At the intersection of tradition and modern luxury, Ankush Dadu, Partner, Anand Sweets & Savouries, Anand Sweets & Savouries is turning mithai into a premium global experience—and Anand Sweets into a billion-rupee culinary empire.

By The Cover Story | Fastest Growing Leaders in the World, 2025 Edition

In a world obsessed with disruptive tech and digital scale, Ankush Dadu chose a different path: he built a revolution using ghee, saffron, and silver leaf.

As Partner at Anand Sweets & Savouries, the Bengaluru-born brand with decades of heritage, Dadu isn’t just leading a food company—he’s crafting a global narrative of Indian luxury through sweets. In 2025, The Cover Story names him among the Fastest Growing Leaders in the World, not just for scaling a legacy, but for reimagining what “premium” means in the most crowded consumer market on Earth.

From Halwai to Haute

Walk into any Anand Sweets flagship store in 2025, and you’ll see what Dadu has created: not a mithai shop—but a multi-sensory luxury experience.

Marble counters, curated gift hampers, branded packaging, and the aroma of saffron-laced khoya meet you like you’ve entered an Indian Hermès of mithai. Under Dadu’s leadership, Anand Sweets has transitioned from a traditional sweets manufacturer into a modern, experiential Indian F&B brand—with an expanding footprint across India, Dubai, Singapore, and soon, London.

Disrupting Taste, One Innovation at a Time

Dadu didn’t just inherit a family business—he rewired it. His approach fuses culinary R&D, brand storytelling, and modern retail design to elevate every aspect of the Anand experience.

Sweets as souvenirs: Dadu was among the first to champion Indian mithai as a gifting category, creating hampers that compete with Swiss chocolate boxes and French macarons.

Tech meets tradition: He’s introduced AI-driven inventory forecasting to ensure zero-waste perishable logistics across 40+ stores.

Design-first packaging: Anand’s festive boxes are now designed in collaboration with Indian artists and fashion houses—making mithai Instagrammable and collectible.

Chef-powered labs: Dadu has brought in award-winning chefs to co-create seasonal products like kesar-pistachio energy bars, masala truffle laddoos, and sugar-free gulab jamun popsicles.

Branding India’s Sweet Power to the World

For Dadu, this isn’t about just sweets—it’s about soft power. He believes India’s culinary identity, especially in the festive and luxury food segment, has global potential.

Under his watch, Anand Sweets has entered airport retail, partnered with luxury hotels, and now serves curated mithai at international weddings, corporate gifting programs, and even Michelin-style tasting menus.

And the numbers back him: annual revenue has grown 4X in five years, with direct-to-consumer online sales now making up 30% of the business, thanks to a stunning Shopify-powered global storefront.

The Culture-First Leadership Mindset

What makes Ankush Dadu different isn’t just innovation—it’s respect for legacy. He has preserved Anand’s iconic recipes while modernizing everything around them. He invests in training artisans, digitizing recipe archives, and documenting culinary heritage that’s often lost in generational transitions.

He’s not just building a brand—he’s preserving a craft, and doing it at scale.

Interesting Facts About Ankush Dadu & Anand Sweets:

• Started working in the kitchen at age 16, shadowing his grandfather’s master halwai.

• Anand Sweets products are now available in 11 countries through curated export boxes.

• Launched India’s first luxury mithai bar—a 10-course plated experience blending molecular gastronomy with Indian classics.

• Grew Anand’s festive season sales by 300% in 2023 through experiential marketing and influencer campaigns.

• Building a culinary school for Indian sweets artisans, opening in 2026.

The Mithai Mogul of Modern India

Ankush Dadu is part of a new generation of Indian entrepreneurs who don’t just build businesses—they build narratives, break molds, and export culture.

In his hands, mithai has become movement. And Anand Sweets isn’t just a heritage brand—it’s a symbol of how old-world legacy can lead the new-world order.

He isn’t chasing disruption. He’s sweetly engineering it.

Ankush Dadu is taking the soul of India’s sweet legacy global—combining culinary innovation, luxury branding, and digitized heritage to transform Anand Sweets into a billion-rupee powerhouse.

