‘If one is determined, change will happen’
“Old habits are hard to break and new habits are hard to form. But if one is determined, then change is bound to happen,” says Dilip Asbe, MD and CEO of National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). Asbe, like his predecessor AP Hota, has been working to change the way India makes payments.
Photo: Unified Payments Interface (UPI)
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‘We deliberately chose to go where the problems are’
Born in 1950, Dr Abhay Bang (68) spent much of his childhood in Mahatma Gandhi’s Sevagram Ashram in Wardha, Maharashtra. His father was a Gandhian and the Mahatma’s teachings left a strong impression on him. He entered a medical college when he was 17 and met Rani Chari, his future wife. He completed his MD in Internal Medicine and she in Obstetrics & Gynaecology.
Photo: Dr Rani Bang & Dr Abhay Bang
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‘I always had the urge to do something differently’
Srikanth Bolla was born blind into a family of agriculturists in Seetharamapuram in Machilipatnam, Andhra Pradesh. Bolla persisted and triumphed against adversity, fighting every step of the way, from getting an education to venturing into an entrepreneurial career.
Photo: Srikanth Bolla (25)
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‘We know our borrowers; data is not everything’
Chandra Shekhar Ghosh didn’t quite set out to set up a bank. After clearing his MSc in Statistics from Dhaka University in 1985, he took up a job at BRAC in Bangladesh, before moving to West Bengal, where he had a short stint at a Howrah-based microfinance institution (MFI).
Photo: Bandhan Bank
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‘It’s better to touch a billion lives than have a billion dollars’
Working out of an unpretentious office in a Delhi suburb, social entrepreneurs twins Hilmi and Subhi Quraishi, founders of ZMQ, have been quietly transforming the lives of many using their coding skills.
Photo: ZMQ Development
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‘Remaining private allows us to reinvent ourselves’
Zoho, founded by Sridhar Vembu, is a highly successful ‘Made in India' software product company, with its software as a service products being used by over 30 million customers worldwide. The Zoho suite has emerged as a leader in the cloud and on devices. It today competes with global giants, including Microsoft, Google and Salesforce.