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Isha, Akash Ambani make debut on Fortune's '40 Under 40' influencer list

New Delhi: Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's twin children Isha and Akash, and edtech startup Byju's founder Byju Raveendran are among the Indians who have debuted on Fortune's '40 Under 40' list of influential people around the globe.

Stating that the coronavirus pandemic has fundamentally altered the way people work and socialise, Fortune magazine said executives have moved quickly to support and empower employees while grappling with daunting challenges to the way their businesses operate.

"To reflect this wave of transformation, we decided that we needed to embrace change in this year's 40 Under 40. We needed to go bigger -- and search more widely," it said.

This year's list includes 40 influential people under 40 years of age in five categories — finance, technology, healthcare, government and politics, and media and entertainment.

In the technology list, Isha and Akash Ambani feature with Byju Raveendran.

"They say data is the new oil —w and when it comes to Reliance Industries, India's largest company, that's literally the case," Fortune said, adding the 47-year-old conglomerate amassed a fortune in petrochemicals before dominating the country's mobile connectivity market with Jio, a low-cost wireless carrier which debuted in 2016.

Reliance is a family business. Akash joined the company in 2014 after receiving an economics degree from Brown University. Isha joined a year later, following stints at Yale, Stanford and McKinsey.

"As Jio board members, they helped seal the company's recent megadeal with Facebook — $5.7 billion for a 9.99% stake — plus major follow-on investments from marquee tech titans like Google, Qualcomm, and Intel. The flurry of investments lent the business an eye-popping USD 65 billion private valuation," it said.

The Ambani scions, it said, lead enviable lives, "attending private concerts featuring Beyonce, partying with buddies Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas, living it up in a 27-story residential skyscraping pleasure palace in Mumbai."

"When the glam siblings are not basking in unfathomable luxury, they're training -- along with their younger brother, Anant, 25, a more recent addition to Jio's board — to take on their father's empire. A major proving ground will be e-commerce," it said.

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