Udyam Fellowship: My Journey of Self Exploration

My life was very comfortable in Chandigarh. I was doing MS from National Institute getting monthly stipend from Ministry of Chemical and Fertilizer. I worked on Anti-tuberculosis and Anti-cancer drugs in early drug discovery and development stage for 18 months. Apart from my research I was singer in my rock band, trained yoga, meditation teacher from Art of Living, so overall a balanced life in terms of academics and extracurricular activities.

In 2013 one of the best things happened to me, it was Jagriti Yatra. After completing the journey I realized importance of dreams and chased my dream which is building India. I applied and got selected for 2 fellowships (other than UF) and also got a good job in an NGO apart from all these I had also option to do PhD and Junior Research Fellow in the same institute. Finally after a rigorous analysis and research, I joined Udyam Fellowship. My family, friends, mentir were not really happy with my decision. However I was sure of my passion.

I believed that fellowship was a very good opportunity to explore my potential and building India through enterprise. I did not want to regret. So I joined in Sep-2014.

After a good team work in Mumbai I came to Deoria my Karmbhumi. Here all my concepts failed. Reality is more often a surprise and then I analyzing the situation. People don’t want to come to the center as I was an outsider. I was challenged, as I took that decision after a long fight with my parents, mentors. But there was a thought in my mind that the one year commitment is not for Jagriti; this commitment is first with me. This single thought motivated me. I read a lot of spiritual books like Geeta and others and also follow The Art of living organization, that time I strongly felt that now is the time to implement my learning and time to use the inherited wisdom. With the help of other team members I stayed there for 6 months.

After meeting local people now in 5 months we have created 2 successful enterprises out of 15 enterprises. These enterprises are not big in terms of money but are very big in terms of changing the thought process of small town.

Although it was very tough decision to leave my research field and joined Udyam Fellowship. Now when I look back I have no regrets. I am very happy with my work although the work is very challenging but as I know this is what I want. After my fellowship I will continue as a team member with JEN. One has to face many tough situations in order to succeed as a udyam fellow, well that’s the beauty of entrepreneurship, resilience will be your key asset.

And now after a successful pilot we are moving to build world’s largest enterprise network.

“An Udyam Fellow is a person who has a burning desire of building India through innovation”