company’s top priority should be,
33 percent said workers or jobs, compared with just
6 percent who said shareholders or management.
But a free labour market can cut both ways. With
unemployment now scraping 4 percent, and traditional
rewards of long tenure (pensions and protection from
layoffs) just a memory, employees have little reason to be
loyal. The “quit rate” for 2017 is likely to be the highest
in over a decade, with 26 percent of workers voluntarily
waving goodbye. So companies that fare well on the Just
84 | forbes india february 16, 2018
100 list are attempting to rebuild workers’ loyalty, 21st-
century-style: Not with no-layoff guarantees but with
fair pay, bonuses, stock options, new benefits (think paid
family leave, sabbaticals and student-loan repayments)
and programmes designed to fulfill millennial demands for
work-life balance, inclusive workplaces and professional
growth. Competition is the new union. “Transparency
combined with a tight labour market is effectively
working as an advocate for employee betterment,” says
Andrew Chamberlain, the chief economist at Glassdoor.
The new benefits are far more likely to be lavished on
in-demand, highly skilled workers, and there are still too
many terrible jobs and employers in America. But there’s
an aspect to this phenomenon that might surprise some
less enlightened CEOs and
investors: Treating workers
right ultimately benefits
shareholders after all, and not
only in tight labour markets.
The companies of the Just 100
have returned three percentage
points a year more than the S&P
500 over the last five years.
So does great performance
allow companies to treat
workers better, or does
worker treatment drive great
performance? While there’s
some measure of both at work,
the latter seems to be the
main dynamic. In 2012, Alex
Edmans, a finance professor
at Penn’s Wharton School
who is now at the London
Business School, analysed 27
years of stock market returns
for US companies chosen as top places to work. They
outperformed the market by 2.3 to 3.8 points per year
for the entire stretch, no matter the broader economic
conditions. More recently, he studied the relationship
between employee satisfaction and stock returns across
14 countries. In rigid labour markets, such as Germany’s,
where regulations or union contracts provide a floor of
benefits and limit management flexibility, spending extra on
workers provides little in the way of return. But in flexible
labour markets, such as in the US and the UK, treating
workers better consistently produced higher returns.
The Just 100 get that, even if Wall Street doesn’t.
Stock analysts “look at things like layoffs and they look
at the cost. They don’t think about the employees’ long-
term morale,” says Krzanich, of Intel, which claimed
the No 1 spot this year on the Just 100. “I’ve never been
asked, ‘How do you treat employees?’” Mark Costa, the

CEO of Eastman Chemical, which ranks seventh on our
list in terms of employee treatment, concurs: “Investors
just want more dollars. I don’t think they spend a lot of
time thinking about the consequences to the worker.”
THE JuST 100
For our first-ever ranking of america’s top corporate citizens,
Just Capital surveyed 72,000 americans to measure what they
expect from businesses. then we ranked 877 of the largest public
companies against those expectations, using seven weighted
metrics, such as worker treatment and environmental impact

T
he idea of treating workers well isn’t new—just

environment

brian Krzanich wears a wool, cashmere and silK sPorT jacKeT ($5,200), wool Trousers wiTh crocodile Trim ($1,300), coTTon shirT ($850), and crocodile belT ($2,800) by sTefano ricci.
management
communities
erratic. In 1875, American Express became the

customers
products
workers
first private employer to provide a retirement

jobs
plan. By the early 1900s, when employee turnover often
exceeded 100 percent a year, visionary businessmen were
experimenting with new ways to attract and keep workers. 1 Intel 10 1 12 530 247 2 204
Henry Ford introduced $5-a-day pay; Milton Hershey 2 Texas Instruments 14 5 1 98 127 6 664
and George Pullman built towns and housing for their 3 Nvidia 1 10 93 530 122 18 202
workers; a company called Norton Grinding pioneered 4 Microsoft 2 2 782 509 1 10 110
paid vacations. The Great Depression halted, at least 5 IBM 62 29 36 70 337 4 49
temporarily, this brand of welfare-minded capitalism. 6 Accenture 15 65 97 28 331 1 208
But then the government 7 Cisco Systems 11 22 1 367 114 104 269
and unions stepped in. The 8 Alphabet 8 112 57 39 609 80 61
National Labor Relations Act Wo r k e r t r e at m e n t
9 Salesforce 4 109 36 9 624 179 284
of 1935 guaranteed workers 1. nvidia
10 Symantec 27 44 36 514 252 36 708
the right to organise and strike, “If you’re going to do your life’s
11 Adobe Systems 5 72 773 70 681 13 245
best work here, the company
and labour-union growth has an obligation to provide the 12 AT&T 106 224 1 684 270 49 34
continued for the next three best benefits,” says Beau da- 13 Rockwell Automation 152 36 97 98 172 7 523
decades. Private pensions vidson, VP of human resources.
14 Nike 44 63 36 502 642 96 103
details: nvidia will repay up to
continued to grow during $30,000 of student loans, and 15 Procter & Gamble 9 256 97 648 137 50 172
this time too—thanks in large new moms get 22 weeks of paid 16 Colgate-Palmolive 18 78 58 648 101 88 478
part to the new labour unions. leave; employees also get re-
17 Humana 41 91 145 665 33 42 89
imbursement for in vitro fertili-
The unions’ decline began in sation and adoption expenses. 18 Applied Materials 225 92 1 98 120 34 737
the 1960s, when the Supreme even better: Workers can com- 19 PepsiCo 135 15 362 94 11 84 73
Court issued a string of pro- mit up to 10% of their salary
20 NetApp 87 190 1 98 190 70 738
to purchasing nvidia’s red-hot
employer rulings, holding, stock at a 15% discount. 21 Fluor 58 32 97 530 17 114 335
for example, that companies 22 Jones Lang LaSalle 51 132 13 367 48 200 247
weren’t obligated to bargain 23 Micron Technology 75 52 13 367 467 137 660
over decisions “at the core 24 Edwards Lifesciences 115 62 97 98 26 54 469
co m m u n i t i e s
of entrepreneurial control”.
1. Intel 25 PVH Corp 296 20 36 367 535 21 414
Reforms to the National Labor 26 VMware 6 279 226 9 770 129 163
to encourage its 106,000 global
Relations Board under the employees to volunteer, the chip- 27 CBRE Group 85 110 13 367 379 126 206
Nixon Administration and maker donates $10 for every hour
28 Eli Lilly 30 69 91 688 519 60 356
anti-union Supreme Court (after 20 hours) spent at a non-
profit, including schools. last 29 Biogen 50 115 97 367 155 82 563
decisions and executive actions year, 38% of employees contrib- 30 Teradata 100 58 145 1 86 196 790
during the Reagan years further uted more than one million hours
31 Praxair 140 75 1 367 171 283 583
weakened the union movement. of time. Intel has also connect-
ed over 1,000 retiring employees 32 Bristol-Myers Squibb 34 34 359 688 367 43 391
In 1983, 16.8 percent of all with non-profits like Habitat for 33 Eastman Chemical 7 51 97 530 161 782 650
private-sector workers were Humanity and the Boys & Girls
34 Apple 67 61 767 859 19 17 63
in a union, two-and-a-half Clubs of america for a meaning-
ful second act. 35 Johnson & Johnson 26 49 219 858 421 23 211
times the rate of today. 36 Clorox 55 80 141 36 70 212 551
Wall Street also played 37 Square 25 706 369 41 614 514 2
eThan Pines for forbes

