2026 watch out for...

From the shimmer of the silver screen to the roar of stadiums, from boardrooms buzzing with big bets to runways rewriting the style rulebook India's next wave of super achievers is here, and they're moving fast.

- TEXT: SANGEETA WADDHWANI, REWATI RAU & HUNAR BHATIA

These aren't just rising stars; they're multi-hyphenates who blur categories: OTT actors gone viral, a high-hitting female cricketer, a legacy-bearing young corporate bringing an immersive retail experience to India, a tech genius riding the Al wave, and more.

This special feature presents the faces and forces going places in the Year of the Fire Horse — your all-access pass to the power players to watch out for this year, in entertainment, sports, business, brand endorsements, fashion and beauty — the ones shaping headlines, generating hashtags, and talking about the next must-cultivate habit you didn't know you needed.

ARYAN KHAN

Who: Filmmaker, Entrepreneur, and Co-founder of SLAB Ventures that launched D'YAVOL, a luxury lifestyle and beverage brand

AIl of 28, Aryan Khan is such a stunner. The son of global superstar Shah Rukh Khan, he already has a fan following of 3.9 million followers on Instagram alone. What was that idea? Fake it till you make it? Well, our young superstar didn’t need to fake anything whatsoever. Eschewing the idea of being talented “hero material” like his world-famous father — that he knew would lead to a constant comparison loop — he instead chose to channel his passion for the movies behind the scenes as a director, and also the winner of the ‘NDTV Indian of the Year’ award.

Aryan accepted his award with pride, the kind that can come only when you've sweated it out with the rest of your crew. Dedicating his first win to his mother Gauri Khan, he courted two generations of fans when he quoted SRK, who once said, “Haarne mein aur haar maanne mein bohot farak hota hai (there’s a huge difference between losing and accepting defeat).”

His OTT show debut — Netflix’s