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As legacy supply chains crumble under 20th-century weight, Zetwerk’s co-founder Amrit Acharya is designing a future where global manufacturing is faster, smarter, and infinitely scalable.

By The Cover Story | Fastest Growing Leaders in the World, 2025 

Manufacturing was never supposed to be cool. But Amrit Acharya didn’t get the memo.

At 34, the co-founder and CEO of Zetwerk is not just leading India’s fastest-scaling industrial unicorn—he’s re-architecting global supply chains with the kind of precision and ambition typically reserved for aerospace engineers or fintech disruptors. And yet, here he is—building the backbone of modern civilization, one factory at a time.

In 2025, The Cover Story names Amrit Acharya among the Fastest Growing Leaders in the World, not just for scaling a tech-enabled manufacturing marketplace, but for proving that the next generation of global infrastructure will come not from Silicon Valley—but from a new wave of leaders in industrial India.

From Invisible to Inevitable

Zetwerk didn’t start with glamour. It started with grit. In 2018, Amrit Acharya and his co-founders took on a problem that most tech entrepreneurs ignored: fragmented, inefficient, and outdated manufacturing supply chains that left millions in the dark ages.

Today, Zetwerk is a global manufacturing OS, quietly powering critical infrastructure across industries—renewable energy, aerospace, automotive, electronics, defense. From turbines to railcars to EV components, if it’s being built at scale, there’s a good chance Zetwerk is behind it.

Under Amrit’s leadership, Zetwerk has grown into a $2.8 billion behemoth operating across India, Southeast Asia, the U.S., and the Middle East—while remaining profitable, asset-light, and dangerously underestimated.

The Quiet Revolution of Infrastructure-as-a-Service

What Amazon did for retail and Stripe did for payments, Zetwerk is doing for manufacturing: removing the friction, standardizing the process, and digitizing the future.

With a network of 10,000+ suppliers and AI-powered project tracking tools, Amrit has created a category-defining model: manufacturing as a managed service. Governments are buying into it. Fortune 500s are betting on it. And startups are building on it.

This isn’t outsourcing—it’s smart-sourcing, powered by data, operational transparency, and a deep understanding of industrial complexity.

The Leader as Builder, Not Celebrity

In a time when founders compete more on Twitter than in boardrooms, Amrit Acharya’s silence is deafening—and strategic. He doesn’t do hype cycles or vision-board keynotes. He builds.

A former McKinsey consultant and IIT Kharagpur graduate, Acharya believes in operational excellence over media appearances. But that hasn’t stopped global investors, analysts, and even sovereign infrastructure bodies from taking notice.

Because while others pitch the future, he’s already manufacturing it.

India’s Soft Power Now Has a Hard Tech Backbone

Amrit represents a new kind of Indian entrepreneur: one who’s not just building for India, but from India, for the world.

Zetwerk is not a localization story. It’s a deglobalization antidote. In a post-COVID, geopolitically fractured world, Acharya’s platform offers something rare: a trusted, scalable, neutral manufacturing partner that can plug into any economy’s industrial blueprint.

And in doing so, he’s quietly turning India into the world’s decentralized factory of the future—without the headlines, but with undeniable impact.

The New Order Is Being Built—Literally

Amrit Acharya and Zetwerk aren’t disrupting an industry—they’re laying the foundation for a new industrial order. As global leaders scramble to retrofit outdated systems, Acharya is already two moves ahead—designing the infrastructure of resilience, speed, and autonomy.

In a world that needs to be rebuilt—economically, digitally, physically—the builders will inherit the future. And Amrit Acharya is already standing on its factory floor.

#AmritAcharya
#Zetwerk
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#ManufacturingRevolution
#BuildTheFuture
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#IndustrialTech
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From Kabul to the global frontlines—how Yalda Hakim is redefining journalism, leadership, and the power of relentless truth in the age of spin.

By The Cover Story 

In an era polluted by half-truths, institutional silence, and performative outrage, Yalda Hakim has emerged not just as a journalist—but as a disruptor of global narratives.

