40 Under 40: The class of 2018

It is that time of the year again when we bring to you a list of the brightest young minds from the world of business in India. The Fortune India 40 under 40 list looks at unique business ideas and the people powering them. The list is also very dynamic and includes people from a range of industries, while each one may not have built a billion-dollar business but they have all built something new and different, or simply changed the way things were done traditionally.

The class of 2018 are not just entrepreneurs who started disruptive businesses but also executives who have risen up the corporate ladder quickly. There are corporate executives like Gunjan Soni, head of Jabong and chief marketing officer at Myntra. At 38, Soni had already become a partner at McKinsey & Co, helped Star India build its digital content platform Hotstar before taking over key leadership roles at two of India’s largest fashion e-commerce channels. Joining her from the corporate world are Tetra Pak marketing director Saumya Tyagi, Disney’s Amrita Pandey who is now the Regional Head for Media Distribution and OTT, South Asia and Bain’s Deepak Jain.

There are also seasoned entrepreneurs like Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal co-founders of Flipkart, who have changed the way India shops over the last ten years, Byju Raveendran whose learning app Byju’s is redefining tutorials while Neha Singh and Abhishek Goyal’s Tracxn is fast becoming the primary database to track all of India’s startups.

But we measure success not just through money, revenues, valuations and profits. We look at innovative ideas. Leading the line here is Leo Mavely, founder of Axio Biosolutions that makes single-use bandages from crustacean shells. These bandages are used by the Indian Army, the Border Security Force, and security forces in West Asia and Europe. There is also Upasana Makati, of White Print, an English language magazine in Braille.

But with India set to be the youngest country in the world with a median age of 29 by 2020, according to a Morgan Stanley report from 2017, rest assured the 40 under 40 list will see many new innovators, disruptors and rule-breakers in the coming years. Till then we we leave you with the class of 2018. Explore the full list here.