OUR JUDGES (L to R) Munesh Khanna of NM Rothschild & Sons (India), Ashwin Dani of Asian Paints, Revenue Secretary Vinita Rai, K. Pandia Rajan of Ma Foi Management Consultants, and Ajay Relan of Citigroup

Beginning this year, business today has instituted a survey to identify and honour bright young sparks below the age of 40 in the country.

To generate a master list of people below 40 who have done outstanding work under three categories-CEO, Entrepreneur, and Ideator-BT's own reporters in all its six bureaus spoke to an array of experts, ranging from corporate honchos to hr professionals to analysts to industry specialists, to come up with 72 names under the three categories. This list was further whittled down to 15 (five under each of the three categories) by BT's senior editorial team. To select one final winner under each of the categories, BT brought in a panel of experts to argue for and against each of the 15 names. The judges comprised Vinita Rai, Revenue Secretary, Government of India; Ashwin Dani, Chairman, Asian Paints; Ajay Relan, Managing Director, Citigroup Venture Capital International; K. Pandia Rajan, Chairman and Managing Director, Ma Foi Management Consultants; Munesh Khanna, Managing Director, NM Rothschild & Sons (India); and Sanjoy Narayan, Editor, Business Today.

On February 14, 2004, the six judges gathered at a hotel in Delhi for an in-camera debate on each of the 15 names. After three hours of argument and counter argument the judges agreed on the three final winners. It wasn't easy, considering that the other 12 nominees, whose names BT will not disclose, had equally outstanding achievements to their credit. But at the end of the day, there could be only three winners. You've already met them in the pages of this magazine.