a role during this period. The Reagan era coincided 38 Caterpillar 222 82 32 530 276 24 434
with the Milken era, when leveraged buyouts were 39 Akamai Technologies 33 255 145 9 414 190 132
built around finding efficiencies, even if that meant 40 Arconic 195 123 1 98 32 262 338
treating company assets like Tinker Toys and workers 41 Garmin 143 129 1 367 851 79 304
as costs rather than assets. Barbarians at the Gate was Industry leader
a bestseller, the Predators’ Ball was the marquee event

february 16, 2018 forbes india | 85

cross border

and the iconic 1987 movie Wall Street depicted workers to bolster current employees as the consultancy shifts to
as pawns of Armani-clad paper pushers. At the same cloud and security services. In this labour market, simply
time, companies began shifting from “defined benefit” hiring new experts with cutting-edge skills isn’t a viable
retirement plans—a lifetime pension, with benefits approach for employers. And continual growth engages
backloaded to reward longer-tenured workers—to the kinds of employees worth keeping and promoting.
cheaper “defined contribution” plans. While this brought Companies looking to attract and keep younger
some sanity to corporate balance sheets, it also liberated workers, meanwhile (Read: Everyone), understand that
workers to walk out the door with their retirement millennials are looking for a better work-life balance
stash and roll it into an IRA or a new employer’s plan. than their parents had. At Zillow (No 51), the 42-year-
Those at the top of the Just 100 list figured out years old Rascoff leads by example: When he’s not travelling,
ago that if every worker is now a free agent, a competitive he aims to get home by 5.30 and turns off his phone until
advantage lies in bringing in and retaining the top talent. 8.30 to spend time with his three kids, aged 6, 9 and 12.
Take Delta, which ranks 60th on the list.
After coming out of bankruptcy in 2007, the The original example of welfare
airline started giving a portion, now at least capitalism, Hershey and its CEO,
Michele Buck, are upping their
10 percent, of its annual profits back to its game to compete for talent
workers. “We made a commitment to people
that when things turned around and got
better, they would see the first rewards from
those initiatives,” says Delta CEO Ed Bastian.
Plus, it gave every worker—including
customer-service agents, who have to explain
flight delays to cranky passengers—skin in
the game. In the past five years, Delta has
returned nearly $5 billion to employees—
and 170 percent to its shareholders over
the past decade, double the S&P 500. Not
coincidentally, it’s also the least unionised
workforce of any legacy airline.

I
f you want to see how to treat a worker
in 2018, start at the top. That would be
Nvidia, the No 1 Just 100 company in worker treatment.
It competes with Apple, Google, Facebook and the rest of
Silicon Valley’s giants for the best minds in technology.
That means it pays well. But fair and competitive pay—
the largest single driver of the Just 100—is taken almost
as a given at top companies. Those motivated only by
salary tend not to stay, no matter what. So to get stars,
Nvidia treats them as stars, with universal employee
perks that no union negotiation has ever extracted. New
mothers get 22 weeks of fully paid leave. Workers get
$6,000 of their students loans paid off every year, up to
$30,000. Recently, Nvidia started offering to pay for in
vitro fertilisation, adoption and, soon, egg freezing.
As a result, Nvidia says, its quit rate sits at 5 percent,
roughly half that of its peers. It was the best-performing
stock in the S&P 500 in 2016, giving its investors a 224
percent return. In 2017, through early December, it was
up another 75 percent—four times the S&P’s gains.
Another key employee perk: Training. Accenture, No 6
on the Just 100, announced a $1.4 billion, four-year push
Note that this explosion of family benefits has gone
beyond the young tech companies. In 2016, Johnson &
Johnson (No 35) increased fertility benefits from $25,000 to
$35,000 and began reimbursing workers up to $20,000 for
payments to surrogate mothers. “We’re also competing for
talent as we bring in people from tech and other industries,”
says Peter Fasolo, J&J’s chief human resources officer.
Yet another new trend embraced by the old, established
members of the Just 100: flexible benefits. At Procter &
Gamble (No. 15), with 95,000 workers worldwide, every
employee gets the equivalent of 1% to 2% of their salary
set aside for a benefit of their choice, anything from
disability insurance to financial planning to extra vacation
time. Similarly, last year, 123-year-old Hershey (No 50)
introduced a suite of “SmartFlex” policies for its white-
collar workforce. Those include a number of leave options
for new parents (they can take their time in one chunk or
intermittently, as needed) and expanded opportunities to
work from home or work flexible hours. And this attitude
transcends what can be standardised or put into an

