Meet the 5 Indians who made it to WEF’s 100 Young Global Leaders list

Five Indians, including Paytm Founder and CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma, and Shruti Shibulal of The Tamara Hospitality, have made it to World Economic Forum’s 100 Young Global Leaders list.

The other Indians in the list include Ambarish Mitra, founder and CEO, Blippar, a mobile phone app business valued at $1.5 billion; Hindol Sengupta, Editor-at-Large, Fortune India, and Rwitwika Bhattacharya-Agarwal, founder and CEO, Swaniti Initiative.

There were nine global leaders from South Asia, including five from India. Besides, there are some persons of Indian origin in the US and Europe who were also named in the list.

Each year, the World Economic Forum (WEF) selects 100 young leaders, under the age of 40, who are tackling the world’s most complex challenges with innovative approaches.

In this year’s list of 100 Young Global Leaders, half are from emerging economies, reflecting a trend towards greater diversity in global leadership. “Selected into a five-year programme, this year’s class of 100 Young Global Leaders is split evenly between business and not-for-profit sectors — building a global community of peers who can capitalise on diverse talents, experiences and networks to bridge divides that exist in society and achieve more together than they could separately,” WEF noted.

The Class of 2017 features two of the world’s top scientists on genome editing: Luhan Yang, chief scientist at eGenesis Biosciences, and Feng Zhang, a core member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

From the public sector, the list features Aja Brown, the youngest mayor to be elected in Compton, California.

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Among those representing the private sector is Katie Hill, an innovator who leads Apple’s ambitious new clean energy programme, converting the company’s manufacturing worldwide to renewable energy.

The WEF, government think-tank NITI Aayog, the World Intellectual Property Organisation and the Cornell University have joined hands to develop an India Innovation Index to measure the performance of Indian states. The first ranking is expected to be released at the India Economic Summit in New Delhi on October 4-6, 2017.