10 Most Influential Young Indians: Next Gen

Director, Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited and Director, Reliance Retail Limited
Age: 24
Born in: New Haven, Connecticut

The 14th operator in the telecom history of India plans to change it forever. Reliance Industries’ ambitious, 4G-only network, Jio, will launch later this year and Akash Ambani is sitting at the helm of the conglomerate’s exciting new project that plans to reform the country’s digital ecosystem, promising data speeds that are 40-80 per cent faster than anything we’ve experienced so far — at affordable prices.

CEO, Carat Lane
Age: 38
Born in: Mumbai

When the Tata-owned behemoth Titan acquired a majority stake in 7-year-old online jewellery boutique CaratLane in May, most people expected founder Mithun Sacheti to exit with a killing. Yet the scion of Jaipur Gems has held on to a sizeable stake – north of 30 per cent at the moment – and will continue to drive the business. Harnessing the heft and trust of Titan is part of the plan, but CaratLane will continue to furiously innovate: opening up more duty-free like open format stores (the first for a jewellery brand in the country), and using a novel marketing strategy built on the reach and micro-targeting of Facebook and Google.

Ninth-generation inheritor to Jaipur’s Gem Palace
Age: 32
Born in: Jaipur

Visit Jaipur, and you’re likely to feel a tug, perhaps not wholly unbidden, towards the princely city’s more lavish expressions. Perhaps the whole royal vibe will seduce you into contemplating a luxurious, bejeweled souvenir. For that, you’re likely to end up at the long-standing Gem Palace, where the Kasliwal family has served Maharajas and Maharanis for two centuries.

Chief Executive, SUJÁN and Vice President, Relais & Chateaux
Age: 36
Born in: Delhi

The descendant of a long line of gentrified land owners, Singh has over the years been quietly putting India on the global luxury travel map. Since he set up celebrity hotspot Sher Bagh in Ranthambore in 2000 (one of the country’s first luxury tented camps), his chain of boutique hotels under the SUJÁN umbrella now include the dramatically situated The Serai and Jawai in Rajasthan, Jaipur’s refurbished Rajmahal Palace (where the priciest suite will come with a price tag of Rs 9 lakh), and the unfenced Elephant Pepper Camp in Africa’s Masai Mara.

Founder, Piramal Realty
Age: 31
Born in: Mumbai

Two of the world’s biggest investmentfirms – Goldman Sachs and Warburg Pincus – invested a consolidated amount of $434 million in Piramal Realty last year. With sound reason. The Piramal family has scored impressive realty hits over the last few decades. These include constructing Crossroads, Mumbai’s first mall, and also Peninsula Corporate Park – a blueprint for taking idle sprawling textile mill land and converting it into mega commercial hubs.

Endower of the Murty Classical Library of India
Age: 32
Born in: Bengaluru

For a guy with as many crores as he has in his sock drawer, Rohan Murty defies the stereotypes of the brainiac heir of a super-rich business mogul. The Infosys scion eschews the ostentatious trinkets associated with most people who have, say, $5.2 million to toss around. Instead, Rohan took that amount and endowed it to the Murty Classical Library of India, to translate up to five books written in an ancient Indian language, every year, for the next century. This cultural preservation is a ballsier move than it sounds.

Founder and MD, Massive Restaurants
Age: 39
Born in: Delhi

Molecular gastronomy has been passé for a while and yet Zorawar Kalra’s Masala Library is booked solid for weeks. Along with Farzi Café, and his newest success Masala Bar, the fine dine brand has reignited an interest in Indian food amidst a hip demographic, turning katoris of dal on their heads by using creativity, technology and slick marketing. Recently, he’s used that same brand of seductive techniques and clever PR for Asian food, with Pa Pa Ya, a mall eatery that’s blurred the distinction between “fast food” and “good food”. Massive Restaurants is the fastest growing company in the history of the Indian fine-dining business. Five brands in under three years, and he’s not done yet: 10 more eateries will launch in India soon plus, after a successful launch in Dubai, a few more international openings are in the pipeline.

Whole-time Director and Head of New Media, The Indian Express
Age: 29
Born in: Mumbai

In the four years since Anant Goenka joined the family business started by his great grandfather in 1936, he’s taken the Indian Express website from four million unique users a month to 42 million – with 140 million page views. He’s done this through a clean running IE app, which he says retains the physical paper’s journalistic balance, and insists that things like advertorials “are not expected of us; they are bad for business”.

Owner, Gujarat Lions and Director, Intex Technologies
Age: 25
Born in: Delhi

In October last year, Keshav Bansal approached the BCCI to pitch Intex Technologies – his father Narendra Bansal’s Rs 4,000 crore company of mobile handsets and IT products – as a sponsor for the Indian Premier League. His aim was to target the youth, a common audience for cricket and tech.

Executive Director, Strategy and Innovation, Godrej & Boyce
Age: 34
Born in: Mumbai

When your family business is 119 years old, there may be a need to rethink the way it does business. And that’s the fourth-gen Godrej scion’s full-time job. He’s been creating collaborative physical spaces like the Godrej Innovation Center that he set up in 2011 and The Hubble in 2013, both located on its campus in Vikhroli, Mumbai.