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India is a young country. With over 900 million people under the age of 35, we have by far the largest youth population in the world. The individuals on this list are the vanguards and pioneers of this dynamic demographic: They are leaders of powerful micro-communities or mega stars bearing influence over millions across the country. They’re pioneering business models, defining culture, and disrupting the status quo.
They are driving innovation, pushing boundaries, and effecting change. Presenting GQ’s 2023 youth power list, featuring a set of incredible individuals who reflect the vitality and drive of the world’s fifth-largest economy.
Somewhere between her debut with Student of the Year (2012) and last year’s Gangubai Kathiawadi, in which she plays the indomitable matriarch of Mumbai’s oldest red light area, Bhatt became one of the finest actors of this generation. Leading the 2022 Sanjay Leela Bhansali production, which earned her the best actress award at the Dadasaheb Phalke International Film Festival, was only the start of a game-changing year. Then came her stints in RRR and Brahmastra: Part One – Shiva, two of Indian cinema’s most ambitious projects till date.
The past year also marked her debut as a producer with Darlings, a dark comedy with a powerful message about domestic violence, and saw the 30-year-old multi-hyphenate work towards making Ed-A-Mamma, her eco-conscious clothing brand for children that’s currently valued at roughly `150 crore, a one-stop shop for everything related to babies and mothers. The decision to include maternity wear in the new line stemmed from a happy personal space; after tying the knot with co-star Ranbir Kapoor, the couple turned new parents in November. The year ahead will see Bhatt juggling her many roles, with a Hollywood debut in Heart of Stone and Dharma’s Rock Aur Rani Ki Prem Kahani on the cards.
When King was on tour last year, he got a call from Warner Music Group’s Jay Mehta. Nick Jonas wanted to make a global version of the Indian rapper’s “Maan Meri Jaan”, a track that witnessed a meteoric rise up the music charts—the first non-film song to rank number 1 on India’s Top 50 charts and number 25 on Spotify’s Global Top 50, clocking in over a million daily streams on the service. “I didn’t even have to think twice. When I heard the first draft, I knew…‘Maan Meri Jaan (Afterlife)’ was going to fly,” says the rapper, whom very few refer to by his real name, Arpan Kumar Chandel.
MTV Hustle and Hustle 2.0 may have brought the 24-year-old rapper to the main stage of commercial hip-hop, but the big break came with 2020’s “Tu Aake Dekhle”, with over 400 million views on YouTube. King’s goal for 2023 is amplified on his Instagram highlights: to go global. He’s just wrapped up a track with Jason Derulo, has another one on the line with CKay, and is calling out Jack Harlow next. His upcoming New Life is likely to be one of the biggest albums of 2023.
Globally, documentaries thrive on grants, state support, and many layers of funding. In India, most of these pillars are non-existent. So, how does Monga continue putting her might and money behind them? “How can you say no to baby elephants?” she asks, referring to The Elephant Whisperers, which recently won a historic Oscar, the first for an Indian production, in the best documentary short film category. The previous documentary short film that she co-produced—2019’s Period. End of Sentence, a US production—also won an Academy Award.
The challenges on are always manifold—giant obstacles to be overcome. But Monga marches on, undeterred in her vision to back stories that are at the bleeding edge of Indian realities—from Gangs of Wasseypur to Lunchbox to Masaan—because “producing is not just putting money but an art, finding innovative ways” to breathe life into stories that matter. Monga is already looking to double down on series and documentary features and fundraising for her production house, Sikhya Entertainment. Her goal: “To win many more Oscars, so I can complete my speech!”
For those who achieve it, an Academy Award is as much a jet-fuelled vehicle for career advancement as it is the ultimate validation for one’s creative efforts. For Gonsalves—the first Indian woman to win an Academy Award for film-making—it’s equally a way to effect change benefiting multiple ecosystems. Her maiden documentary film, The Elephant Whisperers, with its story about human-animal communion has managed to galvanize public interest in the increasingly prevalent issue of shrinking animal habitats, particularly for elephants, who are now set to have their own camp in the Anamalai Tiger Reserve.
