Meet the 5 women featured in the Forbes India 30 under 30 list
Actor Sai Pallavi, Ikea designer Akanksha Deo Sharma, entrepreneurs Palak Shah, Priya Prakash and Sai Gole feature in this year's list of India's brightest stars under the age of 30.
Forbes India has released its annual 30 under 30 list that comprises India's young changemakers and brightest stars under the age of 30. The 30 member list released on February 4 includes five women. Actor Sai Pallavi, Ikea designer Akanksha Deo Sharma, entrepreneurs Palak Shah, Priya Prakash and Sai Gole.
(Top) Sai Pallavi, Akansha Deo Sharma; (Bottom) Sai Gole, Palak Shah and Priya Prakash.
In a list dominated by startup founders, Sai Pallavi is the only actor in the list. The 27-year-old is a renowned figure in the southern film industry, she has made her mark with films in Tamil, Malayalam and Telugu. She became famous with her debut role in the Malayalam movie Premam for which she received a Filmfare award. She wooed the Telugu audience with her role in Fidaa, which also won her a Filmfare award.
With impeccable dancing skills she won over the Tamil audience with her moves in the song Rowdy Baby, outshining co-actor Dhanush. She refuses to play the role of the sidekick heroine and “wants to experiment with 'better roles' and 'chiselled characters,” according to the magazine.
Akansha Deo Sharma,28, is the only Indian designer at IKEA and uses Indian textile history, handicrafts and construction techniques to make minimal, playful products, reads her description in the magazine. An industrial designer, a textile innovator and a visual artist, she is first, and only, Indian hire and the youngest designer at the Swedish furniture and home accessories giant. She has also starred in artists Thukral & Tagra’s short film and created her own audio-visual project, Talk is Cheap, with poet-novelist Jeet Thayil.
Palak Shah is the CEO of Ekaya, a handcrafted modern sari label. After graduating from university in 2012, she co-founded the label with her father. Since its inception, Ekaya has collaborated with brands such as Ferragamo and Missoni and counts Indian superstar Aishwarya Rai and the South Korean First Lady Kim Jung-sook among its fans. The 28-year-old has also featured on Forbes Asia’s 30 under 3o - The Arts list for 2019. Palak is now focused on propagating the versatility and global appeal of Indian heritage weaves, and with Ekaya, supports more than 8,000 weavers, says the description in list.
Priya Prakash, the founder and CEO of HealthSetGo was bullied for being overweight as a child which led her to set up the company to provide health programmes in schools. The 28-year-old is now involved in policy advocacy for the same. Her company provides schools with health programs, education, medical assessments and insurance services. According to Forbes, her organisation has trained more than 300 doctors and teachers to implement care and monitor development in the young. It currently operates in 70 cities and has reached out to over 80,000 students.
Sai Gole, 26, is the co-founder of BharatAgri which helps farmers to maximise production and income using their algorithm to tell farmers what to grow and when and how to. She and the company’s co-founder Siddharth Dialanim, who also features on the list, were part of IIT-Madras’s Centre for Innovation. Started as LeanAgri in 2017 and later renamed, the company has one lakh users apart from 25,00 paid farmers and claims to be the only company in India to monetise an information based service in agriculture.
(Edited by Rekha Balakrishnan)
MOST VIEWED STORIES
