Two Indian-Origin Engineers on Fortune’s ‘40 Under 40’: How Did They Make It?

Ankit Gupta, CEO of Bicycle Health, and Jump Crypto President Kanav Kariya feature on the coveted list.

The Fortune '40 Under 40' 2022 edition features two Indian-origin entrepreneurs, Ankit Gupta and Kanav Kariya.

(Photo: Pranay Dutta Roy/The Quint)

Fortune, an American business magazine, recently released the 2022 edition of its prestigious annual ‘40 Under 40’ list and brought two Indian-origin entrepreneurs in the spotlight. 

According to the magazine, headquartered in New York City, the list recognises founders, executives investors, and activists who are creating and seizing opportunity, connecting people, empowering others, building on their success as athletes and entertainers, trailblazing in their industries and creating new ones as well. 

The 2022 edition features two Indian-origin entrepreneurs, Ankit Gupta and Kanav Kariya, alongside the likes of renowned singer Rihanna, TikTok sensation Khaby Lame and footballer Kylian Mbappé.

The list itself features 40 individuals below the age of 40, with eight names under each of its five categories – Culture and Society, Finance and Crypto, Health and Bioscience, Tech and Innovation, and Venture and Startups.

Thirty-five-year-old Ankit Gupta is the founder and CEO of Bicycle Health and was featured in the Health and Bioscience category, while 26-year-old Kanav Kariya was listed under the Finance and Crypto banner and is the president of Jump Crypto.

25-Year-Old Heading Billion in Crypto: Who Is Kanav Kariya?

Born and raised in Mumbai, Kariya spent his early years wanting to join the Indian Army, but a love for video games saw him lean towards a career in computer science.

Immigrating to the United States at 18, Kanav Kariya begun studying computer science at the University of Illinois (UoI) at Urbana-Champaign, which was also the alma-mater of Jump Trading Group co-founders Bill Disomma and Paul Grins. 

During his stint at the UoI, Kariya landed an internship at Jump Trading, a competitive quantitative trading firm. Jump Crypto was the rebranded digital assets division of the Jump Trading Group.

The group is a startup incubator for crypto companies. Soon after he graduated, Kanav was at the firm full-time at a time where the group was ramping up its cryptocurrency business.

In 2022, he was made incharge of the multi-billion dollar firm at the ripe age of 25, and leads a team of over 150 people as president of Jump Crypto. Kanav’s promotion was announced alongside the formal launch of Jump Crypto, which was six years in the making.

On a daily basis, Karina’s day sees him manage everything related to Jump’s jump into the world of crypto while overseeing investment worth billions. 

His journey to the top of Jump’s crypto division saw Kariya working in multiple departments, including product RnD, sales and trading, where he throughly impressed his colleagues. 

Speaking of his future ambitions, even at a time where the crypto downturn continues to rage on, Kariya and Jump Crypto remain undeterred in their vision of the company being a “key infrastructure builder that is part of the furniture of the industry as it scales.”

Even though the crypto winter persists, Kariya’s Jump Crypto invested in over 100 crypto companies in the past year.

Do(u)sing the Opioid Crisis: Who is Ankit Gupta?

In the late 1990s, American pharmaceutical companies gave reassurances to the medical community that patients would not get addicted to opioid painkillers.

Opioid overdoses accounted for more than 42,000 deaths in 2016 and in 2017,  the US Department of Health and Human Services declared a public health emergency in the form of an opioid crisis. 

Here is where 35-year-old Ankit Gupta entered the fray with Bicycle Health, whose main priority is improving access to treatment and recovery services in a country where 40 percent counties lack facilities that offer medication-assisted treatment. 

Ankit graduated with a BTech (Computer Science) from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay, in Mumbai and subsequently moved to the US for a Master of Science (Computer Science) from Stanford University, specialising in machine learning.

Gupta’s company fills the gap between patients and clinics with specialised Telehealth services for opioid use disorder (OUD). He founded Bicycle Health in 2017 after he bought a single clinic in California’s Redwood City.

Making use of relatively-relaxed regulations around prescribing opioid treatment medications online in 2020, Gupta’s Bicycle Health expanded to 29 states, treating close to 20,000 patients and raising $83 million in venture funding. 

The company had also made it onto TIME's 100 most influential companies list for 2022.

Moreover, in June 2022, Bicycle received $50 million in funding which Gupta said would be used to expand to six more states over the next few financial quarters, improve and develop better technology and grow the number of health plans under the ambit of Bicycle's services. 

Before Bicycle Health, Gupta was the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Pulse News. After gathering close to 30 million users and a shoutout by ex-Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Pulse was acquired by LinkedIn, finally becoming the current LinkedIn newsfeed. 

(With inputs from Fortune)