Gonsalves’s win is historic for a variety of reasons. Other than being the first woman film-maker from India to win an Oscar, she’s also the new torchbearer for independent film-making in a country where the solemn message of documentary films is often drowned out by the cacophony of mainstream cinema.
For her next project Gonsalves is headed to the Pacific Northwest, shooting a documentary that focuses on the sacred relationship between the Indigenous people of the First Nations and orcas. “They’re both matriarchal; they both come with a lot of sacred wisdom.” Thanks to the spotlight the Oscar win has placed on her, Gonsalves’s next documentary will be larger in scale and scope. “We’re working on an animal that is much larger than an elephant; we’re going underwater and also delving deeper into the scientific aspect of orca lives.”
It all started with a love song he wrote at 16. Today, “Baarishein”, Jain’s breakout track that put him on the map in India’s booming indie-music scene, has over 56 million views on YouTube and 115 million streams on Spotify, and is a popular background score to (too) many Instagram heartbreak reels. Maybe that’s what makes his music resonate with younger audiences, he muses.
The fact that he’s singing about the most basic of human experiences. But it’s not all melancholia and wistfulness. The pandemic saw Jain mature as a singer-songwriter and with popular singles like “Alag Aasmaan” (2020) and “Mazaak” (2022)—both products of lockdown months—that delved into the lighter side of deep emotions.
There are no small roles—or small venues. That was a five-year-old Bhatia’s M.O. when she would happily perform in any arena she was given—a philosophy she’s carried with her, choosing roles less for airtime and more for impact. It served her well, with her explosive success in films like 2015’s Baahubali: The Beginning—the role she believes made people take notice of her as an actor, after 2007’s Telugu-language Happy Days put her on the map. Over 70 films, eight Filmfare Awards South nominations, and an Instagram following of 20.6 million later, there’s little doubt that Bhatia is influential. It’s how she believes in wielding that influence that makes her unique. “I now consciously post on social media. It’s a platform to be yourself, which matters because people tend to see actors as characters first.”
Not every actor can navigate two distinct regional film industries with grace, but Bhatia has. “The southern film industries are inclined to be more authentic to their culture, while Hindi cinema needs to consider the country as a whole,” she says. Her foray into Hindi films was, as she describes it “a big banner on paper, but a disaster at the box office”—a serious setback, had Baahubali not come along when it did. “I held on through the failure. It’s the most important trait to possess if you want to thrive in the film industry: resilience. That and people skills,” she says. “You can have all the talent, but if you have the wrong temperament, your days are numbered.”
For Rao, the success of a movie lies in its timelessness. “The Godfather was made in 1972, but we’re still watching it. Those are the kinds of films I want to do…. they’re for life—not just the week or weekend.” The actor’s filmography stands testament to this vision. Be it Shahid (2013), in which he plays the titular Mumbai lawyer who was assassinated in 2010, or Newton (2017), in which he serves as an idealistic bureaucrat trying to hold fair elections in a restive part of central India, Rao has a penchant for picking scripts that remain relevant long after the box office spotlight wanes.
Post-pandemic, when the industry was scrambling to make big-budget masala movies to draw the crowds back to the theatres, Rao made Badhaai Do (2022), in which he plays a gay cop in a lavender marriage, and Bheed (2023), a black-and-white film about the tragic plight of the migrant workers during the lockdown months. But then he also starred in a neo-noir crime thriller Monica, O My Darling (2022) and his upcoming projects—Guns and Gulaabs, the Netflix debut series from Raj and D.K.; Sri, a biopic on visually impaired industrialist Srikanth Bolla; and Mr. and Mrs. Mahi opposite Janhvi Kapoor—just prove why Rajkummar Rao will never be boxed in.
Ask Agarwal about the vision he had for Purple Style Labs and he makes no bones about the French luxury conglomerate LVMH being his inspiration. “Engineers aren’t known for their fashion, so it’s not like IIT brought out that side in me,” Agarwal says, before bursting out laughing. “I began PSL in 2015 because there was a real opportunity: Plenty of people were tapping into mass fashion, but no one had really conquered the luxury market.” Cut to 2023, and PSL—a luxury fashion collective that includes brands like Pernia’s Pop-Up Shop and Wendell Rodricks—is well on its way.