86 | forbes india february 16, 2018

 environment
management
communities

customers
products
workers

jobs
employee manual. After Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in
September, Hershey spent $9,000 just to bring a new hire
42 Analog Devices 130 161 13 98 373 87 754
from there to New York and get her set up in an apartment.
43 State Street 360 27 13 530 716 35 331
How much has the world changed? Private equity firm
44 Celgene 112 142 13 530 508 98 228
KKR, Wall Street’s original “barbarians”, is adding goodies
45 Cummins 120 167 139 367 312 20 333
for the rank and file to its buyout formula. Since 2011, KKR
46 Chevron 28 37 145 367 132 764 488
has distributed more than
47 Kimberly-Clark 12 163 125 688 81 136 548
$200 million in equity grants
Products 48 Workday 42 231 58 6 795 222 374
across four industrial deals to
10,000 blue-collar workers.
1. texas Instruments 49 Freeport-McMoRan 47 9 369 98 594 257 581

Calculators. televisions. 50 Hershey 38 101 94 36 634 638 363

“Companies can achieve electric toothbrushes. re- 51 Zillow Group 13 710 369 9 762 496 32
incredible results when all frigerators. this pioneering semi-
52 3M 98 25 204 688 97 93 264
employees are given the conductor company, founded in
1930, is developing smart technol- 53 Agilent Technologies 72 120 369 98 658 15 614
opportunity to think, act and ogy to allow consumers to charge 54 Xerox 725 24 36 62 529 8 375
participate as owners in the their devices faster, power their
55 Amazon 192 263 366 648 772 405 1
business,” says Pete Stavros, homes for less and receive as-
sistance while driving. to fuel in- 56 Merck 65 7 225 799 228 111 565
the leader of KKR’s industrials novation, the dallas company 57 Autodesk 24 282 226 1 810 151 393
group. When KKR took ploughs 10% of revenue into re-
58 Juniper Networks 88 48 58 530 224 185 724
industrial equipment maker search and development. Patent
count: 44,000. 59 KLA-Tencor 280 122 13 98 210 69 771
Gardner Denver public in
60 Delta Air Lines 60 30 768 639 24 293 105
May, it gave 6,000 employees
61 General Mills 40 18 779 642 116 119 712
$100 million of stock grants—
62 Leidos Holdings 196 286 226 1 240 25 588
equal to 40 percent of a year’s
Jobs 63 Keysight Technologies 175 100 145 98 291 27 644
pay for each. The company’s
stock has urged 50 percent 1. amazon 64 Verizon 118 261 1 840 235 149 60

there’s a reason cities and 65 Goldman Sachs 17 289 202 688 845 11 376
since the IPO, so each worker towns across america are 66 united Parcel Service 573 126 127 68 406 66 26
now holds stock worth 60 clamouring for amazon’s second
67 Motorola Solutions 155 876 1 367 475 12 833
percent of his or her salary. headquarters: Jobs. the ecom-
merce juggernaut increased its 68 Rockwell Collins 66 124 369 98 327 73 459

I
us head count sixfold to 180,000 69 Illinois Tool Works 320 79 97 98 139 61 380
f competition now between 2011 and 2016. It has
70 General Motors 22 6 867 799 565 14 67
delivers what unions pledged to hire another 100,000
full-time workers by mid-2018. 71 Facebook 3 287 58 874 719 346 17
once did, it has also Many of its jobs are at fulfillment 72 CA Inc 73 589 13 28 660 145 842
replaced government policy, centres (where workers some-
73 Legg Mason 169 172 13 367 306 174 584
or filled in where it’s lacking. times coexist alongside robots),
but the company is also adding 74 Coca-Cola 108 81 35 529 66 770 220
The federal minimum wage positions in technology, logistics 75 Hasbro 83 11 97 367 297 792 847
hasn’t been increased since and customer service.
76 ResMed 125 188 226 367 144 46 515
2009, and at its current $7.25
77 F5 Networks 31 215 369 98 170 124 761
an hour, it offers a path to
78 Oracle 420 162 36 32 605 81 168
poverty, with few avenues for environment
79 Qualcomm 77 4 202 799 742 194 299
advancement—a combination 1. accenture 80 Citrix Systems 188 170 58 1 717 326 370
that explains why so many the consulting company is
81 Xylem 430 64 36 721 14 19 676
retail companies perform a powerful, invisible force
in eco-friendly business practic- 82 Southwest Airlines 53 458 58 507 54 620 144
atrociously in the Just 100 es, pushing clients, partners and 83 Prudential Financial 168 148 13 625 383 170 381
rankings. That’s what made suppliers to leverage tech to im-
84 Estée Lauder 303 185 201 367 675 3 427
Target’s announcement in prove sustainability. It doesn’t
just talk the talk: accenture has 85 VF Corp 310 8 226 78 285 337 158
September interesting: The
jamel ToPPin for forbes

reduced its own carbon footprint 86 Intuit 29 103 786 490 492 108 496
retailer said it was boosting its 47% since 2006 by making its of-
87 Ecolab 440 17 97 98 300 132 326
starting pay for all workers, fices more energy-efficient and
reining in air travel in favour of 88 Campbell Soup 357 23 368 78 15 131 438
including seasonal ones, to virtual meetings. In fiscal 2016, it 89 Advanced Micro Devices 107 89 369 367 801 26 757
$11 an hour, and aiming to hit recycled 99% of its old comput-
90 Western Digital 380 128 13 98 360 127 417
$15—the number favoured ers (some 76,000), keeping them
out of landfills.
by “living wage” activists—

