America
Four Indian Americans among Crain's New York '40 under 40'
By
Arun KumarWashington, April 1
Four Indian Americans
figure among Crain's 2015 class of "40 Under 40" - described as "the
most talented, driven and dynamic professionals under the age of 40 who
are working in New York City today."
Picked up from more than 450
firms, the business magazine's choices range from a gifted ballerina to
a charismatic marketing guru. The four Indian-Americans in the list
are: Amy Jain, Aditya Julka, Reshma Saujani and Nina Tandon.
Amy
Jain, 32, a Harvard Business School graduate and former investment
banker, started BaubleBar, the accessories company that supplies
high-end stores like Nordstrom and Anthropologie.
"You need to
prove a value proposition and that the brand is cool and
fashionable-that's the biggest hurdle," Jain told Crain's. BaubleBar
gets 1,000 orders a day, each priced between $30 and $75 and features
about 75 new styles a week.
Jain expects to supply four more
retailers by end of 2015 and expand into pet and tech accessories.
"We've made every mistake in the book," she said. But that hasn't
deterred the Dallas native.
Aditya Julka, 33, CEO and co-founder
of Paddle8, an online auction house described as one of the
fastest-rising stars in the art market. "I take business problems and
break them down into small experiments we can test," he told Crain's.
A biochemical engineer with a Harvard MBA, Julka got into auctioneering after two successful biomedical ventures.
Paddle8, Crain's says, is gaining buzz quickly and is a site for those interested in works below $100,000.
Since its 2011 founding, the company has sold more than $50 million worth of art.
It
has also attracted more than $17 million in funding from investors
including artist Damien Hirst and the backers of Uber and BuzzFeed.
Reshma
Saujani, 39, founder of Girls Who Code, a three-year-old nonprofit that
teaches computer skills to girls from low-income communities.
It just finished its best year with 300 percent enrolment growth, 3,000 students in 24 states and more than $8 million raised.
Reshma
Saujani is aiming higher: 10,000 students by the end of 2015,
programmes in all 50 states and more success stories, like the two
graduates who built their own feminist mobile game, Tampon Run.
Democrat
Saujani, mother of a newborn boy, has made several unsuccessful bids
for elected office-Congress in 2010, public advocate in 2013. But
politics continues to beckon.
The last race was hard, she told
the magazine, but if another opportunity presents itself, she won't back
down. "Reshma," she mused in the third person, "loves infiltration."
Nina
Tandon, 35, Chief executive of EpiBone. Her startup has successfully
grown face bones for pigs and aims to move to human trials in three
years.
The company, whose nine employees are spread out among
Italy, Kazakhstan and the US, has raised $3.2 million in funding since
last summer.
For Tandon, an electrical engineer, a PhD and a Fulbright scholar, scaffolding is what the human body is built on.
The
living bones EpiBone grows-each one individually designed to fit a
particular living being--are what she one day hopes to use to replace
damaged bones in humans.
"Our product is a platform for your own cells to go in and repair your body," Tandon was quoted as saying.
(Arun Kumar can be contacted at [email protected])
Photo: Reshma Saujani