Sudha Suresh

In 2008, at the age of 45, Sudha was at a crossroad in her career. She was looking to do something in the social sector. And then Ujjivan happened. A microfinance company promoted by former banker Samit Ghosh, Ujjivan, set about a revolution in India. Around that time, another visionary leader, P N Vasudevan set up Equitas. The two had similar intentions: to finance low-income people. Their companies had similar growth paths, and currently, both Equitas and Ujjivan have cut it big in the field.

Samit Ghosh was a role model. Together as a team, Samit, Sudha and others built Ujjivan as one of the finest microfinance institutions. For her efforts, she rose to become its Managing Director and CEO.

But we are getting ahead of the story

The story begins in Nasik, Maharashtra, in 1963.

That year, in America, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. It ignited minds in the land of opportunities. In the same year, debonair president John F Kennedy criminalized gender disparity by mandating equal pay for equal work.

In December, in Nasik, Shakunthala delivered her fourth child, Sudha. To the caretaker who remarked, “Oh! A girl again?” the mother proudly said, “So what? I will have the joy of making many beautiful dresses for her.” Sanjeevi Rao, who had a transferable central government job, was the proud father. Did the duo guess the heights their daughter would scale in the years ahead? Maybe. Or, may not be.

Sudha’s earliest remembrances of childhood are of the days she spent at Dehu Road (near Pune), the birthplace of Sant Tukaram. At the age of four, Baby Sudha cried her heart out, insisting on joining school! Tired of her daily tantrums, the Raos packed her off with her sisters and brother to the school. As the academic year had only three months to go, the understanding was Sudha would sit in the first standard and repeat the class the following year.

When the report card was distributed after the annual examination, the future-CA noticed something amiss. Her card was blank, while her friends’ had numbers on it. Furious, she marched out of the classroom; her teacher in the tail, to the principal’s cabin. She wanted to know what was all this! An astonished principal listened, pacified, smiled, and wrote on the card, “Promoted to 2nd Standard.”

Little Sudha had her first victory.

Sudha’s days at Dehu Road, a Cantonment Area, gave her an intimate connection with nature. It was a world of innocence and trust, surrounded by mountains and greenery. The school was a kilometer away, but the kids would hitchhike with perfect strangers saying, “Uncle Humko School Mein Chod deejiye.” And the jawans would do just that.

“Forty-five years on, when I visited the place recently, the Cantonment looked the exact same: calm, peaceful, and serene.” Time had frozen still for the place, while the world around had moved on.