february 16, 2018 forbes india | 87

cross border
Cross Border

environment
management
communities

customers
products
workers

jobs
by 2020. The announcement blathered on about paying
workers fairly. A better reason: No one really needs to shop
91 First Solar 264 198 145 367 711 9 750 in a store right now. To avoid a race to the bottom, Target is
92 Baxter International 113 46 797 688 145 22 266 making a bet, one pioneered by Costco, that its long-term
93 Nielsen Holdings 230 14 369 367 696 95 505 fate is better aligned with superior consumer experience
94 Hewlett-Packard 679 12 58 367 249 76 271 and a brand that people feel good about, rather than just
95 National Instruments 96 168 58 98 341 402 658 lower prices or bigger dividends. “People expect it now,’’
96 Molson Coors Brewing 86 77 145 686 737 58 785 says Hershey CEO Michele Buck. Consumers, especially
97 Ingersoll-Rand 180 207 223 98 384 56 395 younger ones, “want to know, ‘I’m buying a product from
98 Air Products & Chemicals 94 35 13 98 295 830 793 someone who cares
99 ultimate Software Group 49 447 226 41 802 480 52 about sourcing and who
100 AbbVie 174 87 34 688 110 226 613 m a n ag e m e n t & s h a r e h o l d e r s cares about the people
1. Microsoft who were involved in
Forbes has partnered with Just Capital to rigorously evaluate 877 of the largest publicly
traded companies in the us (the russell 1000 minus companies for which complete data since satya nadella took over the product along the
aren’t available, like reIts, and businesses that have merged, like Whole Foods). data are in 2014, Microsoft’s stock chain of production’.”
pulled from publicly available sources, third-party vendors and crowdsourced repositories
has awakened from a decade-long
and then scoured by a team of statisticians and data scientists. the ranking is then weighted Of course, treating
based on what americans say are the seven most important aspects of business behaviour: slumber, more than doubling. the
Worker treatment (23% weighting), customer treatment (19% ), quality of products (17%), company is innovating again, with workers well sounds
environmental impact (13%), community support in the us and human rights elsewhere (11%),
the number of jobs available in the us (10%) and shareholder treatment (6%). its cloud business going gang- better as a profit strategy
busters and a promising $26.2 bil-
near full employment.
lion acquisition of linkedIn. “We
used to talk about know-it-alls at What happens during the

THE BOTTOM OF next downturn? Many

Microsoft. now we talk about learn-
it-alls,” says Kristen dimlow, corpo-
companies will surely
rate VP of human resources.

THE BARREL revert to their old habits—

and pay the price that
out of the 877 companies analysed, these were c u s to m e r s
comes with short-term
the bottom 10 percent. Here in alphabetical order savings. “People will see
are the companies that could stand to learn a 1. teradata
through that company, and
thing or two from the folks at the top When you’re in the data
storage and analytics busi- it’s not seen as genuine,”
akorn envision Healthcare Pilgrim’s Pride
ness, nothing is more important says Edmans, the finance
than keeping your customers’ in-
alliant energy extended stay america Pinnacle Foods
formation secure. so far, terada-
professor. “The reason
aMerCO Firstenergy Polaris Industries
ta, whose customers include eBay why you invest in your
american national Floor & decor Holdings rite aid
Insurance Flowers Foods ross stores
and Hertz, has an unblemished workers is because the
record. Its support lines are open
american Water Works Foot locker rPC
24x7, 365 days a year, and terada-
business you want to build
aqua america Gamestop sally Beauty Holdings
athene Holding Gaming and leisure seaboard Corp ta specialists are available on-site is one in which you believe
Bank of the Ozarks Properties service Corp within two hours. “We still have a workers should be treated
Bed Bath & Beyond Gardner denver International startup mentality that every cus-
BGC Partners Holdings serviceMaster tomer is the most important cus-
fairly, not in response
Blue Buffalo Great Plains energy signet Jewelers tomer,” says Imad Birouty, director to market conditions.”
Pet Products Hawaiian electric
Brookdale senior Industries
six Flags
entertainment
of product marketing. As the Just 100
living Herbalife skechers usa reflects, the American
Bruker Kraft Heinz
Brunswick Corp lamb Weston Holdings
spectrum Brands
Holdings
public seems primed to reward those who act well. And
Burlington stores leggett & Platt stericycle the markets will follow. Eastman Chemical offers a case
Calpine leucadia national steris study from the financial crisis. Rather than major layoffs,
Chemours Co liberty Interactive transocean
Chipotle Mexican Grill QVC Group uGI Corp management took an employee suggestion and cut wages
Consol energy M&t Bank united states steel by 5 percent across the board. “Everyone was aggressively
CoreCivic Mcdonald’s urban Outfitters
dick’s sporting Goods Mercury General Valmont Industries
cutting costs. We took a pay cut, from the board to
dish network Michael Kors Vistra energy frontline employees, and kept investing in innovation,”
Michaels Cos
dollar General
Middleby
Weatherford
International
says CEO Costa. Full salaries were soon reinstated, and
dollar tree
domino’s Pizza Monster Beverage WeC energy Group Eastman’s stock roared higher, returning three times as
duke energy Mylan Wendy’s much as the S&P 500 since the market bottomed in 2009.
dunkin’ Brands nabors Industries Westar energy
eagle Materials news Corp Williams-sonoma “Companies that don’t invest in talent management
echostar nrG energy Wr Grace will be left behind,’’ predicts Zillow’s Rascoff. “This is
OPKO Health yum! Brands
endo International not just HR gobbledygook, this is mission-critical work.”
A mission that defines America’s new labour reality.

88 | forbes india february 16, 2018

 Recliner
reclIner 2 appraISal
India Art Fair Maserati’s
has a new SUV is very
director, and nice, and very
direction P/94 expensive P/96

reclIner 1 Winning young: Has it become more easy or difficult over the years?
Virat Kohli, Indian
cricket captain, is an
example of the success
that the country’s
young brigade is
capable of achieveing

Scott BarBour / Getty ImaGeS

 Recliner 1 then & now

The Secret Lives of

Young Achievers
The young have always been successful. But has it become
easier or more difficult for them over the years?
By Jasodhara BanerJee

Y
outh is not always wasted
upon the young. More
so now, in contemporary
times, when the number
of youngsters achieving greatness—
and not merely being born into it, or
having it thrust upon them—seems
to be higher than before. It would
give the appearance that it has
never been easier to have access
to opportunity and the means to
change ambitions into reality.
As our 30 Under 30 lists, now in
the fifth year, have amply shown,
youngsters are no longer held back
by factors that shackled youngsters in
previous generations. They no longer
have to be born into a rich family to get
capital for their fledgling enterprise,
they don’t need to ask relatives
and friends coming in from foreign
countries to bring them a covetable
guitar or amplifier, and they don’t need
to live in big cities to get noticed. They
don’t even need to go through the
motions of qualifying as a doctor, or
engineer, or a lawyer for their parents

