World of Forbes

Around the globe with our 34 international editions.

COSTA RICA

The craft beer boom is going full steam in Central America, too—particularly in Costa Rica where local suds account for 64% of the market.

GEORGIA

Revaz Vashakidze is the founder of Chirina, the rare vertically integrated food company in Georgia.

CYPRUS

Theo Paphitis, a Cypriot-British retail tycoon, is using his standing to sound an alarm about Brexit’s consequences on Europe’s economy: “No one should underestimate the dangers.”

HUNGARY

Peter Tóth controls an unlikely monopoly. He’s the only purveyor of a delicious type of pork from the mangalica pig (its name means “hog with a lot of lard”), once thought extinct.

GREECE

Recent discoveries of natural gas in the eastern Mediterranean are raising hopes for additional investments in stillstruggling Greece from overseas businesses.

ANGOLA

Paulo Araujo, cofounder of Wi-Connect, has a big dream: free internet for all.

ARGENTINA

“Space is an underdeveloped market with tremendous potential,” says Santiago Tempone, a data-satellite entrepreneur and one of a growing number of Argentines focused on the outer limits. “The new gold rush is about chasing the opportunity of connecting the whole planet.”

BRAZIL

At 23, Flavio Augusto da Silva used a $1,000 loan to start Wise Up, an education company that has grown to over 400 schools in six countries.

CZECH REPUBLIC

At 24, Oliver Dlouhy founded Brno-based Kiwi.com, a travel-booking site. Now 31, Dlouhy sold 51% of Kiwi.com to U.S. PE firm General Atlantic in June, valuing the startup at almost $400 million.

INDIA

Nearly 70 audit firms resigned from working on public companies last year—a record—part of a swelling crisis over financial reporting in India.

INDONESIA

Harry Su, managing director at Samuel International, is one of the keenest observers of Asian capital markets. He also knows how to maneuver another complex world: competitive dog shows. His 28-month-old bichon frise, Jazz, has won 36 international competitions.

CHINA

JP Gan, of Qiming Venture Partners, has climbed to No. 5 on our Midas List of the top VCs with bets on companies like Bilibili, a comics and video startup. “When we realized how young its audience was, we knew we wanted to work with them.”

FRANCE

Iris Mittenaere is a TV host, an author, the former Miss France, a onetime Miss Universe— and one of the mostpopular social-network influencers in France with 2 million-plus Instagram followers.

ISRAEL

The future of the world’s cannabis industry may rest in what scientist Hinanit Koltai discovers. “What I saw in the lab convinced me that this is a plant that must be worked with.”

ITALY

Stefano Cecconi has created the GoDaddy of Italy: Aruba, which manages over 2.6 million Web domains.

POLAND

Glass from Arkadiusz Muś’ Press Glass can be found in skyscrapers across Europe and America; he’s currently opening his 15th factory— this time in Virginia.

SLOVAKIA

Software entrepreneur Michal Trnka and his father Miroslav are shifting their attention (and money) to restoring his hometown, the ancient city of Trnava, which is sometimes called Little Rome.

SOUTH AFRICA

In impoverished Johannesburg, one business is thriving: the eight-floor Collectors Treasury bookstore on Commissioner Street, which sells over 2 million items. “People are definitely reading,” says coowner Geoffrey Klass. “And they are reading more.”

JAPAN

Musca, a startup in the far western city of Hakata, has developed a special breed of housefly that it hopes will allow it to create extra-potent fertilizers.

LATVIA

First a successful racecar driver, Andris Dambis is now trying to create an electric minibus.

PORTUGAL

At first, changing the hidebound Portuguese wine world felt like “a fight for Don Quixote,” says Jorge Bohm, who would go on to transform the industry by applying strict scientific rigor. A “great revolution,” he says.

SPAIN

Melía Hotels looked at Cuba’s tourism boom and saw an expansion opportunity, opening a luxury resort on the island that has such rare amenities as free internet.

KAZAKHSTAN

Rashid Sarsenov is a near-billionaire oil tycoon—and owner of a prosperous winery, Chateau Silk Alley, in southern Kazakhstan.

MEXICO

Eugenio Lopez, the “Medici of Mexico,” put together a groundbreaking exhibit of artists Jeff Koons and Marcel Duchamp, an earlier iconoclast, at his Jumex Museum in Mexico City.

ROMANIA

Electric scooters aren’t littering just American sidewalks. Three scooter startups have launched in Bucharest, too, and 20% of Romanians say they plan to buy a scooter this year.

SWITZERLAND

The country’s only unicorn is MindMaze, a computer and VR startup whose investors include Leonardo DiCaprio. Its moonshot project: the “Cognichip,” a microchip that thinks like a human brain.

TUNISIA

“We must collectively imagine the African city of the future,” says architect Borhène Dhaouadi, 39. His Groupement DTA is working on creating an eco-neighborhood in Tunisia and will turn its attention to “Bizerte 2050,” transforming the ancient metropolis into the country’s first “smart” city.

RUSSIA

With his fortune declining, tech billionaire Vladimir Yevtushenkov is planting seeds in the agriculture industry, including a joint venture with the French Louis-Dreyfus family.

THAILAND

Once an unhappy securities trader, billionaire Somphote Ahunai’s Energy Absolute has become Thailand’s leading alternative-energy company.

KOREA

Kim Byung-won, chairman of the country’s largest agricultural co-op, aims to increase the average farm’s household income. It has risen 15% in three years to $42,000, and he sees it climbing by nearly 20% more.

MONGOLIA

Bakery baron Tumengerel Sumiya has a new gig: hosting the Mongolian version of Shark Tank.

SAUDI ARABIA

Within two years of starting Danube Online, Ahmad BinDawood had 2 million Saudi users shopping for their groceries on the Web.

TURKEY

Amid a VC boom, Hande Enes, a 41-year-old heir to a Turkmenistan real estate fortune, has emerged as a leading investor, putting $7 million into 35 startups.

VIETNAM

Most businesses don’t last two generations. With new CEO Nguyen Van Khoa, 42, FPT Corp., an IT giant, is entering its third.