Desis make their mark in 12 categories; social entrepreneurs lead.
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Forbes Magazine released its third annual “30 Under 30†list, a compilation of 30 leaders in 15 different industries who are under the age of 30. The 450-name list includes a whopping 32 people of south Asian and Indian origin.
Desis showed up in 12 of the categories, with the majority appearing in the category of “social entrepreneurs.†The youngest south Asian on the list is sixteen year-old Malala Yousafzai, while the oldest people featured are just 29 years old.
The categories and respective honorees are as follows:
Education
o  Sam Chaudhary – Age 27 – co-founder of ClassDoJo, a software program that allows teachers to monitor and track classroom behavior, data from which can lead to changes in the classroom that have resulted in increases in positive attitudes and higher grades.
o  Sayamindu Dasgupta – Age 29 – PhD student at MIT Media Lab who is behind the Lifelong Kindergarten Research Group’s Scratch Project, which allows children to create their own basic games, art, and animation and share them with millions of other children around the world.
o   Saad Rizvi – Age 28 – Senior Vice-President at Pearson, which is leading an international team to reform public schools in the Indian state of Punjab.
Energy and Industry
o  Adam Khan – Age 29 – founder of Akhan Tech, a company that synthesizes diamonds to be used in microprocessors and computer chips.
o  Eesha Khare – Age 18 – winner of the Young Scientist Award and the Intel International Science Fair, for which she designed a device that can charge cell phones in a matter of seconds.
Finance
o  Ganesh Betanabhatla – Age 28 –managing director at Talara Capital, which has a $500 million heading of private equity to invest in the energy sector.
o  Rushabh Doshi – Age 29 – trader at DW Investment Management who specializes in high-yield, distressed debt.
o  Chaitanya Mehra – Age 28 – portfolio manager at Och-Ziff Capital Management who oversees investments in energy at the $39 billion company.
o  Neil Mehta – Age 29 – founder of Greenoaks Capital, a $600 million investment firm.
o  Vivek Ramaswamy – Age 28 – investment analyst at QVC Financial, where he co-manages one of the largest hedge funds in the biotech arena.
o  Sam Shikiar – Age 28 – vice-president at Goldman Sachs, where he heads up a commodities trading team interested in electronics, metals and energy.
Food and Wine
o  Aditi Malhotra – Age 28 – founder of Tache Artisan Chocolate, a gourmet chocolate shop in New York City.
Games
o  Amir Rao – Age 29 – studio director at Supergiant Games, and co-creator of the game Bastion, which has won several industry awards, including the Interactive Achievment Awards.
Marketing
o  Pranav Yadav – Age 28 – CEO of Neuro-Insight, an innovation strategy consulting company for which he was hired directly to the CEO position.
Media
o  Nikhil Sethi – Age 25 – co-founder of Adaptly, a company that manages advertising campaigns spread across several different social media avenues.
Law and Policy
o  Noorain Khan – Age 29 – associate at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz who is a former Rhodes Scholar, Yale Law School Soros Fellow, and who travels abroad with the US Department of State to talk about Islam in the US.
o  Derek Khanna – Age 25 – Activist and scholar on technology policy, who has been one of the key people behind several Congressional petitions to relax federal spying and copyright reform laws.
o  Nabiha Syed – Age 28 – attorney at Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, who is considered one of the foremost “free speech†lawyers in the US today.
Science and Healthcare
o  Divya Nag – Age 22 – co-founder of Stem Cell Theranostics and StartX Med, with which Nag is aiming to solve the problem of how to keep human tissue cells from dying when they’re being studied in labs, which is what happens with most types of tissue cells.
o  Raghu Chivukula – Age 29 – resident physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he has been behind cutting-edge research that’s found that messenger-RNA (mRNA) can be a vital tool in regenerating mammalian intestines.
o  Surbhi Sarna – Age 28 – founder of nVision, a company building technology to detect ovarian cysts at their earliest stages.
Social Entrepreneurs
o  Shiza Shahid – Age 24 – co-founder of the Malala Fund and one of the overseers of Malala Yousafzai’s healthcare in London after she was shot by the Taliban in 2012.
o  Khalida Brohi – Age 25 – founder of Sughar, which aims to end honor killings.
o  Karan Chopra – Age 29 – co-founder of GADCO, which helps farmers in Ghana get higher profits for the sale of their goods. Chopra is a native of Ghana.
o  Nadim Mahmud – Age 28 – co-founder of Medic Mobile, which aims to use cell phone technology to improve healthcare by connecting millions of healthcare professionals and patients around the world.
o  Ajaita Shah – Age 29 – founder of Frontier Markets, which aims to bring clean energy to families in India.
o  Kavita Shukla – Age 29 – founder of Fenugreen, which produces low-cost, compostable paper from organic spices and other edible material.
o  Malala Yousafzai – Age 16 – co-founder of the Malala Fund, made in her honor after the Taliban attempted to kill her in 2012 for her advocacy regarding women’s rights in Pakistan.
Sports
o  Muthu Alagappan – Age 23 – consultant at Ayasdi, a statistical analysis company that breaks down basketball data for scouting and other purposes.
o  Megha Parekh – Age 28 – vice-president of the Jacksonville Jaguars, as well as their General Counsel. She’s a graduate of Harvard Law School.
Technology
o  Sahil Lavingia – Age 21 – founder of Gumroad, web-based tool that allows people to sell digital products, like art, online.
The full list of Forbes 30 Under 30 can be read here.
To contact the author, email to deepakchitnis@americanbazaaronline.com