90 | forbes india february 16, 2018


aneeth arora (overleaf), founder, Péro,
says one must believe in their abilities;
Priyanka raja and Prateek quit their jobs
to start experimenter in Kolkata
to not be disappointed in them. And,
of course, there’s the internet.
Times, truly, have changed. But
is it all for the better? The jury, it
seems, is out on that. For increased
access, capital and opportunity
mean the same advantages are
available to a large number of
people. This ever-burgeoning talent
pool means it is that much more
difficult to outshine everyone else
and make a mark for yourself.
Priyanka Raja, 37, who, along
with husband Prateek, 38, started
Experimenter, an art gallery, in
Kolkata in 2009, says youngsters
today feel they can find success
wherever they are. “Thirty or 40 years
ago, people thought they could find
success in certain places; either the
big cities, or in other countries,” she
says. “Today, the 20-to-40-year-olds
feel ‘location-free’. In our case, when
we decided to become gallerists, we
had to think of where we would be
able to find the audience, not the
market.” This led to both of them
giving up their corporate jobs and
heading to Kolkata—where they both
are from—to open Experimenter.
This is a sentiment echoed by
Ayaz Memon, 66, sports writer and
author. “The national footprint of
every sport has increased. Earlier,
cricketers, for example, would come
only from the metros,” he says.
“Today, good cricketers are coming
from tier 2 and tier 3 cities.” Former
India captain MS Dhoni, a native
of Ranchi in Jharkhand, is perhaps
the best example of this trend.
The base of the pyramid, Memon
adds, has grown enormously for
certain sports, such as cricket. While
it has also grown for lawn tennis,
football and hockey, the lack of
adequate training infrastructure—
such as artificial turfs—means they
are still not as big as they can be.
Memon feels that the bigger the
base of the pyramid, the better the
quality of those who make it to the top.
“It’s a filtration process,” he explains.
But climbing up that pyramid is
hardly an enviable task. Aneeth Arora,
founder of design label Péro, says there
are two sides to the coin. “There is a
lot more opportunity today,” says the
36-year-old fashion designer, whose
clothes are sold in 250 shops across 30
countries. “Today there are far more
design categories for clothes. Earlier,
there were just a few, such as bridal
and casual. But today there are also too
many fashion graduates being added to
the market every year. Very few chose
to become fashion designers earlier.”
To give an idea of the number
of players in just one sector—
technology—it would be apt to
highlight a November 2017 Nasscom
report that says India added 1,000
startups in the last year, taking
the total number of technology
startups in the country to 5,200.
Twenty percent of them emerged
from tier 2 and tier 3 cities.
But the argument of a growing
national footprint may not be true
for all pursuits. Sunil Shanbag, 61,
theatre director, screenwriter and
documentary maker, says, “The
movement of talent and resources
to the urban centres has increased,
so large parts of the country are
becoming hard to work in. Theatre
festivals in smaller cities feature
work from Mumbai and Delhi, and
there is hardly any representation
of local talent. All this should
be a matter of concern.”
But Shanbag agrees that there are
more opportunities, and consequently
greater competition, today than before.
“There are many more opportunities
for a talented person today, and
perhaps because of this it’s that much
harder to stand out, unless you are
in the mainstream which is backed
by a huge media machine which is
constantly looking for new material.”
And talent alone may not be
enough anymore to excel. Shanbag
says the external factors that play
a role in achieving success “have
remained more or less the same.
People who understand how to
play the system always seem to get
ahead quicker than those who don’t.
The difference may be that while
playing the system was frowned upon
[earlier], now it’s an enviable virtue”.
Yash Bhanage, 31, co-founder
of Bombay Canteen and O Pedro
restaurants, feels that a lot of
youngsters today are ambitious, but
ignorant to the realities of starting
an enterprise. “Everyone wants to
start the next Facebook or Instagram,
without being aware of the difficulties
and the hard work,” he says.
“There are those who want to
open a chain of restaurants because
some startup has got a large amount
Aneeth ArorA: MADhU KAPPArAth
of venture capital funding, and they
believe they too can get something
similar,” adds Bhanage. “But what they
don’t know, and don’t understand,
is that funding does not mean the
founder is getting the money in is his
pocket. There are lots of strings that
come attached with the funds, because
february 16, 2018 forbes india | 91
Recliner 1 then & now
the venture capitalists want a certain
kind of growth path. Youngsters
get distracted by the valuations of
companies, and fail to see reality.”
When asked what he feels about
food entrepreneurs who have
succeeded years before him, he
says, “I have spoken to people like
Anjan Chatterjee [founder, Speciality
Restaurants], and we discuss that
gone are the days when you could just
serve good food, and expect people
to come in. Today’s diners expect
so much more than just food.”
Chatterjee himself says changing
customer behavior means that the
environment of restaurants needs to
be refreshed because diners come in
for the experience. “It’s a business of
happiness,” he says. “You can’t have
grumpy employees. And something
like music adds so much energy.”
Comparing his own experience
of starting out to that of young
restaurateurs today, Chatterjee, who
began his career in hospitality with
an outlet of Only Fish in Mumbai,
remembers, “When we started
in 1991-92, I had gone to a bank
to get a loan of `2 lakh. But they
didn’t take me seriously, because
they did not believe this to be a
92 | forbes india february 16, 2018
viable industry. Today, everybody
[investors] is backing food, and it is
much easier to get funding. There
is also a technological advantage,
with platforms such as Swiggy and
Zomato, and so many avenues to
maximise revenue streams.”
What seems to have remained the
same is the difficulty of setting up
a restaurant business. “Despite the
fact that we employ a large number
of people, the government has not
made things easier. There is a single-
window clearance in other countries,
which is very strict, but efficient. Even
where GST is concerned, restaurants
have to pay a high input credit,”
“Funding does not
mean the founder is
getting the money in
is his pocket. There
are lots of strings
that come attached…
Youngsters get dis-
tracted by valuations.”
Yash Bhanage, co-founder,
Bombay Canteen
says Chatterjee. Bhanage agrees
that despite the talk about digital
revolution, rules and regulations
continue to hobble new restaurateurs.
And while the strings and pitfalls
of opening a new business are often
not talked or written about, access
to information, in itself, is something
that should be handled with care,
says Bhanage. “While addressing our
team, we always say that it is up to us
to read what is there [on the internet]
and use it to our advantage,” he says.
Arora, too, handles the internet
with care: Neither does Péro have
an online store, nor does she put up
her designs on an online platform.
“There is no foolproof way in which
you can guard against your designs
getting copied,” she says. She does
concede, though, that social media
and the digital medium have played
an important role in her success:
“It has its advantages. Like you can
quickly gauge audience reaction.”
Singer, songwriter Uday Benegal,
50, feels that youngsters today are
an immensely talented lot, who
have more opportunities and access
than those in the past did. Making a
comparison between ‘then and now’,
Benegal talks about how difficult

