He was born blind in a farming family in a village in rural Andhra Pradesh. Relatives told his parents the child would not survive in a world built for the sighted, and under that pressure his parents did consider it. They raised him instead.

Education is a right for everyone else; for him it was a daily negotiation. He walked kilometres to school, was excluded from activities, and moved to Devnar School for the Blind in Hyderabad, a new city, a new language, unfamiliar food. He became the fastest Braille reader in the school and a competitive chess player, and entered every competition going.

He wanted to study science and become an engineer. The state education board barred visually impaired students from science and mathematics. He had scored over ninety percent in his exams, so the obstacle was clearly the system rather than his ability.

He took it to the High Court and won, and the ruling opened STEM education to blind students across India, not only to himself. It is worth pausing on that: before he had a degree, a business or a rupee, he had already changed the law.

The Indian Institutes of Technology would not admit him. He applied to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology instead and became the first international visually impaired student at MIT’s Sloan School of Management, in its Management Science programme.

 He recorded his lessons on cassette to study from. Years later the company behind those cassettes backed the film about his life.

He could have stayed in Boston. In 2012 he co-founded Bollant Industries  with Ravi Mantha instead, a manufacturing business built on a deliberately unfashionable premise: that people the labour market writes off can run a modern factory floor as well as anyone, given the training and the machines.

Today over 70% of the workforce is women, and a substantial proportion of colleagues live with a disability, running presses, packing lines and quality control rather than sitting in a separate unit. The first product was a plate pressed from a fallen areca sheath. There are now sixteen product lines.

He directs the Surge Impact Foundation , which mentors entrepreneurs building in India, and speaks internationally. His mission, as he states it, is to overcome employment barriers for the hundred million-plus physically and mentally challenged people in India, and to create competitive employment for skilled and unskilled workers alike.

In 2024 his life was made into the film Srikanth , with Rajkummar Rao in the title role.

Because buyers ask about ESG, and most suppliers answer with a policy document. Ours is the workforce itself  , and unlike a policy document, you are welcome to come and see it.