Pernia, its prize horse, is growing rapidly—ranked at number 29 by The Economic Times among the country’s fastest-growing companies and at number 89 in the Financial Times (High Growth Companies Asia Pacific), while raising millions in funding and opening a 50,000-square-foot experience centre in Delhi at the iconic Indian Handicrafts Emporium. Agarwal is a collector—both of limited edition automobiles and fashion brands he can acquire and grow. “I will never create from scratch,” he says. “What I do is to build on established brand equity. We’ll be a listed company, for sure. The plan is to go public over the next four years.”
As an actor, Kulhari is naturally drawn to playing strong characters. Be it the ruthlessly ambitious Anjana Menon in the popular comedy-drama series Four More Shots Please!, or the newly divorced Neha Siddiqui in Mission Mangal (2019), she takes on roles that have empowered storylines. “This is my way of breaking through the clutter,” says the actor, who, beyond the mainstream, has recently dabbled in experimental projects like the dystopian short The List with Angad Bedi and Rest Of The Night, a black-and-white short about a woman battling loneliness and insomnia while cooped up indoors during lockdown.
Kulhari’s penchant for taking on stories with messages that matter had her donning a new hat in 2022, that of a producer. Her production house Kintsukuroi Films made her start from scratch in many ways, as she took the past year to learn how to “navigate a new space”, even attending the Berlin Film Festival in February to understand the international market. Kulhari’s roster of upcoming projects includes Kintsukuroi Films’ first feature, a dark comedy called Nayeka; Khichdi 2; and an unnamed film with Madhavan.
Contrary to the complacency you might expect in a star child, there isn’t a blasé bone in Kapoor’s body. “My mother and father instilled that in me early on—the understanding that there’s no substitute for hard work.” With parents who have cinema legacies, the shadow looms large, but since her debut (Dhadak) in 2016, Kapoor has stepped out from under it to find her own place in the sun. “Someone called me a ‘lazy actor’ in Dhadak, and while there’s a lot of things you can say about me, that isn’t one. It hurt me, but also gave me even more drive than ever.” With powerful performances in Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl (2020), and last year’s Good Luck Jerry and Mili, she showcased her talent and made her mark.
Yet it is the cute goofiness and candid imperfection that she reveals on her social media that is equally responsible for her legion of fans. “I think there’s a lot of judgment when you’re in the public eye, and that can get to you,” Kapoor reveals. “I’ve always found vulnerability powerful; I’ve been inspired by it when I’ve seen it in my role models. I know what it’s like to be a young impressionable mind and I want the people who look up to me to feel like they can make their mistakes and won’t be judged for them.”
Rodrigues is the quintessential next-gen cricketer: bold with the bat, confident on camera, and a prolific social media performer. The 22-year-old from Bandra, Mumbai, who made her debut for the national team in 2018, has scored an average of nearly 30 runs in 80 T20 Internationals, and in the World T20 semifinal against Australia in February, Rodrigues almost dragged India to a win alongside captain Harmanpreet Kaur. But India fell short by five runs despite her imperious 24-ball 43.
She was the epitome of consistency in the inaugural season of the Women’s Premier League (WPL), scoring again at an average of nearly 30 in the league, after being acquired by the Delhi Capitals for Rs 2.2 crore.
But even more than the runs, Rodrigues’s star power has helped significantly raise the popularity of women’s cricket. Easy-going and fun-loving, she’s seemingly always poised to break into a tune or bust out her dance moves for her legions of social media fans.
For Chennai-based actor Regina Cassandra, national success came sooner than she’d expected. It was kick-started in 2022 with her role as Mrinalini Sarabhai in Rocket Boys, which she played with sensitivity and depth, followed by her performance as a steely flight lieutenant in Shoorveer. Yet it is perhaps her character, Rekha, in Prime Video’s Farzi that stood out most, because it was written and portrayed in a way that does not serve the male protagonists.
In the series, she calls out the flaws in Vijay Sethupathi’s character, Michael. Their separation and subsequent divorce is not skimmed over, with the complexity of a complicated relationship artfully showcased. With her knack for picking out progressive roles within an Indian context, Cassandra displays a rare creative instinct that will keep her in the spotlight for years to come.
