Get An Adrenaline Rush From The Tenth Edition Of The 30 Under 30 Asia List In Forbes Asia's June Issue
Forbes Asia June 2025 cover
Often a key ingredient of a successful enterprise is having a founder or CEO with an infectious can-do spirit. Who sees any setback not as the end of the road but as an opportunity to forge a new path. Examples of such indefatigable, innovative individuals abound in these pages.
Manu Chopra: Harshith Dambekodi for Forbes Asia, BINI: Josh Tolentino/Artists & Company Manila for Forbes Asia, Ardy Ferguson: Jocelyn Tam for Forbes Asia, Anshita Mehrotra: Karan Nevatia for Forbes Asia, Jia Haojun & Yi Gang: Tim Gao for Forbes Asia, Gaby Rosenberg: Brendon Thorne for Forbes Asia, Jin Kim: Douglas Levy for Forbes Asia, Woo Qiyun: Munster Cheong for Forbes Asia, Hu Yao-chieh & Hang Meng-tse: Sung Tzu Fan for Forbes Asia
At the starting gate is the 300-strong cohort of our 30 Under 30 Asia list, now in its tenth edition. The class of 2025 features up-and-comers of different stripes—entrepreneurs, artists and athletes—from which five notables grace the magazine cover. Curating this list every year since its launch in 2016 is editorial director Rana Wehbe Watson, supported by a tireless team of editors and reporters across the region, with an external panel of experts weighing in on the final selection. The sheer volume of nominations received each year—4,500 in this round—illustrates how much Asia's young achievers aspire for this badge of honor. The distinctively vibrant look of this 16-page package is the handiwork of our creative design crew.
An accompanying section featuring successful alumni of past 30 Under 30 lists ties in with our traditional wealth coverage. Australia's Melanie Perkins (class of 2016), cofounder and CEO of design software giant Canva became a multibillionaire and debuted on the World Billionaires List in 2022. Refer also to our story on Harshil Mathur (Class of 2021), cofounder and CEO of Indian payment gateway Razorpay, who's a more recent entrant to the three-comma club.
Billionaires abound in the two wealth collations featured this month: Taiwan's 50 Richest and Japan's 50 Richest. Members of both these lists are seasoned entrepreneurs, who despite the tariff threat from the U.S. are collectively worth more than they were a year ago.
U-Next Holdings President and CEO, Yasuhide Uno
Robust chip sales drove up fortunes and minted two newcomers linked to that sector in Taiwan. Over in Japan, the biggest gainer this year is Uniqlo billionaire Tadashi Yanai, the country's richest person for seven years in the past decade, whose net worth hit an all-time high of $48.2 billion. An accompanying story features Yasuhide Uno, president and CEO of U-Next Holdings, who built a homegrown streaming rival to Netflix in Japan from a struggling business he inherited as a reluctant successor.
Sunny Varkey, the Indian-born chairman of Dubai-based GEMS Education.
A lesson in resilience can also be drawn from the story of Indian education billionaire Sunny Varkey, one of the world's largest operators of K-12 schools, whose Dubai-based GEMS Education took a hit in the pandemic. Now cashing in on Dubai's expat influx, Varkey is rolling out new schools and simultaneously expanding the GEMS brand in his native India in partnership with Gautam Adani, the country's second-richest person.
From rising startups to mature businesses, from tomorrow's tycoons to today's business leaders, we cover the full spectrum in this prime-time edition. As always, comments welcome at executiveeditor@forbesasia.com.
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