PEOPLE SPECIAL..... TRUE Grit (4)

 TRUE Grit  (4)

Focussed Manager

Forget about media interviews, N Shiva Kumar doesn’t even have
time for friends or relax over a cup of coffee. The 23-year-old thinks only about his projects and lectures at IIM-C where he is studying finance. “My aim is to make the most of this opportunity,” he says. “I have a goal and I’ll be successful.” The goal is to start an institution to help poor children pursue their education.
Kumar knows what it is to be poor. His father was a truck driver and his mother a homemaker in Banaswadi, near Bangalore. There was never enough money for a full meal. “When I was in Class 3 or 4, I sold garlands by the roadside. But that didn’t earn me enough. So I became a newspaper vendor. It was a difficult life. Get up very early in the morning, deliver the papers, go to school...other odd jobs in the evening such as selling consumer durables,” he recollects. But studies was his priority and he excelled in it.
Thanks to Krishna Veda Vyasa, one of his newspaper clients and who helped him financially, Kumar managed to complete school and also graduate from the Bangalore Institute of Technology with a degree in computer science. Then last year he cracked CAT.
There is no bitterness in him. Instead there is hope. Hope that his parents will lead a decent life soon. And of course there is his goal. And what about photography that he is so interested in? “I’ll have to save money and buy a camera first,” he says, smiling shyly.

STUDYING: Finance at IIM-Calcutta
FAMILY BACKGROUND:
Father a truck driver, mother homemaker
“I want to help poor kids pursue their education” N Shiva Kumar

— Anuradha Himatsingka
ETM130901