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World Of Forbes: Entrepreneurial Capitalism Across Our 35 International Editions

This story appears in the April/May 2021 issue of Forbes Magazine. Subscribe

Across the planet, the licensed editions of Forbes magazine span five continents, 24 languages and 13 time zones. They all share the same mission: celebrating entrepreneurial capitalism in all its forms. Here’s a global perspective on the business landscape mid-pandemic in real time.


ANGOLA

Finance Minister Vera Daves, 37, says she won’t rest until she launches the Angolan stock market—this year, she hopes. The Luanda native expects telecom Multitel and construction company Mota-Engil to be among the first IPOs.


ARGENTINA

The pandemic—and the resulting increase in home cooking—helped Ignacio Noel turn around century-old Buenos Aires flour maker Morixe Hermanos. Its stock is up fourfold since early 2020.



BAHRAIN

Forbes Middle East features Najla Al Shirawi on its list of Power Businesswomen. The CEO of SICO, a Manama-based investment bank with $2.3 billion in assets, is leading its expansion into Saudi Arabia.


BOLIVIA

PepsiCo, which is beginning to make Cheetos at a Bolivian manufacturing plant, has committed to buy an estimated 30 tons of locally grown corn each month and is hiring about 300 people for production, distribution and marketing jobs.



BRAZIL

Santos native Djamila Ribeiro’s three books—comprising essays on such topics as Black female empowerment and race-quota policies—have sold more than 500,000 copies and been translated into French, Spanish and Italian.


BULGARIA

Sara Kyurkchieva launched Orpheus, a cosmetics line that claims to harness the restorative powers of the Orpheus flower, in 2018 to help her sensitive skin. The flower grows along Bulgaria’s border with Greece.


CHINA

Named one of China’s most successful businesswomen by Forbes China, Wang Feng Ying is the first female president of Great Wall Motor, China’s largest manufacturer of SUVs and pickup trucks.


COLOMBIA

Offering medical cannabis—what Colombians call “the new green gold”—Bogotá-based Clever Leaves debuted on the Nasdaq via a SPAC in December. Recent market cap: $330 million.


CYPRUS

“Telecommunications became the unexpected hero of the battle against social isolation and the threat of financial paralysis,” says Andreas Neocleous, CEO of the country’s international voice and data-services leader, Cyta.


CZECK REPUBLIC

Forbes Czech 30 Under 30 honoree Veronika Kamenská, 21, created a mental health app after surviving a suicide attempt. Available in nine languages, Nepanikař (“Don’t Panic”) has been downloaded nearly 200,000 times.


DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

Lucile Houellemont de Gamundi took over Dominican Watchman after her father’s death in 2016. The 50-year-old security company is now preparing to begin exporting its products—such as electronic entry cards and surveillance cameras—to other Caribbean islands.


FRANCE

Having designed Heineken bottles, trams and a superyacht, multidisciplinary artist Ora ïto’s next project is transforming a Marseille fortress into a seaside attraction promoting environmentalism. “Entrepreneurial success today is no longer [about] turnover, but what the business will generate,” he says.


GEORGIA

Skeptics questioned the future of Guram Gvasalia’s streetwear brand, Vetements, after his brother, a fashion designer, departed the company in 2019. Yet sales grew during the pandemic, he says. “If your house is built well . . . it will sustain any strong wind.”


GREECE

Boosting Greece’s export GDP, which lags behind that of most EU countries, is key to climbing out of its decade-long financial turmoil, says academic Konstantinos Lymperopoulos. He believes the country’s problems have been exacerbated by the pandemic and reduced consumption.


HUNGARY

After making a million-dollar fortune in roofing and façades across Eastern Europe, József Kreinbacher is pouring his time into his mountainside winery, which produces 200,000 bottles of award-winning Hungarian champagne each year.


INDIA

Philanthropist Azim Premji’s foundation and Wipro, the Indian IT giant he scaled, committed $155 million toward fighting the pandemic. Wipro also converted one of its facilities to a 450-bed hospital for Covid-19 patients.


