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- By Parinda News Bureau, May 02, 2006, 11:40 IST
Infosys president Nandan Nilekani and New York-based NRI entrepreneur Vikram Akula have figured in Time magazine's list of 100 most influential people who shaped the world.
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, Iranian leader Mohmoud Ahmadinejad, US President George W Bush, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabo, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Pope Benedict also figure in the list.
Time described Nilekani, the Infosys co-founder, as a "great explainer". "He has a unique ability not simply to programme software but also to explain how that programme fits into the emerging trends in computing business and how that transformation will affect global politics and economics," the magazine said.
Akula is the 37-year-old founder of SKS Microfinance, which uses smart cards to make venture capital available to over 800 million people living on less than two dollars in India. He has made SKS one of the fastest-growing microlenders, having dispensed $52 million to 221,000 clients since 1998, Time said.
Loaning a few bucks may not sound like cutting-edge banking but Akula is using advanced technology in the areas where there are few land telephone lines and no ATMs, it said.
The 'plastic approach' of Akula "intrigued" Visa International, which is now pairing his firm SKS Microfinance with cell phone-based card readers, Time said.
Akula, who grew up in upstate New York, said poverty in India is "disconcerting". "I just thought that I must do something. When you see the people suffer, make sacrifices, and when you experience the unstated intimacy of this suffering, only then you realise the brute reality of poverty," he said.
US Senator Hillary Clinton, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and his wife Melinda, Pakistani gang-rape victim and rights activist Mukhtaran Bibi and Bhutan King Jigme Singye Wangchuk, who gave up absolute power, are also in the list.
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