“That guy with weird clothes” is how Batra captioned one of his images—wearing a glowing green netted shirt paired with an opulent pearl necklace. It’s a story, sure, but it’s the kind of story that stretches the sanitized boundaries of fashion. Batra says that his earliest memory of trying to “pull off a slight style was being punished for a half-tucked shirt” in his strict army school.
From pursuing mechanical engineering to writing and styling shoots and now creating content, Batra narrates stories through his unconventional aesthetic, blurring the boundaries of gender. It’s “all about pulling anything off with confidence” for him, thanks to the confidence he imbued in himself through his “friends from the queer community”. Batra acknowledges his privilege—of not being conflicted with his identity, of having supportive parents. But at the end of it all, just “creating 20 looks on the daily teaches you to break all rules and boundaries”.
“Hip-hop doesn’t have rules. I don’t either,” says rapper Altaf Shaikh, a.k.a. the phenomenon MC Stan. The 23-year-old’s unvarnished authenticity—both in personality and music—has earned him a devoted fan base of 11.1 million Instagram followers, 7.5 million YouTube subscribers, and 4.3 million monthly Spotify listeners. So when he entered as a contestant in season 16 of the buzzy Bigg Boss reality show, his fans were ready. Four months later, he was declared the winner and the most highly voted contestant in the show’s history.
MC Stan’s been on the road since, with international shows of his Basti Ka Hasti Tour; collaborations with DIVINE, Badshah, and Karan Aujla; and a new experimental album on the cards. Currently, he’s vibing with Playboi Carti’s rage music, and credits the Atlanta hip-hop scene as a big inspiration for his sound. “I’ve always likened the ATL rap scene to the one in my hometown Pune—P-town baby!—while Mumbai is more influenced by West Coast rap.” Some call him a pioneer of mumble rap in India, but he doesn’t like labels. His objective for making music is far simpler: “Main chahta hu ki bine daaru ke logo ka body hilaoon.”
On a flight to Munich, Vishwas—who had worked in practically every sector but alcohol—came across a stray article about mead. He called his best friend of 33 years, cofounder Rohan Rehani, and they decided to act on an idea they’d been toying with for 15 years: making beer. Research began (“on Reddit”, Vishwas chortles) and all threads led to the fact that no one was really making mead—in the entire continent.
The boys brewed a batch in Rehani’s grandmother’s kitchen, and the garage project was so well received by their friends that they filed for cabinet approvals to be the first meadery in India. Cut to three years later and they’re winning IWSC silvers and bronzes; are available in 1,500 outlets across India, UAE, Australia, and New Zealand; and are responsible for myriad new meaderies that have hopped on the bandwagon. “The tough nut to crack was creating a category—not entering one, like gin or whisky—and convincing people to drink it,” Vishwas says. The big goal for Moonshine is an altruistic one: to save the Indian honey industry from its nearing extinction.
Last year was a big one for Koli. A Bollywood debut with Jugjugg Jeeyo, followed by a successful season two of Netflix’s popular Mismatched series, that’s now returning for a third. As UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) India’s first “Youth Climate Champion”, she’s been using her platform, which includes 6.8 million subscribers on her YouTube channel, MostlySane, and 7.5 million followers on Instagram, to “break down the jargon around climate change into bite-sized content for younger audiences”.
Much of Koli’s appeal as a young creator rests on this desire to amplify and simplify critical issues for her audiences, a mission highlighted in the Daytime Emmy–winning YouTube documentary “Creators for Change”, featuring Michelle Obama, Koli, and other prominent voices. The year ahead is buzzing, with her latest project propelling her into the world of superheroes with season two of Marvel’s Wastelanders—the Hindi Audible Original podcast series. There’s also Audible’s Desi Down Under, Anu Menon’s Neeyat, and an undisclosed upcoming series. What about a five-year plan? “I’m just letting the universe take the wheel,” says Koli.
If there’s anything that playing Dr. Vikram Sarabhai across two successful seasons of SonyLiv’s Rocket Boys has taught Singh, it’s this: to commit ever further and more deeply to his craft. And so, even as he basks in the success of the new season of the show that chronicles the lives of celebrated Indian physicists Dr. Homi Bhabha and Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, he’s been training round the clock for the many exciting projects that have come his way since.
