Lakshmi V. Venkatesan

Founder

Founder of Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust (BYST)

Lakshmi V. Venkatesan is the founder of Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust (BYST) (1992)[1], an Indian non-profit working on livelihood from New Delhi.

Lakshmi Venkataraman Venkatesan is the founding and managing trustee of the Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust (BYST), a non-profit organisation established in 1992 that helps disadvantaged young Indians turn business ideas into working enterprises with the support of a volunteer mentor.

BYST combines the model of the Prince of Wales Youth Business Trust in Britain with the Indian guru-shishya tradition of mentoring. Venkatesan is a daughter of R. Venkataraman, a former President of India.

Early life and education

Venkatesan is an alumna of Delhi University and holds double master's degrees in physics and engineering science from New York University.

Career

She began her career in the United States, working at AT&T Bell Laboratories as a systems engineer, and returned to India in the late 1980s after nearly two decades in high technology.

In 1992 she set up the Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust with the encouragement of the industrialist J. R. D. Tata and the support of the Prince of Wales, later King Charles III. BYST provides mentoring, training and access to finance for young entrepreneurs, particularly in rural and low-income communities. The organisation reports having trained more than 15,000 certified mentors, supported over 11,000 entrepreneurs and trained around 50,000 young people.

Venkatesan worked with Youth Business International to replicate the BYST approach in other countries, and has served on Indian government task forces, on Confederation of Indian Industry committees including the Woman Exemplar Programme, and as a trustee of the Guild of Service, Delhi.[2][3][4]

Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust (BYST)

Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust (BYST) was established in 1992, with JRD Tata as mentor and founding chairman, to nurture young entrepreneurs from disadvantaged backgrounds into 'grampreneurs' and job creators. It provides mentoring, loans and business support across urban and rural India, partnering with state governments, banks and corporates.

Bharatiya Yuva Shakti Trust (BYST) reports the following, on its own site:

Has outreached and counselled 2,500,000 youth in total, trained 200,000 youth, and trained and accredited 22,000 mentors (homepage impact counters).
Has supported 51,000 Grampreneurs and facilitated Rs. 850 crore of loans through financial institutions, generating 500,000 jobs and Rs. 5,000 crore of wealth.