Most Famous young Indian entrepreneurs of 2012
Entrepreneurship has no bar on age, but nevertheless you get surprised to see some youngsters making it big as entrepreneurs. In the age where these youngsters could have simply did the usual things like high school, college, hangout joints, video games or bike rides, they went ahead and founded companies, gave seminars, wrote books, and became inspiring figures for all aspiring entrepreneurs irrespective of age. Read on to know top 10 young entrepreneur success stories— their struggles and triumphs, as compiled by JuniorBiz.
They are young, They have great ideas, and know how to make them a reality. They use their creativity and hard work to make things happen – bringing new concepts and products to market. Probably they have learnt their business lessons sooner than later. These young desi business-minded go-getters are not only moving one step closer to the life of a successful entrepreneur, they are even earning global recognition in the process.
Here is our pick of the top young entrepreneurs:
Neha Juneja
Neha Juneja, 27, from Greenway Grameen Infra, a Mumbai based startup, recently hogged the limelight when her company Greenway Grameen Infra won the 2012 Intel Global Challenge at Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, receiving $50,000 from the Intel Foundation. Her company has developed Greenway Smart Stove which is a patent-pending cookstove designed as a modern replacement for traditional mud chulhas. The design of Greenway Grameen Infra was selected from ideas presented by more than 150,000 students from more than 50 countries.
The firm’s biomass-based stove increases fuel efficiency and targets consumers in rural areas. The single-burner, high-efficiency cook stove uses 65 per cent less fuel and produces 80 per cent less smoke than traditional chulhas. In late 2011, the company won the Businessworld Young Entrepreneur Award.
Phanindra Sama
Phanindra Sama or ‘Phani’ is co-founder and CEO of redBus.in, India’s largest bus ticketing company. He is the CEO of the Bangalore-based Pilani Soft Labs Pvt Ltd, a company that was set up by three friends who studied in BITS, Pilani. He was chosen as a Global Shaper 2011 for the World Economic Forum. He was also awarded Entrepreneur of the Year award under IT, ITES category by ET NOW and the BITSAA 30 under-30 award. He is also selected as a high-impact Endeavor Entrepreneur (www. endeavor.org) and TiE Entrepreneur (www.tie.org).
redBus was amongst Forbes top five startups to watch in 2010 and was ranked first amongst the fastest growing companies in India in a survey done by All World Network. It was awarded India’s best Internet start-up, 2010, by IMAI.
Faisal I. Farooqui
He is an entrepreneur, best known as the founder- Chief Executive Officer of MouthShut.com, a leading user-generated consumer review and feedback service. He is an Indian who graduated in America from State University of New York with MIS and Finance. He got Mouthshut.com running at the times of dotcomburst.
Farrhad Acidwalla
Farrhad Acidwalla, 19, become an entrepreneur at the age of 13 after deciding to build a cutting-edge company devoted to web development, marketing, advertisement, and branding. Now he has Rockstah Media, now an international, award-winning agency, which focuses on branding, marketing and web development in Maharashtra. He has a team of developers, designers and market strategists working for him all over the world.
Acidwalla now has plans to diversify by producing Hindi entertainment programs.
S Sanjay and Shravan Kumaran
Sanjay Kumaran (11) and Sanjay Kumaran (13), two brothers from Chennai build a mobile phone applications firm that have witnessed over 10,000 downloads across the world already. Sanjay is probably the youngest CEO in the world.
Shravan is in the eighth grade and Sanjay in the sixth at Vael’s Billabong International School, Chennai.
According to Shravan, their first app ‘Catch me cop’, had more than 10,000 downloads in 45 countries since it was made available on Apple’s App Store from January 21 in 2012. He adds that his company is now developing more apps, all of which are now available on App Store and on Google’s Play Store.
The second app, ‘Alphabet Board,’ and third app “Prayer Planet,” have also received good response from the users all around the world.
These young entrepreneurs now have plans to develop a tablet by 2015-16 and want to price it so slow that they become easily assessable to people of all economic backgrounds.
