‘Indigenous Achievers’: Meet The Entrepreneurs Conferred With Padma Awards 2020

The Government of India had announced the Padma Awards 2020, conferring 7 Padma Vibhushan, 16 Padma-Bhushan and 118 Padma-Shri awards to various eminent personalities.

In the Trade and Industry category, the government has announced Padma Awards for 11 entrepreneurs.

Among the 11 entrepreneurs, Padma-Bhushan has been conferred to Anand Mahindra (Mahindra Group) and Venu Srinivasan (TVS Group).

While, Padma-Shri will be given to Jai Prakash Agarwal (Surya Roshni), Sanjeev Bhikchandani (Naukri), Gafurbhai Bilakhia (Micro Inks) Chewang Motup Goba (Rimo Expeditions), Bharat Goenka (@tallysolutions), Nemnath Jain (Prestige Group), Vijay Sankeshwar (VRL Group), Romesh Wadhwani (Symphony) and Prem Watsa (Fairfax Holdings).

Anand Mahindra is an Indian billionaire businessman, and the chairman of Mahindra Group. The group operates in aerospace, agribusiness, aftermarket, automotive, components, construction equipment, defence, energy, farm equipment, finance and insurance, industrial equipment, information technology, etc. An incisive business commentator and humanitarian with over 7 million followers on Twitter, Mahindra also initiated the Nanhi Kali programme, which, for the last two decades, has provided over 330,000 under-privileged girls access to high quality education.

Venu Srinivasan, is an Indian industrialist, who is the Chairman of TVS Group which include Sundaram-Clayton Group and its subsidiary TVS Motor Company, India's third largest maker of two-wheelers. With the success of TVS, he has shown how an Indian company can grow to be a company of global quality and recognition and manufacture products that can match or even exceed the best in the world by adopting the right work ethos and successful work culture.

As part of the social outreach of TVS Motors and Sundaram-Clayton, he oversees Srinivasan Services Trust (SST), which works in 5,000 villages in India . SST's model is one of self development for village communities in India covering education, healthcare, infrastructure, economic development, environment and community development.

Jai Prakash Agarwal is chairman of Surya Roshni Limited (formerly Prakash Surya Roshni Limited), which is an Indian multinational Fans, Steel, Lighting, LED, Kitchen Appliances and PVC Pipes manufacturing company headquartered in Delhi, India. Surya exports its products over 44 countries and has a turnover close to Rs. 5,975 crore.

The organisation also runs Surya Foundation, a social NGO established in 1992 by Jai Prakash Agarwal, with a view to promote a greater sense of national consciousness and social awareness among our countrymen particularly the youth.

Sanjeev Bikhchandani is an Indian businessman, who is the founder and executive vice chairman of Info Edge which owns Naukri.com as well as the co-founder of Ashoka University. His company also runs Jeevansathi.com, 99acres.com, and Shiksha.com. He is also an astute investor, having invested in unicorns like Policybazaar and Zomato.

Gafur Bilakhia is a Gandhian and an industrialist who is settled in Vapi, South Gujarat. Presently, his sons handle the Bilakhia Group of Companies, as reported by Ahmedabad Mirror.

Chewang Motup is the owner and founder of Rimo Expeditions, which is India's foremost organiser of treks and expeditions to the Himalaya and East Karakoram stretching from Ladakh and Himachal Pradesh to Uttarakhand, Nepal, Darjeeling, Sikkim, Bhutan, Arunachal Pradesh, north-eastern India and Tibet. He also organises the Ladakh Marathon which began in 2012 and is the highest and amongst the toughest marathons in the world.

Bharat Goenka is the Vice Chairperson of Tally Solutions Pvt. Ltd. A technocrat at heart, he established Tally Solutions (earlier known as Peutronics) in 1986, under the guidance of his father S S Goenka, to leverage technology to help entrepreneurs manage their business better.

Dr Nemnath Jain is the founder chairman of Prestige group of industries, Indore. He has been given this honour for his significant contribution in the field of agriculture, soybean, education development and social service in the country. He is now also identified as Soya Man of India.

Vijay Sankeshwar is an Indian businessman. He along with Anand Sankeshwar (Managing Director) is the chairman of India's largest logistics firm VRL Group. He is also known for being the owner of the largest fleet of commercial vehicles in India.

Known as the Canadian Warren Buffett, Indo-Canadian billionaire Prem Watsa, who will receive the Padma Shri, is the founder and Chairman of financial services firm Fairfax Financial Holdings. Hyderabad-born Watsa founded the Toronto-based company in 1985.

With a net worth of $3.3 billion, US-based Romesh Wadhwani is the Chairman and CEO of Symphony Technology Group. According to Forbes, he combined nine of his companies that were AI-focused into a new group called SymphonyAI in 2017. After graduating from the Indian Institute of Technology, he went to Carnegie Mellon and received a Ph.D. in 1972 in electrical engineering.

The serial entrepreneur later founded Aspect Development, which i2 Technologies acquired for $9.3 billion in stock in 1999. He sits on the boards of Kennedy Center and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, according to Forbes.

(With Inputs from IANS)