Source: World Economic Forum - Forum Blog  http://www.forumblog.org/

Interview with Global Shaper Vidyadhar Prabhudesai

Vidyadhar is one of the founding members for LeadCap Ventures and currently heads its operations in Mumbai, Delhi and Bahrain. As a Managing Trustee of LeadCap Trust, he heads the "Voice of Youth" and “E-Learning” training program initiatives to provide India her future “One million leaders”. He has been instrumental in setting up of world’s first "Leadership Village" in Waynad, Kerala. Apart from above, Vidyadhar is also a co-founder and partner in Cygnus IT Solutions, an IT and Mobile application development and service provider company where he heads the marketing and sales function.

What does the Global Shapers Community mean to you and why is it important for you to be part of the GSC? 

I think it is for the first time that World Economic Forum has recognized achievements of 20-30 year olds globally. It is a sense of great achievement and pride for me personally as I am among top 20-30 youth from India who got selected to be a part of Global Shapers Community.

Youth represents more than 50% of the 7 billion people today and the Global Shapers is one of platform to hear our voices. Being young involves tackling some unprecedented challenges including climate change, terrorism, ageing societies and infrastructure, changing job markets, technological advances, the increasing influence of popular culture and changing family and social structures. I think youth will play a significant role as the world confronts these and other challenges.

For all of these reasons we as Global Shapers of future need to continue to improve the support available to young people to navigate these challenges. As a community, we must do more to develop a stronger, fairer and more inclusive society for young

Why are you excited about the India Economic Summit? 

I think IES is the only event where you can meet personalities from all walks of life – Politics, Culture, Academics, Technology, Business, NGO’s, Entrepreneurs, and Media etc. The other events which I have been were domain focused. If you are an entrepreneur you would certainly be interested in meeting all of them as you can network with top-notch bureaucrats, investors, media folks with whom you essentially work in future; and what better platform one can get other than IES? This is the opportunity which cannot be missed! 

What do you believe you can contribute to the meeting? 

LeadCap Trust focus is on leadership where we are striving to nurture a million leaders in India. I am a part of some of the initiatives under the foundation like the Leadership Village, a self sustainable model where we created income generation opportunities by helping the village men discover their true potential. Now the village men are not just dependent on farming produce but have developed sources like tourism, handicrafts etc. to supplement their income.  I also actively contribute to Young Leader Programs and Living Libraries in the Leadership Village. I also pioneered the book donation drive and helped to set up a “Village Leadership Library”. This model will be replicated in other parts of India.

Photograph - Leadership Village/ffNewsIndia archives

I have several other ideas in mind which I’d bring forward in the meeting. I’d like execute a project S-U-S-O. SUSO stands for Stand UP and Speak OUT, which are moderated discussions among teenagers and youth with below objectives

        Make people aware of the prevailing issues

        Help the youth to voice out their opinion

        Come up with effective solutions

        Reach a consensus for its implementation

Another idea is to provide cost effective higher education to people who are economically backward or those who cannot afford education like MBA. I strongly feel that if Academicians, Govt. and Entrepreneurs work together on this, it is definitely achievable. I am currently working on developing this model. My leadership learning from these projects can be valuable lessons for the summit. At the same time I can also learn the best practices in leadership and sustainable community development.

What will you bring back to your Hub and your community after the meeting? 

The India Economic Forum can provide me a platform to demonstrate some of my models as shared above. This event will also help me to build a global network of individuals across the world and find more innovative and effective means to empower youth. An insight into different economies their cultures and principles of nation building etc will help me mould my domain of expertise into highly scalable vessel of skills to sail through all kinds of challenges. It will enable me to shape myself into a global leader of tomorrow with a vision for empowering young people in the world.

As a visionary leader of the future I look forward in participating in activities that benefit both the world economy and the people’s community. Taking cues from past learning and knowledge earned from the Mumbai event, will eventually lead to a creation of programs that are aimed towards empowering youth.