NEW YORK: A slum boy who now owns a food industry empire in Chennai - thanks to his poverty stricken mother who sold idlis on pavements to educate him - was honoured at a youth conference of the World Bank for his entrepreneurship and leadership skills.
Sarath Babu Elumalai was among the three youth invited from across the globe for the Bank's annual flagship event, the Global Youth Conference, to engage the broader development of community with youth around the world.
The theme of this year's conference was Youth Unemployment: Empowering Solutions through Innovation and Inclusion.
Convened by youth experts and advocates, the conference was webcast internally and externally, with online participants from over 20 countries.
Ronan Farrow, advisor on Youth Issues to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressed the participants. The conference was also webcast internally and externally, with online participants from over 20 countries.
Sarath Babu told PTI in Jersey City here that at one time he struggled to continue his school education due to poverty.
His mother who worked as a low grade servant at the State Government nutritious noon meal scheme project decided to make idlis and sell them in a pavement shop to educate her son.
Babu did not disappoint her and got admission in merit at BITS-Pilani for a Chemical Engineering degree and landed in top-notch Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad for an MBA.
Today, the 30-year-old youth who was wallowing in abject poverty in the prime of his youth, employs around 300 people mostly from the poor strata of the society and his multi-crore Food King restaurant and catering business has crossed Chennai and operates in Hyderabad and Jaipur as well.
"I was born and raised in a slum in Madipakkam in Chennai. I have two elder sisters and two younger brothers and my mother was the sole breadwinner of the family," Babu told the gathering at the conference moving some of them into tears.
"It was really tough for my mother to bring up five kids on her meager salary. She sold Idlis in the mornings, worked for the mid-day meal at the school during daytime and taught at the adult education programme of the Indian government, thus doing three different jobs to bring us up and educate us. We went hungry many a days and I know the impact of hunger,"
After graduating from IIM-A, Babu had setup "Food King" -a food catering services in 2006 with the vision to offer employment to illiterate and semi-illiterate people and improve their standard of living.
"I put values ahead of money and power. And I have learnt it the hard way, rising up from delivering idlis prepared by my mother."
Source: The Economic Times
