Indian cricket captain Virat Kohli, Bollywood star Deepika Padukone, Ola co-founder Bhavish Aggarwal and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella were featured on TIME magazine’s 2018 list of the world’s most influential people.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi was missing from the list – which included names such as Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Japanse Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and Banglesh’s premier Sheikh Hasina.
It was Sachin Tendulkar who wrote Virat Kohli’s TIME profile. “Every sportsman knows what it’s like to have good spells and bad ones too,” the batting maestro explained. “Virat took the criticism he faced during a disappointing West Indies series and returned home with a goal: to improve not only his technique, but also his fitness level. He’s never looked back.”
Vin Diesel, who was Deepika Padukone’s co-star in ‘xXx: Return of Xander Cage’, wrote that she “isn’t just a star,” but “an actor’s actor, dedicated to the craft.”
Flipkart’s executive chairman Sachin Bansal wrote of Bhavish Aggarwal’s “vision, passion and determination to stand against all odds.”
And Walter Isaacson, the former TIME managing editor who wrote Satya Nadella’s profile, noted how “in the four years since he inherited a sticky wicket, Microsoft’s market value has increased 130%.”
TIME said a record 45 people on the list are under 40 – including the youngest designer ever, the 14-year-old actor Millie Bobby Brown – and that a common theme in the tributes is how much people can learn from them.
See all the 2018 #TIME100 honorees in under a minute https://t.co/ppzdOe0ckQ pic.twitter.com/dyTCJ9na05
— TIME (@TIME) April 19, 2018
The magazine added that while “we remain much too far from gender parity in global leadership, there are more women than ever on this years TIME 100 – proof that there are ways of changing the world beyond traditional power structures.” (Inputs from PTI)