Fortune 40 Under 40: 2020 emerging leaders list includes Isha and Akash Ambani, Byju Raveendran, Adar Poonawalla

Fortune’s 40 Under 40 — an annual list of influential individuals under the age of 40 — has named Reliance Jio’s Isha and Akash Ambani, edutech company founder Byju Raveendran and the Serum Institute’s Adar Poonawalla among the “emerging leaders” across the world, in its 2020 edition. The 2020 Fortune 40 Under 40 list highlights 40 influential people each across five categories — finance, technology, healthcare, government and politics, and media and entertainment from around the world. Explaining its departure from the usual, single list format of 40 achievers, the Fortune editorial explained it was in response to “a year of monumental challenges and change, and just one list of 40 emerging leaders wouldn’t be enough”. Including Isha and Akash Ambani in the ’technology category’, Fortune noted: “They say data is the new oil — and when it comes to Reliance Industries, India’s largest company, that’s literally the case… As Jio board members, [the Ambani scions] helped seal the company’s recent megadeal with Facebook — $5.7 billion for a 9.99 percent stake — plus major follow-on investments from marquee tech titans like Google, Qualcomm, and Intel. The flurry of investments lent the business an eye-popping $65 billion private valuation. Recently, Akash and Isha helped launch Jio Mart, a venture that aims to challenge Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart for command of India’s massive and fast-growing online shopping market.” Byju founder Raveendran has “shown the world that it really is possible to build a massively successful online education company,” the Fortune profile on him read, adding that the company is helping “millions of students prep and study for the most important exams of their lives” while also teaching them about core topics like mathematics and science. Poonawala’s role as CEO of the Serum Institute of India made him among the most “in demand” people on the planet during this current crisis, the Fortune ranking noted. It further acknowledged the Serum Institute’s vital role in public healthcare, and the 1.5 billion doses of vaccines the company produced to immunise children in low- and middle-income countries through programmes administered by organisations like UNICEF. The complete Fortune 40 Under 40 rankings for 2020 can be viewed here.