India’s entrepreneur from Coimbatore Arunachalam Muruganantham has been listed in the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders by Fortune Magazine for 2019. Muruganantham is the only Indian and is ranked at Number 45 in the list released recently.

The hero of the Oscar-winning documentary short -Period. End of Sentence had invented a machine that turns cellulose into low-cost sanitary napkins making it affordable for everyone to buy them.

He has created self-employment opportunities for more that 1.25 lakh women in the country through his machines. Speaking to a leading English Daily he said that Fortune magazine had followed his work. Six of his machinery were installed in Sri Lanka to be operated by war widows. Muruganantham is currently working on taking these projects to Pakistan and Afghanistan. In India, he plans to focus on the north eastern States especially in Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh.

A Hindi film titled Pad Man which was directed and written by R. Balki was released in 2018. The film was inspired by Arunachalam Muruganantham and featured Akshay Kumar in the lead role for which he received a Best Actor nomination at the 64th Filmfare Awards in 2019.

Another person of Indian origin to make it to the list was Microsoft’s Satya Nadella who was in Number 5 in the list . This was in recognition for his contribution to power the company’s new businesses like its Azure cloud platform and for standing up to a contract to supply the US Army with augmented reality headsets in a bid to prove that Microsoft shouldn’t withhold technology from institutions that uphold democracy.

Bill and Melinda Gates of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation topped the list at Number one.