Vaibhav Devanathan, 28

Inspired by the idea of enlivening school education by ridding it of all stress elements, Vaibhav Devanathan gave up a job at McKinsey and an MBA offer from Harvard Business School two years back to start LaughGuru. The Bangalore boy struggled for a year in Mumbai before joining hands with his core team to launch the e-learning portal that teaches English, maths and science to middle school children up to class eight, all with a generous helping of humour. “It was equal parts of stubbornness and belief in the power of humour that kept me going,” he says.