These include supernatural thriller Adhura, co-produced by Rocket Boys creator Nikkhil Advani; spy thriller Berlin, in which he stars alongside Aparshakti Khurana; and Nitesh Tiwari and Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari’s young-adult comedy-drama Bas Karo Aunty. In an industry that tends to pigeonhole actors, especially those working largely in the streaming arena, Singh is on a mission to diversify.
As the son of prolific film producer Kumar Mangat, it was only natural that Pathak gravitated towards film-making. He directed a short film Boond in 2009, but focused more on producing films before making 2019’s Ujda Chaman as an experiment. When Drishyam director Nishikant Kamat passed away in 2020, the 37-year-old Pathak was persuaded to helm last year’s Drishyam 2.
“We had the rights to produce, but were looking for a director,” Pathak says. “We started throwing names around and dad asked, ‘Why don’t you do it?’ ” It helped that the thriller is his favourite genre, and Pathak did it his way, creating a unique world and mood for the film—centred on evergreen, versatile Ajay Devgn. The result? One of the biggest theatrical hits of the past year.
For as long as she can remember, Qureshi always wanted to be a storyteller. At the turn of the last decade, she stood out as Mohsina in the two-part Gangs of Wasseypur—unassuming in her dialogues, owning the character in the way she presented herself. She’s now pursuing roles that are wildly different from anything else she’s done. In her cameo as Dilruba in Gangubai Kathiawadi for the song “Shikayat”, director Sanjay Leela Bhansali trusted her enough to discard the originally planned heavy-handed choreography for a layered set of “facial expressions that could mirror the angst of Alia Bhatt’s character”.
And when critics praised her for portraying a “vamp” so beautifully, in her career-defining role as the titular character in Vasan Bala’s Monica, O My Darling earlier this year, she was vocal about the sexist connotations that that word carries. Qureshi’s upcoming projects are varied and textured: playing veteran food writer Tarla Dalal in a biopic and a role in Pooja Meri Jaan a “social commentary meets courtroom drama”.
Even before Gunehgar, the latest album from Vivian Fernandes a.k.a. DIVINE, blew up on streaming platforms—Ranveer Singh was already using “Baazigar (feat. Armani White)” as the backing track on all his Instagram stories. Such is DIVINE’s reach as the kingpin of Mumbai’s gully rap scene, which got propelled into the mainstream after Zoya Akhtar’s Gully Boy, a (loose) retelling of the rapper’s journey to hip-hop’s main stage. At 32, DIVINE is much too young to be labelled a “veteran”, but he certainly seems to be more intentional about his music these days. Gunehgar, which dropped last November and features international acts like Jadakiss, Russ producer Hit-Boy, Noizy, and Armani White, came after a substantial break.
Back-to-back live city gigs have been replaced by global festivals—Lollapalooza’s India debut and Wireless Festival in Abu Dhabi kicking off the list. He also serves as a mentor of sorts to the recent crop of emerging desi rappers in the country—those with opportunities he “could never have even dreamed of” when first starting out. What about Indian hip-hop’s presence on the global rap scene? “For that, we need to make it stronger here at home first. Everything else will follow naturally.”
Its take on the beauty market is unique: what founder Vineeta Singh describes as “fast fashion, for the face”. Their M.O. is range—options that for example help women discover shades of foundation they once only were able to acquire through a “friend in the US”; or find a trending neon eyeliner that Singh admits only 1 percent of her consumers might buy. “Catering to everyone means making enough products—including niche ones that don’t translate to sales. But that’s what’s made us popular: People can always find what they’re looking for.”
Sugar’s stats are impressive: over 45,000 retail touchpoints across more than 550 cities; over 4 million downloads of their app, which has also launched in the US, among other countries; and over 2.6 million Instagram followers. So what’s next? “We want to have 10,000 women employees. And we will—it’s just a question of ‘by when’. ”
In an industry that loves slotting actors into lazy categories, Thakur’s journey from soaps to multi-crore film projects is staggering. Her debut in the 2018 Hindi film Love Sonia delved into the world of human trafficking and challenged the perception that mainstream actors need to make their debuts with flowing hair and groovy numbers next to a leading man who will carry the film. The result was a spate of people who, influenced by the film, started nonprofits to combat human trafficking. When it was screened for the parliament of Uzbekistan, Thakur says they “changed three laws in favour of women”.
