Billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla was forced to take over as the Aditya Birla Group chairman in 1995 when he was just 28. His eldest daughter willingly turned entrepreneur when she was 17.
In 2013, Ananyashree set up her venture, Svatantra Microfin Pvt. Ltd. to lend tiny loans to rural women for buying sewing machines or starting papadum businesses. In doing so, the teenager declined to join her father’s $41 billion conglomerate -- known for making cement, aluminium, apparel and offering wireless services -- to enter microfinance, a field that had sometimes been criticized for high interest rates and coercive lending tactics that were blamed for borrower suicides in India.
Her firm has since expanded to at least 50 branches across India servicing 80,000 borrowers with a loan portfolio of about $20 million as of April, according to its website. Somewhere in between, the 21-year-old finished an undergraduate degree in economics and management from the University of Oxford.
She now plans to launch a premium e-commerce portal that will source inaccessible handicrafts from around the world. Ananyashree and her mother, Neerja Birla, have also started MPower — aimed at helping those with mental health disorders.
Ananyashree has been a state-level chess player, taught herself to play guitar and sports tattoos. Among her five, the one on her left arm says ‘Conquer.’