and expensive it was for them to
procure the musical instruments
and equipment they needed for their
performances, and the “innovative”
ways in which they would source
them. “Today, you can easily get
the best guitars in India,” he says.
“We were headstrong and
lucky,” he says about the 1980s,
when he started out as lead singer
and principal songwriter of Indus
Creed, one of India’s pioneering rock
bands. “Thirty years ago, there was
no process, no marketing, and no
promotions. We were simply playing
gigs at college festivals. Then came
satellite television, and MTV, which
pumped things up, and we got more
exposure.” What has also changed, he
adds, is how people listen to music.
“There was just one [music] channel
[MTV], and everyone tuned into it.
Today, there’s no one channel, and
no one medium. People are searching
for what they want to listen to.”
While he agrees that both the talent
pool and competition has increased,
what he thinks has changed for the
better is the mindset of parents. “There
is far more open-mindedness among
parents today. Consequently, people
are in professions that we could not
have imagined earlier,” he says.
The music industry has a plethora
of career options in areas such
as production and management,
which means enthusiasts have a
greater chance of getting out of
the rut of conventional careers.
Echoing his thoughts, Raja says
that in the Indian context, “family
name” has been very important. This
meant that youngsters wasted a lot of
time in building one career (one that
their parents wanted them to), and
then building a second (one that they
themselves wanted to). “The current
generation of youngsters does not feel
the necessity to have a conventional
“When we started in
1991-92, I had gone to
a bank to get a loan
of `2 lakh. But they
didn’t take me
seriously because they
did not believe this to
be a viable industry.”
Anjan Chatterjee, founder,
Speciality Restaurants
overleaf (from left): anjan Chatterjee
and yash Bhanage say the difficulty in
setting up a restaurant is still the same;
Uday Benegal (left) and sunil shanbag
are of the opinion that there are multiple
opportunities to succeed today
career. Children don’t waste time
doing what they are told to do; they
do what they want to do,” she says.
Highlighting this approach,
Bhanage says of the 140 employees
that his restaurants have, about 40
percent have made a career change
to work in the hospitality sector.
“Food is the new music,” he says. “It
is also true that the entry barriers to
this industry can be relatively low.
So, we do have home cooks who have
joined us in the kitchen. We take them
because they already have a basic
understanding of taste and flavours”
Memon adds that the openness
to these opportunities is because it
is now possible to make a livelihood
out of them. “This awareness has
come about in the last 10 years or
so. A sport like cricket can bring
you phenomenal rewards and
international fame. But people have
also realised that you don’t always
have to be a winner [in sport], because
there is a huge industry around it
now that can provide opportunities
of various kinds, in training, sports
medicine, writing and commenting.”
Shanbag acknowledges the
increased opportunity for theatre
actors to earn a living through
their trade. “The easy movement
AnjAn ChAtterjee: joshUA nAvAlKAr; YAsh BhAnAge: tejAl PAnDeY;
between different media such as
film, television, and theatre makes
it possible for younger people to
survive and work,” he says.
But despite all the difference
in opinions, everyone agrees that
sUnil shAnBAg, UDAY BenegAl: gettY iMAges
there is no alternative to hard work.
“Genuine achievement always needs
the same amount of commitment,
hard work, and supreme focus. That
hasn’t changed,” says Shanbag. Arora
agrees: “There are a lot of people who
will tell you that it won’t work… But
you just have to believe in yourself.”
Some things never change
with time. No matter how
much time itself changes.
february 16, 2018 forbes india | 93
Recliner 2 art

‘We must show our commitment to

the art ecology of the region’
Jagdip Jagpal, the new director of the India Art Fair, talks about her plans for
the event, having a year-round programme and making art culture accessible
By Jasodhara BanerJee

T
he 11th edition of the things just need to be refined, it should then it is not the India Art Fair
India Art Fair (IAF), reflect market trends and what the anymore. So we have set up criteria,
from February 9 to 12, audience wants. This year, the priority such as bringing work that has not
will be the first one after will be Indian and South Asian been put at other art fairs; we are also
MCH—which runs Art Basel, the galleries. We are also clear that if limiting the number of international
world’s premier annual modern and international galleries get preference, galleries. Also, while creating the
contemporary art fair in Basel, Miami
Beach, and Hong Kong—acquired new direcgtor
a 60.3 percent stake in it last year. Jagdip Jagpal
brings with her
It will also be the first with Jagdip experience in the
Jagpal as director, who took over from UK’s art sector
founder and former director Neha
Kirpal six months prior to the fair.
The event is expected to be a
testing ground for new ideas, with an
expanded programme and increased
participation from Indian and South
Asian galleries and artistes. Jagpal, 53,
a British national who has relocated
to India, brings with her experience
in the UK’s art sector, as well as in
publishing, radio and television.
Edited excerpts from an interview:

Q There are two new elements

in the IAF: MCH as a new
shareholder, and you as its new
director. How will the IAF this
year be different from the ones in
the past?
What Neha [Kirpal] managed to
achieve was remarkable. In quite
a new market, particularly for
contemporary art, she was able to
attract exhibitors to sell the art, and
visitors. What it created was the
foundation on which we are now
building. So, the headlines remain
the same: It’s an art fair, it sells art,
with artists from India and the region,
and some international galleries.
What is different is that sometimes

