Ensuring success

‘’ – Confuscious.

Uday Shankar , like many of the students that we meet at Unnati, has a simple beginning. His father was employed at a book store. His mother was a home maker, and he has a sister. The father’s slim income was just enough to make ends meet. Uday admits that, as a student, he was lazy and did not want to share any of the family’s responsibilities. And as seems to be the case with many other parents, Uday’s parents ensured that he and his sister got good education. Both of them have a Bachelors of Arts (B.A.) degree.

A friend of Uday’s father mentioned Unnati to the family. The family then decided to send Uday to Unnati for the vocational program. At Unnati, Uday was selected for the Retail vocation, and says he learnt a lot about retail sales. The three biggest learnings from Unnati as per Uday, are:

·         Learning to respect others.

·         Learning to be well-behaved (especially in public places).

·         Learning the importance of being responsible.

Unnati helped Uday learn all of the above, and he says those lessons have helped him to be successful today. Uday’s first job was at Subway for around Rs. 5400 per month. He worked there for a year-and-a-half, but Uday was not satisfied with the kind of work he was doing. He mentioned that he grew up seeing his dad work in a bookstore. He wanted to do the same thing when he grew up. Since 2004, he’s had an interest in books (as a business proposition) so he found his calling in a bookstore that dealt with old books.

Uday now works as a Sales Rep in a bookstore, and by interacting with him, one can easily understand that he is very passionate about his job, and thus, very happy! His company pays him a rather fat salary of over Rs. 2,00,000 an annum, and this does not include his perks. As a part of his current job, Uday needs to interact with multiple customers, negotiate, articulate his product knowledge clearly and get more business for the company he works for. Unnati is the single institution that has made all of this possible for Uday.

Uday is a very proud student of Unnati. He says the world around him acknowledges his presence, and recognizes him as a mature adult today, only because of how Unnati has shaped him into what he now is. He has recommended 13 youth to Unnati so far.

In his own words, Uday says, “Life lessons, effective time management and how to progress in life– if you learn all these three lessons that Unnati emphasises on, each of us can have a very bright and good future.”

Team Unnati is very happy about Uday’s achievements and wishes him all success to open his own bookstore very soon!

Contribution by Sukanya Kuppuswamy ( volunteer )

Team Unnati