Inspiring story of GreatWorks founder Anandham Selvakumar

From Rs.400 salary to 45 crore turnover business to supporting hundreds of Underprivileged students education, the Inspiring story of GreatWorks founder Anandham Selvakumar

Can one person bring change in hundreds of underprivileged students’ lives?

Can one person be a role model to aspiring entrepreneurs?

Can one person be always the first to jump in when his friends are in an emergency?

Can one person set his life by example with a vision “the purpose of life is happiness “

Yes

Meet the all in one Selvakumar, fondly called Anandham Selvakumar. , for some people, he is Maruthi Selvakumar, for different people he appeals differently. But inside he is the same humble, friendly, down-to-earth, approachable friend. We call him Selva.

YourStory.com deeply covered his life story in their Tamil edition

I tried my level best in the English version. This is not a translation, of Yourstory.com, I don’t have to do a translation because I know Selva for over 25 years and whatever I have seen him in close quarters and sometimes from a distance is what I share here

Selva student life:

Selva had a very humble beginning

Born and raised in a small village near Thiruvarur district, where just about 15 families lived, he cycled about 10 km to his schooling, then for further studies, he went to a polytechnic college, completed his diploma in electronics.

After completing studies, usually, south side youngsters do two things, one they either go to middle east countries, take whatever the job which they get and spend the rest of their lives, sacrificing their dreams for their family

or

two they travel down to Chennai settle for a meager salary and find a place to live, every Pongal and Deepavali they board a bus, go to their villages, spend time with their family and come back with heavy heart, live in the dreams of their village life

But Selva was different.

I met him around 1995; Selva is no different then, carried the same enthusiasm. I know he was a man on a mission, He was keen on learning new things, worked hard; he had a vision of starting a business not a small one but something big. For 90s youths, dreams happen only in sleep, rarely do youngsters have a vision and chase it.

Selva set his vision clear. He doesn’t want to live a regular life, and he pushed himself hard to learn the skills of business, saved money for his venture. When his Job threw him the dust, he did not complained, took the hard way to learn business, during his travel, he slept in bus stands and railway stations but that doesn’t deter his vision. The next day, he will be back with the same enthusiasm.

Selva Entreprenuerial Journey :

Then at the early age of 19 years, he started his first venture Maruthi Power System.

For a successful entrepreneur, two things are important: 1) Values 2) Business Skills

Skills can be taught, but values have to be ingrained. Selva’s deep-rooted values are integrity and taking care of his people. Even today, this is the value he built his organizations.

Business success did not come easily to him. He had his own struggle to establish his business, but he never compromised on his values. Right from day one, he was serious about customer service. We worked with many clients together. Sometimes the cost of servicing them overshoots the product cost itself, but he never bothered about it. , commitment is a commitment to him and his friend Ravi. They never compromised on service

In our long friendship, the only time I see Selva is getting angry about is the below-accepted service level to customers; otherwise, any business challenges he takes as an opportunity.

On the business journey, he expanded his business, Maruthi Surveillance, Maruthi Solar; EFocus, Great Works all combined serving over 50,000 customers across TN.

Even while he was struggling for his business to take off, he finds time to do something for society along with his friends. He will book some popular speakers to conduct motivational programs for students.

One thing which is close to his heart is to work with the youths and inspire them. That’s one of the reason Inspiring story of GreatWorks founder Anandham Selvakumar is read by many youths

Beginning of Anandham Foundation

On his journey with students, he saw there is a vast gap in our educational system. Selva saw a lot of students discontinue their studies after + 2. To this day his nature is not complaining about the system; he works on the potential solutions you can bring in rather talking about the problem; he wants to solve a bigger problem. A problem bigger than his capacity.

Along with his friends, he started Anandham Youth Foundation, a service organization to support underprivileged youth’s higher education. Starting with around 30 students, today Anandham has grown as an organization supporting 585 underprivileged students. He says this is just the beginning; his bigger vision is no underprivileged students should discontinue their studies because of lack of money. I know for sure this will happen, too. When your cause is big, support will come automatically.

Good things are always recognized, TN government has honored him with the highest civilian award of APJ Abdul Kalam award during the Independence Day celebration. For him, it’s one more event, he moves on his mission.

Selva believes education and employment can alone lift the country

He wanted to do something for entrepreneurship. He founded GreatWorks, a sales consulting firm to help the growth of SMEs. Through GreatWorks, He is inspiring fellow entrepreneurs through his speeches.

If you see him, his thinking, actions are all focused on others

People who know him always ask one question, where he got all the time to do these many things.

But watching him in close quarters, I know the sacrifices he and his family make to make others happy.

Selva is blessed to have a great life partner, Rajeshwari, and two lovely daughters who always stand by him. Without them Selva would have been one more average human being .because of their sacrifices, he is known today for what he stands for. Thanks to those family members.

Don’t think he reached his pinnacle.

The best is yet to come.

Yes, Selva, we know you deserve much more success

We draw inspiration from you,

This is just a small attempt to write a little about him. The time will come to write a book about the Inspiring story of GreatWorks founder Anandham Selvakumar

Before I leave, I want to ask you a question. If you had interacted with Selva, what is the one thing you will admire or what one thing you will ask him to correct?

Please share it in the comments section.