Vidya Ragu: A Prodigy whose creations leave indelible footprints in the landscape of Education system
The CEO Magazine in its search for remarkable & multi talented business women came across extraordinary icons whose contribution in various disciplines have made a phenomenal impact in our economy and society. Their glorious stories of hard earned success exhibit their unyielding determination, zeal, patience and perseverance that show they have the power to shape our world. One of these prodigies is Vidya Ragu, an award winning Woman entrepreneur, who is gifted with many accomplishments. Vidya is a Leading learning and development specialist and a Popular Speaker, who has conducted over three hundred experiential workshops/sessions on various performance Impact topics for individual , educational institutions and businesses -like Personal leadership, New millennium effective teaching methodologies, Achievement formula ,Brain Gym, Get Unstuck, innovation and creativity drivers, Accelerating Productivity, Building Winning Teams, Becoming the TITAN, Genie in me, Iceberg Leadership. Vidya is a frequent panelist on TV shows, and she is also regularly featured in print media. She has worked with Top companies and institutions like McKinsey, Wipro, Cooper Bussman, IIT etc. She is also a consultant for two of India’s Leading Companies in the learning space which deal with transforming education at early childhood and innovating adult learning in corporate. She is a very active contributor to social change, handling numerous Volunteering projects for woman and child development. She is also a mentor with BYST (CII) helping many startups to unleash their entrepreneurial journey. Recently, Vidya has authored a book’ Shed Fears not Tears’.
With more than twelve years of experience in delivering world class training programs, Vidya has founded ‘ SkillsGurucool ‘- an organization dedicated to holistic learning and development for Educational Institutions, Top Corporates, and Individuals. The firm specializes in designing and delivering Performance Impact programs that combine latest scientific research with hands on industry experience and effective world class delivery methodologies to create powerful programs which employ experiential way of learning to bring about desired positive change. Speaking about what stimulated her ideas to start SkillsGurucool, Vidya says, “I wanted to reach more people in better ways so that they can benefit through my services. I stepped into the new venture to build foundation for greater impact and reach. We would like our business to be vehicle of opportunity for woman and youth that makes them financially strong and enables their growth.”
Vidya started her entrepreneurial journey at an early age of 16 to realize her dream of building a business that enhances the productivity at workplaces, Institutions, and homes by bringing in positivity. Vidya has always stuck to her belief that if women channelize their immense potential into viable business models, it can make a big difference to the society. Speaking about her dream as a business woman, she says, “I had always been fascinated to read that India was a golden bird once and leaders of our nation dream of India becoming a golden bird once again. I just want to contribute in my ways to support the realization of this dream and help our children see India again rising as the Golden bird.”
Vidya is a powerhouse in business who has a long list of professional achievements that acknowledge her zeal, determination and dedication towards persistent innovations in business as well as her field. She was awarded the India Lifestyle award for one of her entrepreneurial ventures in 2015. She was selected to take up an entrepreneurship program on scholarship by Goldmann Sachs from one of the best B-schools, Indian School of Business, Hyderabad. She had earned her International Certification for High Impact Training from Stalwarts like T.Harve Ekr. Speaking about her professional achievements, she shares about her success in a project that filled her with sense of achievement, “During one of our Projects in a manufacturing company, we were able to bring down the firm’s attrition and defect rate drastically. Our programs not only aided in increasing its top line significantly but also created a new atmosphere in the factory that was conducive for communication and collaboration while markets were struggling due to economic slowdown.”
Vidya has a unique client centric approach towards building strategies for developing her business. To achieve sustainable growth, she takes more initiatives to maintain the standards and qualities of her services so that she can build long term relationships. She says, “Instead of big team of sales force we have collaborated with people and business that share a similar vision and have the hunger to grow, so we have a lean team that leverages on impact and quality rather than quantity. Everyone who associates with us is valued for their burning desire for growth and is encouraged to challenge existing ways and do things differently in new ways and share with others which enables us to deliver the same flavor in our work with clients”
The road to success wasn’t always smooth for Vidya. She also stepped into stones of failure in her journey of entrepreneurship which was full of hurdles. She had to make painstaking efforts to overcome them and climb the ladder of success. She speaks about her failures and the learning that came with it, “I have seen huge failures in business, that too because of unanticipated calamities, which ended up in huge losses apart from the mental trauma of having lost what we have created with so much investment, passion and effort. My learning was that Failure shows us where all we can fall weak and its an opportunity to master the art of becoming better. It challenges us to find our better selves, to get off from our comfort zone and find as well as appreciate real things around us.”
Vidya’s learning programs clearly interpret her desire to transform the way education is regarded in our country. With these programs, she aims to bring in harmonious changes at workplace in such a way that every individual has ample opportunity to express their maximum potential and create happy communities. On being asked about her future plans, she says, “We plan to leverage technology to enable us to take our programs to grass root remote educational institutions. We are constantly endeavoring to be the Learning & Development Partner for 100 Indian companies/educational institutions so that we can facilitate them to become global brands by impacting their workforce and workplace, in next coming years.”
“Success is a journey of ups and down that takes us close to and sometimes beyond what we have dreamt and help us experience it in reality which otherwise is just an image in our mind; in the process creates immense value for us as well as others fulfilling our need for achievement and self discovery”, says Vidya Ragu
