Page 35 - Forbes - Asia (October 2019)

ANITA DONGRE, 55
Chief Creative Officer, House of Anita Dongre
INDIA

Dongre started her eponymous fashion empire
in 1995 with her sister, Meena Sehra, with just
two sewing machines in her Mumbai apartment.
Today, House of Anita Dongre has 272 stores from
Mauritius to Manhattan, with an array of labels
that runs the gamut from bridal couture (Anita
Dongre) to sustainable ready-to-wear (Grassroot).
Dongre has attracted a celebrity clientele
that includes the Duchess of Cambridge Kate
Middleton and Canadian first lady Sophie Gregoire
Trudeau. Dongre has also lured a big-name
investor: New York-based PE firm General Atlantic
has a roughly 40% stake. —Naazneen Karmali

TAN HOOI LING, 35
DONGRE: MEXY XAVIER/FORBES INDIA, TAN: ORE HUIYING/BLOOMBERG
Cofounder and COO, Grab
MALAYSIA

Tan is the cofounder of Southeast Asia’s first decacorn, super app Grab. The 35-year-
old Harvard M.B.A. has led the company alongside her cofounder Anthony Tan in rais-
ing over $9 billion dollars since launching in 2012.
Nearly half of that sum came in March when the Singapore-based startup raised
$4.5 billion in a funding round led by SoftBank’s Vision Fund, Alibaba, Microsoft and
26 other investors, valuing the company at $14 billion. This Series H round aims to raise
another $2 billion before the end of the year.
As chief operating officer, Tan focuses on growing market share in the eight coun-
tries and 336 cities where Grab operates. In March 2018, Grab bought Uber’s Southeast
Asian operations in a deal worth “several billion dollars,” according to San Francisco-
based Uber. As part of the deal, the founders gave Uber a 27.5% stake and its CEO Dara
Khosrowshahi a board seat. The acquisition, and Grab’s own expansion efforts, helped
it boost its market share in Indonesia—Southeast Asia’s largest market—above 60% (by
number of rides) in mid-2018 from just 30% in early 2017, according to New York-based
ABI Research. —Pamela Ambler

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