She’s the voice world leaders can’t ignore, the presence media conglomerates can’t replicate, and the woman who—just months ago—shattered Pakistan’s decades-old diplomatic mask on terrorism in a single, live interview.

That moment has since been immortalized in clips, UN talking points, and intelligence briefings worldwide. But for Hakim, it was just another chapter in a career defined by truth-telling under pressure.

The Interview That Rewrote Headlines in Every Capital

It was a conversation that began like any other high-level political interview. But as Yalda Hakim pressed former Pakistani Defence Minister Khawaja Asif on Islamabad’s support—or tolerance—of terror groups, something rare happened on live TV: the mask slipped.

Asif, caught off guard by Hakim’s relentless questioning and forensic grasp of timelines, admitted that Pakistan had hosted certain terrorist factions, then attempted to walk it back with ambiguous deflection. But it was too late. The global media cycle exploded. Policy circles were stunned. And Hakim had done what few journalists have dared: she exposed a government narrative in real time, without flinching.

In the days that followed, her interview was cited in foreign parliaments, amplified by security think tanks, and hailed by counterterrorism experts as a “watershed moment in international accountability journalism.”

For Hakim, this wasn’t a takedown. It was a truth bomb dropped with surgical precision.

Video Credit: Sky News

From Field to Frontline: A Journalist Who Doesn’t Play Safe

Born in Kabul and raised in Sydney, Hakim’s rise wasn’t orchestrated by media handlers or PR strategists. She climbed her way to the global stage through battlefields, refugee camps, and authoritarian shadows, reporting what others feared to touch.

When she moved from BBC to Sky News International in 2023, it wasn’t just a career shift—it was a strategic takeover. She transformed global coverage by marrying hard investigation with broadcast intelligence, focusing on storytelling that changed things, not just streamed them.

Today, she’s Sky’s crown jewel—and journalism’s steel spine.

Photo Credit: Yalda Hakim

Redefining the Power of the Press

The Ishaq Dar interview wasn’t a fluke. It was the result of years of earned credibility, meticulous research, and Hakim’s refusal to be stonewalled by titles or talking points. She has mastered the rare art of asking questions that demand answers—immediately.

Her interview with Taliban officials, her coverage of women’s protests in Iran, and her post-conflict documentaries from Ukraine and Libya have made her a de facto authority on state accountability in the modern age.

Where many journalists are content with access, Hakim forces consequence.

Photo Credit: Yalda Hakim

The Yalda Hakim Foundation: Empowering the Truth-Tellers of Tomorrow

Even as her star rises, Hakim’s focus remains deeply rooted in impact. The Yalda Hakim Foundation, launched in 2020, has now expanded its footprint to over seven countries, offering scholarships, mentorships, and media fellowships to refugee and female journalists from conflict zones.

Her foundation now partners with major universities and newsrooms, not just to provide opportunity—but to build an entire generation of fearless, ethical reporters.

What’s Next: Journalism? Diplomacy? Both?

With 2025 shaping up to be a breakout year for Hakim, rumors swirl of a global media initiative spearheaded under her leadership. Others suggest she is in quiet talks for an ambassadorial or UN role focused on global media integrity.

Whether it’s anchoring from conflict zones or influencing peace dialogues behind closed doors, one thing is certain: Hakim is no longer just covering the power structure—she’s becoming part of it.

She Doesn’t Break Stories. She Breaks Patterns.

The interview with Ishaq Dar wasn’t just a viral moment—it was a turning point in global media accountability. It reminded the world that real journalism still matters—and that Yalda Hakim is leading its most important revival.

She doesn’t echo the truth. She confronts it. Amplifies it. And forces the world to deal with it.

In a century that desperately needs clarity, courage, and consequence, Yalda Hakim isn’t just the fastest growing leader of 2025—she’s its most necessary one.

#YaldaHakim
#Leadership2025
#MediaDisruptor
#TruthMatters
#PakistanExposed
#AccountabilityJournalism
#NextGenNews
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