Newsmakers: Neeraj Chopra to Harnaaz Sandhu, who all made headlines in 2021

India produced its best-ever performance at the Olympics, with a haul of seven medals at the Tokyo 2020 edition in the middle of the year, with bronze winner Lovlina Borgohain becoming only the third boxer and second woman to finish on the podium; javelin thrower Neeraj Chopra creating history with a stunning gold to end a century-old drought in track and field for India; Mirabai Chanu winning a silver in weightlifting; wrestlers Bajrang Punia and Ravi Dahiya picking up a bronze and silver in separate categories; and ace shuttler P V Sindhu becoming the first woman and second Indian to win two Olympic medals at an individual event.

If ever there was a Chak De! India moment for Indian hockey after years of disappointment, this was it. The giant-killing women’s team lost by the narrowest margin to Great Britain in the semis to miss out on a medal, while the men’s team closed out an epic contest against Germany to win a bronze. Also inspiring was golfer Aditi Ashok, who beat all odds to finish fourth.

Aryan Khan, the son of Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, was arrested in October in a Mumbai cruise drugs case. Although no drugs were found on him, the actor’s son languished behind bars for weeks. A media circus ensued, Khan was granted bail by the Bombay High Court, and the investigating officer of the Narcotics Control Bureau was removed from the probe.

It was another year when Indians came to head global companies. In December, French luxury fashion house Chanel appointed India-born Leena Nair as its CEO. A fashion outsider, Nair had joined Unilever 30 years ago, where she rose through the ranks to become the youngest chief. human resources officer. In November, 37-year-old Parag Agrawal became the CEO of Twitter after founder Jack Dorsey stepped down from the post. The IIT-Bombay graduate had joined the tech giant in 2011, while he was still a PhD scholar at Stanford University.

Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani joined the world’s most exclusive $100-billion club after his net worth soared to $100.6 billion in October, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. This placed him in the rarefied group of 11 men led by SpaceX CEO and founder Elon Musk, who’s the world’s richest with a net worth of $222.1 billion, followed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (net worth $190.8 billion). The 64-year-old Ambani, who inherited the company from his father in 2005, has transformed the business into a retail, telecom and ecommerce behemoth. In June, he unveiled Reliance Industries’ plan for a clean and green energy business, by investing Rs 75,000 crore over the next three years.

Another Indian business tycoon on whom Kuber, the god of wealth, smiled was Gautam Adani. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires index, the 59-year-old’s net worth stood at $89.1 billion in November. The Adani Group chairman had added a colossal $44.3 billion to his wealth since the start of 2021, largely as a result of good stock market performance through the year. Adani is one of the early entrants into the green energy space and has said he plans to invest $70 billion in the next 10 years across renewable energy generation, component manufacturing, transmission, and distribution.

As the year drew to a close, the death of India’s first Chief of Defence Staff, General Bipin Rawat, in a helicopter crash in the Nilgiris stunned the nation. His wife and 11 others were also killed in the crash. The lone survivor, Group Captain Varun Singh, succumbed a week later. Earlier in July, screen legend Dilip Kumar passed away at the age of 98. The thespian who inspired generations of actors was the last link to the Golden Era of Indian cinema. This was also the year when another legend, track and field sprinter Milkha Singh — The Flying Sikh — died of Covid-19 complications at the age of 91.

Some of the world’s leading companies saw new faces in the corner office. Walt Disney, the 98-year-old entertainment company, got its first woman chair in Susan Arnold. She had been lead independent director at the company since 2018 and served on its board since 2007. Arnold will succeed Bob Iger, who is known to have made some of the most iconic acquisitions for the company. Arnold was operating executive at the Carlyle group for the last eight years, before which she worked at the consumer goods giant Procter and Gamble. And in July, Andy Jassy succeeded Jeff Bezos as CEO of Amazon. The move came amid growing chatter around the former CEO’s increasing wealth. Jassy, who started working at the tech giant in 1997 after graduating from Harvard Business School, had been leading Amazon Web Services since its inception in 2003. 

After a gap of 21 years, the Miss Universe crown returned to India with Harnaaz Sandhu becoming the third Indian to win the title. The first was Sushmita Sen, who won the pageant in 1994, followed by Lara Dutta in 2000 — incidentally, the year Sandhu was born. The postgraduate student of public administration is also a film star and has acted in a few Punjabi movies.