INDONESIA

Southeast Asia’s most-followed YouTuber with 26.5 million subscribers, Atta Halilintar fronts Forbes Indonesia’s inaugural list of top digital-content creators. The 26-year-old has made his name in acting, rap and prank videos.


ISRAEL

Omri Schanin, 31, is the cofounder of MeaTech, a Tel Aviv–listed company that debuted on the Nasdaq in March. The startup, founded in 2018, sustainably 3D-prints meat from the stem cells of chickens and cattle.


ITALY

Forbes Italy adds a social media category to its 30 Under 30 list, honoring viral stars such as Norma Cerletti, a 29-year-old English teacher who has more than 800,000 followers across Instagram and TikTok.


JAPAN

Hiromasa Tsuchiya chairs CAINZ, a $4 billion (sales) discount home-goods center testing innovative ways to improve the retail experience, including a robot or app that guides customers to specific items.


KAZAKHSTAN

Last year Alim Khamitov, 34 (far left), and Mirat Akhmetsadykov, 33, launched a $10 million venture fund to support Kazakh and Central Asian startups as part of MOST, an entrepreneurship community that has emerged over the past decade.


LATVIA

In order to promote farming and production, and support increased interest in buying property, Latvia in February increased the loan limit to purchase agricultural land to €1 million.


MEXICO

Guadalajara native Sergio “Checo” Pérez, 31, will represent Red Bull Racing in Formula 1 this year. He clocked his first big win in December at the Sakhir Grand Prix in Bahrain.


MONGOLIA

Tatsuya Hamada heads Mobicom, the nation’s leading telecom and web provider, which has expanded into digital payments. More than 1.6 million users have made secure purchases via its Monpay smartphone app.


ROMANIA

“The residential market recorded exceptional results in 2020,” says Ionuț Nicolescu, president of SVN Romania’s property portfolio. The number of real estate transactions nationally rose 11.6% in 2020.


RUSSIA

Early Facebook investor Yuri Milner says he donates nearly $100 million to science and space exploration each year. “There should be people or institutions that will finance projects with little chance of success but with great potential significance,” he tells Forbes Russia.


POLAND

Gabriel Chojak’s Dekorglass molds 200 tons of glass each day into decorative bottles for products such as Hugo Boss fragrances and Johnnie Walker whiskey. Annual revenue was roughly $50 million pre-pandemic.


PORTUGAL

Twenty years of stagnant economic growth is a “national shame,” says oil executive António Costa e Silva, who has been tasked by the government with drafting a decade-long recovery plan. “We have to create conditions for the country to create wealth.”


SLOVAKIA

Slovak Olympic medalist and Hall of Fame professional basketball coach Natália Hejková has led teams to five EuroLeague Women titles. She names 11-time NBA championship coach Phil Jackson as her role model.


SOUTH KOREA

Baek Joon-ho heads Seoul-based Furiosa AI, a maker of AI-enabled semiconductor coprocessors. Competing against Nvidia and Intel types, the chips’ decision-making capabilities are used in everything from autonomous driving to language translation.


SPAIN

The Spanish-language You-Tube yoga classes of Xuan Lan—a Vietnam native living in Barcelona—have attracted 1.4 million followers. She fronts Forbes Spain’s issue titled “Who’s Who in the Business of Yoga.”


SWITZERLAND

Lukas Langenegger’s startup, Hemotune, which grew out of public research university ETH Zurich, seeks an effective antidote for sepsis. The body’s extreme response to infection—as seen in many Covid-19 patients—kills 11 million people each year.


THAILAND

When Amorn Thongthew, 37, takes the reins of Viriyah Insurance from his mother, he plans to expand the 74-year-old Bangkok company’s nonautomotive categories, such as healthcare.


UKRAINE

Near-billionaire Yuriy Kosiuk and his company, MHP, Ukraine’s largest poultry producer, are rolling out initiatives to promote healthy, affordable cooking. MHP is opening meat markets, planning a restaurant concept and posting chef-guided recipes on social media.


ZIMBABWE

Chef Nicola Kagoro, 32, is building a business promoting veganism across Africa as an affordable, nutritious diet. She partners with the International Anti-Poaching Foundation to provide dozens of rangers with three plant-based meals a day.


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