movers & makers
Founder & CEO, Robotix Learning Solutions
Ameera Shah
MD & CEO, Metropolis Healthcare
“The process of giving blood for tests was daunting for many customers, so we thought of making it easy for them,” Shah explains the goal of her family-run chain of pathology labs. Her ambition—scaling up as well as simplifying the process of giving blood for testing and making the experience as pleasant as possible. The Mumbai native quit her job in the US to join her father’s business at the age of 21. What started as a single laboratory set up in Mumbai by her father Sushil Shah, clocking in a little over US$1 million ( 7 crore) annually, is today an almost US$90million company ( 600 crore) with more than 25 partnerships in India, south Asia, Africa and the Middle East. The 37-year-old says, “Make in India resonates with me, since I returned to build my own business here.” SS
This Chennai-headquartered firm—with an office in the US— harnesses innovative robotic technology from around the world to design education programmes for primary and secondary schools. “Our programmes provide a fun, hands-on learning experience and helps develop skills that are important in the 21st century,” says Suchindran, who has a PhD in neuroscience from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She leads the technical strategy and product team to develop educational robots, while Prasad, who has a master’s degree from Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, handles the operations. She also leads social initiatives and works on product strategy, among other responsibilities. The duo has set up @IndianGirlsCode to make STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) subjects accessible and inspirational to young underprivileged girls. “We are trying to show the real-world application of STEM and robotics,” says Suchindran, to inspire young girls to code and become innovators. In July last year, the company collaborated with The Lighthouse Project, a Ford Motor Co Pvt Ltd, India initiative, to teach coding and robotics to 50 underprivileged children at the Kannagi Nagar School, Chennai. SC
Chiki Sarkar
Co-founder& Publisher, Juggernaut
This innovative mobile publishing app, Sarkar says, came about to directly talk to readers and make original content accessible at cheap prices (starting at 10). “My partner Durga [Raghunath] and I have managed to achieve a lot since we launched in April 2016—our app currently has 1,40,000 downloads, we publish a number of books, with one big bestselling title (Indian Superfoods by Rujuta Diwekar) already, and have signed on some exciting writers and personalities. The list includes established writers such as Arundhati Roy and Suketu Mehta as well as firsttimers like Sunny Leone and Sourav Ganguly,” she says. Sarkar, the former publisher of Penguin Random House India, started her career with Londonbased Bloomsbury Publishing, which shaped her approach to the field. “My first boss, Alexandra Pringle, taught me everything that’s important—to be brave, have fun, champion writers and throw a great dinner party.” From her vantage point, Sarkar weighs in on the Make in India tag: “In the context of books, it’s very clear to me. The biggest hits in India are home-grown. Indian readers demand made in India. And that’s where all the growth and excitement will be seen.” Amrita Tripathi, SheThePeople.TV
“In the context of books, The biggest hits in India are homegrown. Indian readers demand made in India. And that’s where all the growth excitement will be seen.”
photograph: bisual studio/stocksy
Aditi Prasad COO Deepti Rao Suchindran
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