Srikanth Bolla was born blind to a family who earned their living through farming. After his birth people in his villagers advised his mother and father to let him die. In India physically handicapped kids by birth are considered as curse and are let to die.
Despite scoring over 90 percent marks in Class 10, he had to fight for nearly six months to get himself enrolled for science batch. With the support of a teacher who converted all the lessons into audio clips, Srikanth scored an impressive 98 percent in his exams. But his rejections didn't end there. This time it was by the IIT in 2009 on the same grounds that he was blind.
Srikanth however secured an admission in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and graduated from there in 2012 and he became the first international blind student to be admitted to the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US.
Now Srikanth is the CEO of Hyderabad-based Bollant Industries, an organisation that employs uneducated disabled employees to manufacture eco-friendly, disposable consumer packaging solutions, which is worth Rs 50 crores.
Today, Srikanth has four production plants, one each in Hubli (Karnataka) and Nizamabad (Telangana), and two in Hyderabad (Telangana). Another plant, which will be one hundred percent solar operated, is coming up in Sri City, an integrated business city in Andhra Pradesh.
Srikanth even impressed Ratan Tata who recently invested an undisclosed amount in the company. Other investors on-board the company include the likes of Srini Raju of Peepul Capital, Satish Reddy of Dr Reddy's Laboratories and Ravi Mantha, one of India's prolific angel investors.
He also worked with former president APJ Abdul Kalam on the Lead India project, a movement to empower the youth through value-based education.
Srikanth Bolla vision is to, transform about 540 million youth which would help India to become a developed nation by the year 2020, by eradicating unemployment, poverty and illiteracy.
You should definitely see an inspirational talk he gave recently,