Four Pakistanis have been included in the prestigious ‘Forbes 30 under 30 Asia List’ and are a sense of pride for our country. The annual list available on the American business magazine website featured 30 under-30 individuals making strides in different industries, including art and style, education, games, food, enterprise technology, and media.
Author Dur- e- Aziz Amna, designer Zain Ahmad, digital, entrepreneur Muhammad Saad, and social entrepreneur Shawana Shah are among the honorees.
A glimpse into the winners
Dure Aziz Amna, a Pakistani-born Yale graduate, was nominated for the social impact award. Her debut novel, ‘American Fever’ is a coming-of-age story about a Pakistani Muslim girl growing up in a small community in the US state of Oregon, and was inspired by her cross-cultural experience in South Asia and the United States. Her work has featured in publications such as Dawn, Al Jazeera and The New York Times. She has previously won prestigious awards such as the 2019 Financial Times/Bodley Head Essay Prize.
With the Pakistan fashion scene making splashes worldwide, the co-founder and creativedirector of ‘Rastah’ a Lahore-based Pakistani streetwear business, Zain Ahmad, was nominated. The brand is said to have been established in 2018. His designs have been worn by personalities such as Bollywood filmmaker Karan Johar, Oscar-winning actor Riz Ahmed, andrapper French Montana.According to the Forbes feature, the brand “champions sustainable and artisanal designs, with items being designed, sourced and produced by local artisans in limited quantities in Pakistan.
Shawana Shah was honoured by Forbes for her tireless efforts in the areas of gender equality and social impact. She is the co-founder of ‘Da Hawwa Lur’ a platform that supports girls, women, and transgender individuals in Pakistan on political, social, and economic levels.
Shah has also established various feminist organisations and was the first Asian to receive the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award in 2016.
Shawana uses her Malala Fund grant to engage with communities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa to change socio-cultural practices that prohibit girls from finishing high school. In 2019, she was chosen to join the UN Women’s Beijing+25 Youth Task Force.
Lastly, we have Muhammad Saad, the co-founder of BridgeLinx, a Lahore-based firm that connects manufacturers and exporters in Pakistan with truckers and private fleets through a marketplace to assist them to move goods more effectively. It also offers technological solutions for document validation, on-time pickups, and cargo security.
Saad’s journey reached a crucial milestone nine months after it was founded when it received $10 million in seed capital from Harry Stebbings’ 20 VC, Buckley Ventures, and Indus Valley Capital.
Taking it to Twitter, he wrote “The entire credit goes to the team at BridgeLinxTech. The way I have seen this team execute at speed, fight enormous battles, bring product innovation in an archaic industry, and build a culture of togetherness has been an experience of a lifetime.”