For her segment in Netflix’s upcoming second instalment of Lust Stories, she stars opposite Angad Bedi. For Thakur, the light of these characters does not cease to glow when the end credits roll. She was “raised in a conservative [Maharashtrian] household where topics such as human trafficking and sex were not even discussed”. Now, these conversations take place at home and beyond—provoked through her stories.
The mundaneness and tedium of his advertising job got to Abhiraj Rajadhyaksha sooner than he thought it would. And so he and his wife Niyati trundled across the countryside, scoping out stories that had disappeared along the margins, and shared them under #100ReasonsToLoveIndia. The couple wanted to plug a gap in the way we consume and understand stories because “there is always news about the many problems facing us, but the stories of [people effecting change] get lost along the way”. These are stories of Tulu Nadu queen Abbakka Chowta who pushed back against Portuguese colonists but remains forgotten in our history books or even the kindness of a truck driver in the middle of a deserted road in Tripura.
These stories reaffirm life. The Instagram reels and YouTube shorts that documented them raked up millions of views. These days the duo share “informative videos on subjects as diverse as decoding the union budget documents, the intricacies of climate change, and the shady ethics of the paan industry”. Their videos reach civil service aspirants, doctors, and engineers—the building blocks of a young nation.
With streetwear blowing up across India, it is Delhi-based label, Almost Gods, that is emerging as the creative numero uno. Founder Dhruv Khurana’s idea is to engage in the discourse of fashion through a cultural lens, broadening how people engage with clothes as markers of communities. Khurana’s designs combine modern streetwear silhouettes with works of art—primarily paintings. It’s been just five years since Almost Gods launched, and the label has already garnered a cult following among hypebeasts and street-style enthusiasts. The bold, eye-catching garments and accessories are stocked across India, Europe, and North America and have been seen on the likes of DaniLeigh, Machine Gun Kelly, Ranveer Singh, and Mike Snell.
Masaba Gupta is the consummate multi-hyphenate. Two successful labels—House of Masaba, in which Aditya Birla Fashion bought a 51 percent stake last year, and LoveChild, a carefully curated beauty and skincare line for all Indian skin types—a series of acting projects (Netflix’s Masaba Masaba and the popular anthology series Modern Love Mumbai), and most recently the podcast “How I Masaba” took up all her time last year. These days, however, she finds herself turning down projects that come her way.
Social media validation has taken a back seat for the moment, with even the posts on her wedding to Satyadeep Misra shared as an afterthought. That’s not to say that she doesn’t feel like a “hot mess” on most days—the theme of her namesake show’s first season that was a hard relate for most late-20- and early-30-somethings—or that she’s decelerating on her many ambitious projects. An almost aggressive expansion of House of Masaba is on the cards, as well as the offline expansion of LoveChild products. For the next season of “How I Masaba”, she wants to break the norm and host an interesting mix of people who haven’t made it in their industries. She’s also revving up to play Lisa Cartwright in Marvel’s Wastelanders: Black Widow—Audible’s upcoming Hindi podcast series. The idea is to take on less, but spend more energy on it. “If your work is good, you can’t be ignored,” she says.
When Salmaan made his film debut in 2012, his biggest challenge was getting out of the rather long shadow of his father: one of Malayalam cinema’s biggest names, Mammootty. So he diversified into films in other languages early in his career. As the rebellious Aju in 2014’s Bangalore Days, Salmaan earned a pan-South Indian audience, his easy-going charm and strong screen presence making him an actor worth following. Mani Ratnam turned him into a youth icon when he bet on Salmaan’s likeability with OK Kanmani (2015).
The 37-year-old has had mixed success in Hindi, with Karwaan (2018), The Zoya Factor (2019), and Chup (2022), before last year’s Telugu-turned-multilingual Sita Ramam brought the kind of language-agnostic attention that hit OTT shows do. Among several projects that are lined up are Raj and D.K.’s upcoming series Guns and Gulaabs and a Malayalam film, King of Kotha, that Salmaan is producing. As he begins his second decade as an actor, Salmaan has reached a stage of recognition in which he no longer needs to be introduced as Mammootty’s son.
