US MOST CR E AT I VE P EO P L E
For going up against Big Smiley Jennifer 8. Lee and Yiying Lu Cofounders, Emojination
FOR OFFERING INDIA’S BUDGET HOTEL OWNERS AN UPGRADE Ritesh Agarwal Founder and CEO, Oyo
Recognising that the small, independently owned hotels, inns, and guesthouses that account for most of India’s hotel inventory could offer travelers better experiences with the right technology, Ritesh Agarwal launched Oyo. Five years later, he has knit together the country’s largest budget hospitality company by giving property owners tools that automate room availability, revenue management, customer relations, and marketing, boosting occupancy rates to roughly 75% (65% of guests are repeat visitors). With more than 75 000 rooms spread across India, Nepal, and Malaysia (accounting for 2.2 million room nights in December alone), Oyo is also one of India’s most powerful booking engines: 95% of its reservations are made through company channels, eliminating travel agency fees. “The neighbourhood hotel can now fight the big boys,” Agarwal says. 50 FASTCOMPANY.CO.Z A JUNE 2018
If you’ve ever used emoji like the hijab or the DNA double helix, you can thank Jennifer 8. Lee and Yiying Lu. The pair founded Emojination, a platform that allows anyone to submit a symbol to be considered for the world’s keyboard. Lu, a Chinese-born graphic artist, and Lee, a Chinese-American writer and entrepreneur, started Emojination in 2015, after making plans for a dumpling dinner over text and realising there was no dumpling emoji. “Dumplings are universal— and emoji is a global universal language,” Lee says. They learned that the Unicode Consortium consists of 12 organisations, including Apple and Google, that pay $18 000 (R220k) a year for the privilege of voting on the lexicon, a process that can take more than 18 months. “How do you take something run by tech culture and make it inclusive?” Lu says. Emojination offers cloudbased tools to help aspiring contributors with everything from designing icons to writing proposals. Of the 66 new emoji approved for 2018, 45 came from Emojination, including a women’s flat shoe, a mosquito (developed with the Gates Foundation), and, for noshers everywhere, a bagel.