sai prasad vishwanathan

Sai Prasad Vishwanathan

Sai was born in Lalgudi tiruchinapally in tamil Nadu, India with some physical challenges and compelled naturally to use crutches for walking. As a child, Sai bounced from one school to another due to his disabilities. His mother constantly reassured him he was inferior to no one. With all his hurdles and stigmas, he made such blocks of confidence that resulted in him to burn as a hard working intellectual and in 2002 August, got the chance to study Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Chaitanya Bharathi Institute of Technology (CBIT) in Hyderabad.

After that, there was no set back for him and upon graduation from CBIT, won a gold medal for academic achievement in 2006. A new country was actually writing a script for his life at that time. His fortune paved such a way for him that he bagged a research scholarship to attend the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and work toward a master’s degree in engineering. It was not that much easy for him to be compatible with such an environment far from the warmth of his home town always been snowy and cold at UW, Madison. But with all his physical challenges, he adjusted and thrived on and on towards changes and adaptability. All he said about the United States is that “The most important lesson I learned while studying in the U.S. was that education and life are not just about being the best,” he says. “They are about constantly becoming better.”In the US, he came to know about those tangible modes by which he can visualise some opportunity to make something better for all disables out there in India.

Despite being challenged, he pushed himself for a skydive some day in the year 2008 and uttered that he is willing to see that how far he can push himself with his odds. He muses right from his heart that "I also realised that this jump was a way I could also make a lot of noise for those with disabilities across India, plus the thrill and fun of it all almost defies description.

Once he got back to India after gaining a graduation degree from UW in April 2010, he then went to take an MBA degree from coveted Indian School of Business (ISB) in Hyderabad and worked a lot to develop a business model to promote disables in India.there. His efforts were highly appreciated in 2010 for which he received the Helen Keller Role Model Person of the Year Award. The award is all about an Indian way to honour and felicitating someone who has promoted employment opportunities for the disabled. It was recognised as one of the top 10 business plans submitted to the Global Social Venture Competition held at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Vishwanathan lost sensation in the lower half of his body when he was a kid. But he was not one to let a disability take over his life. He became India’s first skydiver and has his name registered in the Limca Book of Records for being the first Indian with disability to skydive from 14,000 feet. He has co-founded Sahasra, an organization that provides scholarships to financially disadvantaged students with great potential, to pursue higher studies. He currently works as a risk consultant at  Deloitte U.S. in India.