Even after his label Countrymade won “The Showcase” at Blenders Pride Fashion Tour in 2020, Sushant Abrol didn’t rest on his laurels, showing dramatic improvement with each new collection and season. The label, which launched in late 2019, is known for thought-provoking narratives around the military and taking a modern approach to design while celebrating the artisanal strength of Indian craft. Abrol’s designs are minimal and wearable in approach, but well-tailored and sharp, featuring unique details that fit right in the world of contemporary menswear.
Countrymade debuted at Copenhagen International Fashion Fair in August 2022, and this year, in January, Abrol showcased his collection at Tranoï, the official Paris Fashion Week trade show, building on the growing momentum of his fresh, young brand.
Soon after getting her commerce degree, Pandey seemed a little lost about what to do next. That’s when she had her first encounter with interpreting outfits, morphing and styling them in myriad ways, then making short videos behind her former college’s canteen. What happened next was an explosion in interest in her content, with her social following growing to nearly 2 million. Pandey’s fashion is accessible. Her videos show you that finely cut couture isn’t the only way to be theatrical or grand.
One of her videos, in which she styled a simple white shirt in half a dozen ways, went viral primarily because even though “clothes are supposed to be worn a certain way, there is much more to them”. Pandey’s content acknowledges the wide-ranging possibilities of fashion, of being creatively stylish with even the most basic wardrobe.
With strong performances that span the Kannada, Tamil, and Telugu cinemascapes (and four Filmfare Awards South trophies to prove it), Singh proves what it really takes to crack the business is mettle. “I didn’t have a godfather or guidance; I thought pageants were the best way to get into acting,” Singh says about her starting point. Well before her Miss India accolades in 2011, her modelling portfolio had already drawn attention from the film industries of the South. “When I shot my first film in 2012, I didn’t speak a word of Telugu,” Singh says, though she now speaks it as fluently as Hindi or English.
Her debut in Hindi cinema came with the 2014 cult phenom Yaariyan, which set off a slate of strong performances. Singh’s M.O.? Work begets work. “I often put in 350 days in a year because I believed doing good work was the only way to get more.” It’s her military-family-derived work ethic that seeps into everything—including running her gym chain (F45), investing in nutrition, and starting New Boo (reusable diapers).
Singh has also started Starring You, a platform that aims to be the “LinkedIn for the film industry”—with a database of 30,000 names (and counting). “There’s no system for people in our industry to find projects. The plan is to remedy that.”
Three days after Rahul Reddy soft-launched Subko with Daniel Trulson, cofounder of Puducherry’s Bread & Chocolate, in March 2020, the pandemic struck. Yet the founders held their nerve—and vision, of sourcing “Indian ingredients and presenting them with a global outlook”. From Reddy’s vantage point, the subcontinent rarely figured on the global coffee map despite India’s rich coffee heritage.
The brew he made was not tailored to Indian sensibilities, and Reddy consciously wanted to move the palate in a different, global direction. The coffee was sourced from the farms of Ratnagiri to the highlands of Meghalaya and beyond. The plan now is to go deeper into the premium specialty coffee concept, giving an Indian spin to it all. Only a few weeks ago, Subko’s The Cacao Mill became Mumbai’s first chocolate factory, a quaint mill tucked away from the din of the Colaba market, where workers craft and weave ingredients into a truly desi story.
When the country first locked down in March 2020, the restaurant industry panicked. But Rebel Foods was miles ahead of the curve. With household names like Faasos, Behrouz Biryani, Oven Story Pizza, and Firangi Bake under its enormous belt, Rebel Foods eventually became the largest cloud kitchen restaurant chain in the world. Today, with over 450 cloud kitchens spread over 10 countries, the company is fuelled by the kind of “disruptive” innovation that functions at breakneck speed. They have their own launcher (Rebel OS), as well as a toe in multiple successful brands (Mad Over Donuts, Big Wong, Wendy’s).
