Latest news with #ManuChopra
Forbes
2 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
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@
Forbes
14-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The Changemakers And Activists On 30 Under 30 Asia Social Impact 2025 List
Forbes Asia With the global AI training dataset market poised for exponential growth over the next decade, social entrepreneur Manu Chopra saw an opportunity to channel some of that wealth to the rural poor. His nonprofit Karya pays villagers, many of them women, $5 an hour or more—roughly 20 times minimum wage—to be recorded speaking in their own language, which can be used by AI apps to understand and generate speech. About 70% of fees paid by its clients, which include the Indian government, U.S. tech giant Google and Indian ride-sharing company Ola, goes to the workers while Karya retains the rest to cover operating costs. Roughly 120 Indian dialects have been recorded so far and Karya says it has expanded into Kenya and Ethiopia. Chopra, CEO, cofounded Karya in 2021 with Vivek Seshadri, chief technology officer, and Safiya Husain, chief impact officer. Chopra's Karya is one example of how AI is being used by this year's Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia: Social Impact listees to create a positive change in their communities. 'To build a future of AI that is diverse and inclusive, we need to employ diverse and underrepresented populations.' The nonprofit has also received grants for research, including $2 million from the Gates Foundation to collect recorded speech from 30,000 rural women to capture their language, syntax and patterns of speech with the aim of combating gender bias in AI. Karya, which in Sanskrit means work that gives one dignity, says its goal is to provide support to half a million disadvantaged people over the next five years. Chopra, who has a bachelor's degree in computer science from Stanford University, notes: 'To build a future of AI that is diverse and inclusive, we need to employ diverse and underrepresented populations.' Forbes Asia Also in India, 26-year-old Arghya Bhattacharya has an ambitious mission: he wants to reduce the case backlogs in the country's clogged courts using AI. Together with Utkarsh Saxena (over 30), they cofounded Adalat AI, which is developing software that can transcribe depositions and take dictation in court. The non-profit says its product has been trained to understand legal jargon and local Indian languages, which helps ensure accuracy. Adalat AI says the software is being used in 3,000 courts across eight Indian states. In addition to AI, social entrepreneurs on this year's list are innovating using various other technologies to create apps and devices to help those with physical and developmental disabilities access therapy and improve their quality of life. Pravin Kumar, 26, founded in 2020 Dextroware Devices, a startup that developed Mouseware, a device worn on the head to control computers and smartphones, for use by people with upper limb disabilities. The startup completed the incubator program at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras and in 2023 Mouseware was India's winning entry for the James Dyson design awards. Turzo Bose and Lamia Sreya Rahman, cofounders of Vidi Labs In Hong Kong, Turzo Bose and Lamia Sreya Rahman cofounded Vidi Labs to help the visually impaired move independently using wearable cameras and "seeing" AI. Their company has developed Seekr, a device packed with depth sensors and scene and text recognition technologies to describe surroundings to the wearer. In 2025, Seekr won a CES Innovation Award in the Accessibility & AgeTech category. Also addressing challenges faced by the visually-impaired, Hunny Bhagchandani founded Ahmedabad-based Torchit, a company producing accessibility products. Torchit's flagship product is Saarthi, a cane that "reads" the environment and sends vibrations to warn of potential obstacles. The company's Jyoti AI, smart spectacles interpret text in multiple languages. For neurodivergent people including those with autism, ADHD and dyslexia–who make up an estimated 15% to 20% of the global population–Holly Fowler launched the Wable app, a social network to help them connect. Through Wable they can hook up with potential friends or set up dates; it even has a job board that recommends inclusive workplaces. Available in Australia and New Zealand, Wable plans to expand to the U.S., U.K. and Canada. Prathyusha Potharaju, cofounder of Grailmaker Innovations. Growing up with dyslexia herself, another listee, Prathyusha Potharaju cofounded Grailmaker Innovations to help kids with developmental disabilities access therapy in a more affordable and convenient way. The four-year-old company created Vision Nanny, a low-cost, interactive AI-powered learning software as an at-home therapy tool for children with Cerebral Visual Impairment (CVI). Recently, Potharaju and her team developed Spacefelt, an app that was developed with support from Hyderabad's LV Prasad Eye Institute, to allows the visually impaired navigate their surroundings. The list this year also highlights activists who are championing various social causes including women's rights, education and gender equality. An Afghan refugee in Pakistan, Helai Masudi is cofounder of Speak For Change, a volunteer-led platform which offers educational resources such as entrepreneurship webinars and writing workshops to young women in Afghanistan being denied access to schools by the Taliban. Masudi originally used Telegram groups to offer free online courses, which were expanded into a series profiling inspiring Afghan refugees, who have successful careers. Masudi,also helped coordinate disaster aid after the 2023 earthquake in the Herat Province, was one of the recipients of the Diana Award in 2024. In Nepal, transgender woman Rukshana Kapali is a champion of gender equality, having filed over 50 lawsuits against the government for greater legal recognition of transgender identity. The activist won one case last year, when the Supreme Court ruled that she can be identified legally as a woman, not as a third gender, without having to submit medical verification. Through her nonprofit Queer Youth Group, Kapali provides legal assistance to people fighting for their gender rights. —Additional Reporting by Anuradha Raghunathan Read our complete Social Impact list here – and be sure to check out our full Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2025 coverage here.
