NEW DELHI: Three notable Indians, including cricketer Harmanpreet Kaur, have earned a spot on TIME magazine’s prestigious “2023 TIME100 Next: the Emerging Leaders Shaping the World” list. The list also featured Nandita Venkatesan and Vinu Daniel. It also featured Indian-origin Nabarun Dasgupta.
TIME magazine celebrated Harmanpreet’s enduring competitive spirit and her profound impact on the world of women’s cricket. They credited her with transforming women’s cricket from a peripheral interest to one of the most valuable sporting assets globally.
At the age of 34, Harmanpreet continues to make headlines and impress cricket enthusiasts.
Harmanpreet attained legendary status in 2017 when she scored an incredible 171 not out off just 115 balls in a World Cup match against Australia, leaving fans and pundits astounded by her extraordinary talent.
In a recent incident, Harmanpreet was suspended for two matches and fined 75% of her match fee in July for her criticism of umpires during India’s match against Bangladesh.
In March, Harmanpreet was named the captain of the Mumbai Indians (MI) team for the inaugural Women’s Premier League (WPL). The WPL gained significant attention as five franchises were sold for a combined total of $570 million in January.
Harmanpreet’s leadership led the Mumbai Indians to become the league’s first champions, further solidifying her status as a pioneering figure in women’s cricket.

Venkatesan, 33, is a tuberculosis survivor who lost her hearing during her bout with a multidrug-resistant version of the disease, a side effect of the toxic cocktail of drugs she took during treatment.
She was named on the list, together with Phumeza Tisile, a South African health activist, who too lost her hearing to the disease,
Together with Médecins Sans Frontières and Tisile, the longtime advocate filed a petition with the Indian government to deny pharma company Johnson & Johnson a secondary patent for a safer and more effective drug to treat TB after its initial patent expired.
This made way for cheaper generics to treat the disease.
In March, India rejected the secondary patent, a landmark victory that will help make the drug available at a much lower price and separately, Johnson & Johnson announced an agreement this summer that will make generic versions more accessible in lower-income countries, the release said.
“We had to undergo what we had to undergo,” Venkatesan said. “But maybe we could prevent this from happening to others,” she added.
Daniel, who owns a studio, Wallmakers, was quoted as saying that “his best teachers were masons, workers, and locals in Kerala, India.”
“While a student there, he met his hero Laurie Baker—an architect celebrated for energy-efficient, evocative buildings—who shared Mahatma Gandhi’s advice: the ideal house should be made of materials found within a five-mile radius,” the release said.
His studio uses mud and waste as the chief components to make structures that are both utilitarian and alluring, according to its website.
“Vinu teaches us respect for local wisdom and material culture are key for a truly responsible attitude toward the environment and the future,” the release said.
Indian-origin scientist Dasgupta helped launch a programme through a nonprofit that cleared bottlenecks stopping the opioid-overdose-reversing drug naloxone from getting to the front lines.
After creating new supply arrangements and buying the treatment in bulk, the organisation distributed over 1.6 million doses across the country in the past year, helping end a life-threatening drug shortage.
“Few Americans have done more to prevent drug–overdose deaths than Nabarun Dasgupta,” the release said.
Dasgupta also devised a system of swabbing street drugs and testing them, collecting valuable information to help scientists and drug users alike.
He aims to use science to answer big questions about drugs. “With 100,000 people dying a year, it’s not theoretical,” the scientist said.
(With PTI inputs)