The goal is also to make the online food experience smarter and smoother. Their most recent breakthrough? EatSure—essentially a “food court on an app”. “Often [one person] wants biryani while the other wants a burger, and a third person wants dim sum,” cofounder Sagar Kochhar says. “We wanted to solve that by making all kinds of food accessible through the same app, without the hassle of placing, handling, and paying extra for multiple orders.”
Khurana doesn’t like the word “typecast”, but after a string of successful comedies—Dangal (2016), Stree (2018), Pati Patni Aur Woh (2019)—he was ready to break from the genre-specific mould. The opportunity to take on more layered characters came last year with Kookie Gulati’s Dhokha: Round D Corner, where he plays a terrorist on the loose and more recently with Vikramaditya Motwane’s Jubilee, a period drama series on the golden era of Hindi cinema. Khurana shines as Binod Das a.k.a. superstar Madan Kumar, the show’s most intriguing and dangerous character. While Binod, a trusted aide in the country’s top film studio, may have skewered his moral compass to achieve his lifelong dream—of becoming a movie star—Khurana lauds his character’s passion.
It’s because he’s “been Binod” in the past, once even taking up a low-level job in a music TV show just so he could host it someday. The dreams have gotten bigger and better since, but the commitment to the craft remains. The year ahead will see the actor getting more experimental with Atul Sabharwal’s spy-thriller Berlin and a travel-and-history-based documentary with Applause Entertainment. “It’s a golden time for Indian documentaries, and I want to be the first [mainstream] actor in the space,” he declares.
As soon as Tacker signed Neeraj Pandey’s Khakee: The Bihar Chapter, the pandemic hit. When the show finally released on screen, he “didn’t sleep a wink the night before, down with anxiety”. The shoot for Khakee was an exercise in masterful storytelling and the drive to give one’s all to a story—diving into the forests and alleyways of Jharkhand under the blazing North Indian sky for hours on end. On day one, through certain scenes in the series, he understood the long shadow of casteism in smaller towns and cities beyond his “Bombay-bred bubble”.
It was this realism, he says, that has been appreciated by judges and IPS officers; some of them even tagged him in tweets declaring that India finally has a cop-gangster story “minus the jingoism, and that doesn’t celebrate things we don’t need to”, Tacker says with pride.
The 2008 financial crash got brothers Ravi and Raghu Kumar and fellow University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign grad Shrinivas Viswanath to move from the US and form a company in India to help Indians invest in the financial market using technology. The company RKSV Securities, now called Upstox, which has had Kavitha Subramanian as a cofounder since 2016, became a unicorn last year. The stock and mutual fund investment platform has a user base of more than 10 million, riding on the sharp increase in the number of retail investors online trading firms have attracted since the beginning of the pandemic.
Viswanath—a computer science engineer and former program manager at Citibank—heads strategy, product, and operations in the company whose investors include Ratan Tata and Tiger Global. The 37-year-old Viswanath has said in the past that their goal is to add 20 million to 30 million users by this financial year and 100 million in the next five years.
Malik took a leap of faith when he released his first English single in March 2020. “For too long, I waited for someone in the Indian music space to open the door to creating non-Hindi, non-filmy pop music. When that didn’t happen, I realized I had to do it myself,” says the 27-year-old singer, who bagged his second MTV Europe Music Award for “Best India Act” in 2022. According to Malik, it’s a great time to be a musician in India, with the past three years ushering in a democratization of the country’s music scene.
This has also allowed him to break out from a singular identity—as one of India’s most cherished playback singers—and embrace an additional layer: an Indian pop star taking his music to the global stage. The track “2step”, a peppy collaboration in 2022 with British singer-songwriter Ed Sheeran, was just the beginning. This year will see him experimenting with music across new genres and languages, including Arabic and Spanish.
Goyal has been ahead of the curve ever since she launched her namesake label in 2014. In a market revolving around ceremonial fashion and tailoring, Goyal’s designs speak to the urban youth—leaning heavily into denim and elements of streetwear. She is the only Indian designer to have a consistent presence at New York Fashion Week, and has collaborated with brands like Adidas Originals, Smartwater, and Absolut. Earlier this year, Goyal launched Kilogram, a new label that offers easy-to-wear, unisex, elevated basics that are imbued with the line’s signature narrative, all while maintaining an effortlessly cool and visually ambiguous street element in its graphic language.
