From the late 1950s, the government pursued a strategy directed at conserving foreign exchange, producing heavy capital and intermediate goods domestically, building science and technology ...Image by E. O. Hoppe / Getty Images
In 1948, JRD Tata launched Air India International, the country&rsquos first international airline. Under his guidance, the Sir Dorabji Dadabhoy Trust established Asia&rsquos first cancer h...Image by (Left)Mukesh Parpiani / Dinodia Photos and Dinodia Photos / Getty Images
In 1956, Brijmohan Lal Munjal and his siblings got a licence from the Punjab government and a bank loan of about ₹50,000 to set up a factory named Hero Cycles. In 1975, this company becam...Image by Soltan Frederic/Sygma via Getty Images
Dhirubhai Ambani is the lighthouse example of an entrepreneur, who created an equity cult in Indian stock markets. A dispatch clerk at A Besse & Company, he was sent to manage an oil fillin...Image by Dinodia Photos / Getty Images
Jaswantiben Popat and six others&mdashJayaben Vithalani, Parvatiben Thodani, Ujamben Kundalia, Banuben Tanna, Chotadben Gawade and Laguben Gokani&mdashthought up this enterprise on the terr...Image by Indranil Mukherjee via Getty Images
Har Prasad Nanda and his brother Yudi arrived in Delhi from Lahore after Partition. To impress and revive his business contacts, Har Prasad hired a suite of rooms at The Imperial, Delhi&rsq...Image by Courtesy Escorts
Agricultural scientist Dr MS Swaminathan is renowned for his leading role in introducing and developing high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice in India. India&rsquos Green Revolution sta...Image by Soltan Frederic/Sygma via Getty Images
Azim Premji was studying electrical engineering in Stanford University, USA, in 1966 when he was called upon to handle the family business, due to the sudden demise of his father. He was ju...Image by Pallava Bagla / Corbis via Getty Images
Karsanbhai Patel graduated with chemistry and worked as a lab technician at Gujarat&rsquos geology and mining department. In 1969, he started an after-office business of detergent powder, m...Image by Alok Brahmabhatt for Forbes India
In the 1970s, TCS began exporting its services and pioneered the global delivery model for IT services, with its first offshore client in 1974. Its first international order came from Burro...Image by Tom Bible / Alamy Stock Photo
After graduating in zoology from Bangalore University in 1973, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw went to Ballarat University in Melbourne, Australia, and qualified as a master brewer. Mazumdar-Shaw start...Image by Dibyangshu Sarkar / AFP via Getty Images
The Infosys legend began in 1981 when NR Narayana Murthy dreamt of forming his own company, along with six friends. Getting wife Sudha Murty&rsquos savings of ₹10,000 as seed money was Mu...Image by Gireesh GV / The India Today Group via Getty Images
Dr. Anji Reddy is a pioneer in pharmaceutical research in India, founding Dr Reddy&rsquos Laboratories in 1984. The company transformed the Indian bulk drug industry, from being import-depe...Image by Courtesy Dr. Reddy"s
Originally from Tamil Nadu, Shiv Nadar moved to Delhi in 1968, working as an engineer with DCM Ltd. Along with six of his colleagues, Nadar launched a firm making office products like copie...Image by Ritesh Sharma / The India Today Group via Getty Images
Sunil Mittal had begun in 1984, assembling push-button phones in India, replacing the old-fashioned, bulky rotary phones. He identified an opportunity in mobile telecom in 1994, successfull...Image by (left) Reuters and Amit Bhargava / Bloomberg via Getty Images
GR Gopinath was the man who made flying affordable to millions of Indians. When he launched Air Deccan in 2005, a no-frills airline modelled on European budget carriers like EasyJet and Ry...Image by Namas Bhojani / Bloomberg via Getty Images
Looking at job ads in newspapers in the 1990s, Sanjeev Bikhchandani knew that there were far more jobs out there, and wondered if there was a way to aggregate it. In late 1996, at the IT As...Image by Shome Basu / The India Today Group via Getty Images
Sachin Bansal and Binny Bansal were stuck at the same lab in IIT Delhi, trying to complete their delayed projects when they met. In September 2007, bored with their jobs at Amazon, they poo...Image by Hemant Mishra / Mint via Getty Images
IIT-ians Vidit Aatrey and Sanjeev Barnwal were in their mid-20s when they launched Meesho, a reseller platform in 2015. They had learnt from their previous failed startup that several small...Image by Courtesy Selvaprakash Lakshmanan / Meesho
