"EdX continues to up the ante by increasing partners, classes (seven to dozens for spring 2013) and innovations, such as virtual laboratories," Forbes added.

Related: Indian Genius Makes World's First 100 Core chip

Datawind had won the tender in 2010 to supply 100,000 Aakash tablets for a price of around $49 dollars per unit. A new version of the tablet PC, featuring one Ghz processor, four-hour battery time, capacitive screen and Android 4.0 operating system, is expected to be launched in India Sunday.

Among the other education innovators on the list is Salman Khan, the Bangladeshi-American founder of Khan Academy, the revolutionary online education platform.

Khan Academy has grown from one-man working alone in a walk-in-closet 24-months ago into a 38-employee organisation, but Salman Khan's offbeat educational videos remain at the heart of the organization. He has personally recorded more than 3,000 of them and they have been downloaded 180 million times.

"The numbers get really crazy when you look at the impact per dollar. We have a $7 million operating budget, and we are reaching, over the course of a year, about 10 million students in a meaningful way", says the 36 year old MIT and Harvard alumnus.