94 | forbes india february 16, 2018

[fair] space and navigation, we are
making it clearer about where Indian
galleries and international art are.
And although this is a commercial
activity, we play a role in the
development of the art sector, and
the contemporary art market in
particular. So we must demonstrate
our commitment to the development
of the art ecology in the region.
In terms of the talks programme,
instead of flying in lots of
international speakers and those
who have been heard a lot before,
we are focusing more on speakers
from India, and those who have
not been heard as much before.
Q You say there will be a focus on
Indian modernist. Why have
you selected this category?
This is a modern and
contemporary art fair, so we
need to bring clarity for visitors.
Among the things we have got
this year is the Delhi Art Gallery
exhibition on Navratna—Nine
Gems, which will pay tribute
to India’s national treasures
like Raja Ravi Varma, Amrita
Sher-Gil, Rabindranath Tagore,
Nandalal Bose, and Jamini Roy.
There are some fantastic stories
there that have not been told. So
it’s about getting these stories
out to the broader audience.
Q You have visited the
IAF for the past few years.
How have you seen the
audience evolve?
For contemporary art in particular,
the audience has to engage with, or
understand, the art. It’s also about
developing new collectors, who are
much younger. New collectors can be
of any age. The same goes for artistes.
For me, it’s about making art
and the art culture accessible;
the price points should be such
that visitors can buy something
for themselves. I have seen that
people are thinking of art as an
investment, but the first expectation
is that they should like it.
Q You have worked with
international partnerships at
Tate in the UK, and with New
North + South (a network of 11 art
organisations in North England
and South Asia). What are the most
important learnings that you are
bringing to the IAF?
A lot of my past experience has
been about understanding who your
audience is, and the different groups
within that audience. It’s not just
about pandering to them. Audiences
also evolve, and we must know how
they feel about things that change.
The great advantage of working
with something that is public sector-
funded is that there are many great
people working on the projects.
sunil Gawde’s Still Alive III, (2016-2017, painted FrP and
steel) is one of the highlights of this year’s India art Fair
And, along with my commercial
background, I am able to see things
as a whole. Also my production work
in organising talks, from my radio
days [Jagpal has worked with BBC
Radio 4 in the UK], has taught me
that communication is a key part, as
well as knowledge. But being part
of the New North + South project
really put me in the centre of what
was going on in South Asian art.
Q What is the unfamiliar ground
you now see yourself treading?
It would be to do with an in-depth
learning of the art ecosystem here.
Also, I want to focus on the work
that we will be doing throughout
the year, and not just on the
four days of the fair. It would be
important to look at the sector in
different parts of the country.
Q What is the work that you are
planning around the year?
We will be developing a summer
internship programme and residencies
for developing quality in education,
and also to develop opportunities,
so that people can understand that
you can work with art and culture
and make a living; even if you are not
an artiste, there are other elements,
like foundations and biennales,
which are opportunities.
I would also like to build a
greater connect with public
institutions—such as the
National Gallery of Modern Art,
from whom we have received a
great response—and with local
art communities. We would
like to build relationships with
patrons and collectors too.
Q Christie’s started with
a bang in India in 2013,
and have now withdrawn
their India event. Is that
significant to the art market
in South Asia?
Auction houses are a secondary
market. What has happened
over the last decade, like in any
boom-and-bust scenario, there
is no one single factor; it’s always
a combination of things. What is
happening now is that there’s a steady
stream of people developing the art
sector here. So, of course, there is an
photographs courtesy: IndIa art faIr
impact when one commercial activity
or investment moves away. But let’s
look at the solid base that has been
built with not-for-profit organisations,
biennales, the new residencies
coming up, the corporate sponsors,
the individuals and foundations… I
would say that a commercial entity
coming in and then leaving should
not kill off what we have got here.
february 16, 2018 forbes india | 95
 Recliner appraisal
T
he Maserati Levante is the
first SUV from the exotic
Italian brand, and true to
Maserati’s tradition, it’s
an absolute stunner to look at, and
the least SUV-looking SUV there is.
It’s large, no doubt, but the
design is so sleek that it’s more like
a well-built athlete rather than a
bulky body-builder. The sleek side
profile is typically Maserati, with
the three slots on the front fender
and the pronounced rear haunch,
all of which contribute to the fact
that it looks more like a crossover.
The inside is bathed in luxurious
leather. There isn’t any ground-
breaking technology or feature in
there, but the symmetrical layout, the
finish and material remind you that
it’s designed by Italians, especially
the large three-spoke steering
wheel and the analogue dials.
Maserati is only selling the V6
diesel Levante in India for now, while
the more exciting 430 PS V6 petrol is
Courtesy: overdrive
expected to come in later. The 3.0-litre
turbo-charged diesel engine produces
275 PS of power at 4,000 rpm, and
600 Nm of torque from 2,000-2,600
rpm. The engine is very responsive,
96 | forbes india february 16, 2018
and while power delivery is linear,
it’s also just aggressive enough to
keep things interesting. It’s got three
drive modes: Normal, sport and ICE
(increased control and efficiency).
Normal and ICE modes are
ideal for city driving, thanks to a
duller throttle response, and better
efficiency. It returned a decent (for
this size of engine) 8.65 kmpl in the
city and 11.24 kmpl on the highway.
In sport mode, the idle note becomes
a little more bass-y and when you
step on the throttle, the Levante gives
out an extremely satisfying gruff
rumble. However, once you pick
up speed, it’s drowned out by road
noise, leaving just a ‘whoosh’ sound
every time you floor it. So while it is
pretty quick—0-100 kmph in around
7 seconds—it lacks the sense of drama
tech specs
Type 2,987 cc turbo-diesel V6
Max power 275 PS @ 4,000 rpm
Max torque 600 Nm @ 2,000-2,600 rpm
Transmission 8-speed automatic
4-valves/
cylinder 4-valves/cylinder
Speed 0-100 kmph 6.9 secs (claimed)
Car:
Maserati
Levante
Diesel
By Rahul RichaRd
you’d get from a louder petrol engine.
By What
Rahulthe Levante lacks in dramatic
RichaRd
sounds, it makes up for with exciting
cornering speeds. While it doesn’t
stay flat like a sportscar, it offers
staggering grip. When you chuck it
into a corner, it leans just the tiniest
bit, but continues to hold its line
as if on rails. The all-wheel-drive
system, with torque vectoring, is
constantly adjusting how much
power is sent to the front and rear
wheels, and you can see this on the
display in the instrument cluster.
The steering response is sharp,
and provides an enormous amount
of feedback—something most
cars these days lack. However, at
really high speeds, the car does
feel a little twitchy because of
how sensitive the steering is.
To sum it all up, the Levante is
certainly a nice car. It’s also very
expensive! At `1.50 crore, ex-
Mumbai, it’s around `25 lakh more
than the 3.0-litre Jaguar F-Pace. At
this price, it goes up against a larger,
more capable SUV, the Porsche
Cayenne, and I’m not sure the
Maserati Levante has enough on the
platter to justify that price tag.
 Fitness Column

The Shape of us
Engage in activities that challenge physical
and muscular strength to stay toned
By Vijay Thakkar

However, weight loss achieved this

way cannot be sustained. These
activities elevate calorie expenditure
for a short period, but soon the
metabolic rate returns to its former
level and eliminates the effects of
exercising. Also, such activities don’t
trigger the biochemical reactions that
are responsible for improving basal
metabolic rate (BMR).
The key to being toned is to
engage in activities that challenge our
physical and muscular strength. They
use anaerobic respiration that burns
glucose, challenges the musculo-
skeletal system and stimulates growth

W
hat do we first think
of doing when we
realise we are not
fit? We start eating
less and exercising more. But have
you wondered why we can’t sustain
weight loss for long, and why is it easy
to maintain our weight when we are
young? Time and again it has been
proven that ‘eat less and work out
more’ is not a successful strategy for
maintaining a toned body.
While weight is a valid factor to
measure the success of a ‘get-back-in-
shape’ intervention, it is not a decisive
one. It’s important to know that when
body tissues associated with shape—
So, how did we remain toned so
effortlessly in our childhood and
adolescence? It not only depends
on the food consumption habits and
physical activity, but also on the
body’s biochemistry. When we are
young, our bodies not only expend
energy to fuel organs and muscles—
which they also do during adulthood—
they also expend energy to grow those
tissues. This plays a significant role in
keeping us in shape. So, the question
now is: How to maintain tissue growth
even in our adulthood?
To reduce weight, aerobic activities
such as running can be appealing.
of lean skeletal tissues. Even 30
minutes of such activities (see box),
twice or thrice a week, ensures a
biochemical environment that fuels
growth of lean tissues, and boosts
BMR, leading to burning more
calories even while resting.
However, it is critical to know
which muscle groups to engage. For
instance, a bicep curl engages a small
muscle and will not boost metabolism
as compared to squats, which engages
larger muscles of the thighs and hips.
Therefore, exercise selection can
ensure a better metabolic advantage
by improving BMR for almost 72
hours after a workout.
AlexAnder lukAtskiy / shutterstock

such as skeletal tissues—grow, we
start looking more ‘in shape’. It is only
when shapeless tissues (fat) grow that
we add inches to our girth. Evidence
from scientific studies that tested the
‘eat less and work out more’ strategy
suggests that although participants
lost weight quickly, they were unable
to sustain it in the long run.
Burn it like a pro
Home/outdoor setting
Engage larger muscles using
body weight
Pull-ups, push-ups, squats,
lunges, planks
So, if you are thinking of getting
in gym/club setting back in shape only by eating less and
Use resistance
machines, fitness acces-
working out more, remember it will
sories like dumbbells for have a short-term effect. Switch to
customised resistance to
meet workout intensity exercises that will burn calories even
and volume goals
when you are at rest. A small change
Add weight to the squat
exercise or add TRX in your exercise routine will make a
training to planks to add
core stability challenge
huge difference to your lifestyle.
The writer is founder and CEO of 48 Fitness

february 16, 2018 forbes india | 97

 Thoughts
On AmbitiOn
May he give you the desire
of your heart and make all
your plans succeed.
—Psalm 20:4

Fain would I climb,

yet fear I to fall.
—sir Walter
raleiGH
The trouble with
fulfilling your ambitions
is you think you’ll be
transformed into some At age 6, I wanted to be a cook.
sort of archangel, and
you’re not. you still have At 7, I wanted to be Napoleon.
to wash your socks.
And my ambition has been
Bernières: AlessiA Pierdomenico / reUTers; conrAn, WAgner, BroWning: geTTy imAges; dAlí: shUTTersTock ; legUin: dAn TUffs / geTTy imAges;

—loUis de
Bernières
growing steadily ever since.
—salvador dalí
Ambition is the growth
of every clime. All my life i wanted to Would you give up the
be somebody. now i see
—William BlaKe that i should have been craft of your hands, and the
more specific. passion of your heart, and
—Jane WaGner the hunger of your mind, to
buy safety?
There is always —UrsUla K leGUin
room at the top.
—daniel WeBster Ambition, n. An Desire makes
overmastering desire to everything blossom;
be vilified by enemies
while living and made possession makes
ridiculous by friends everything wither
when dead. and fade.
First things first; —amBrose BierCe —marCel ProUst
second things never.
—sHirley Conran

If you would hit the ’Tis not what a man does

mark, you must that exalts him, but what
a man would do.
aim a little above
it; every arrow —roBert
PlATh: BeTTmAnn / geTTy imAges

that flies feels the BroWninG The future is what

attraction of the matters, because
earth. one never reaches FINAL THOUGHT
Well is it known that
—Henry ambition can creep it, but always stays Ambition is best
WadsWortH as well as soar. in the present. not naked.
lonGfelloW —edmUnd BUrKe —sylvia PlatH —malColm forBes

98 | forbes india FebruAry 16, 2018

Hope you loved our
I NDIA

Tablet Edition

Do mail us your feedback at:

letterstoforbesindia@nw18.com