Here is an inspiring story of the Srikanth Bolla who has faced rejections all his life because of his blindness. Srikanth Bolla was born blind and everyone said to his parents that to get rid of the kid. But, his parents had not followed any advise and take care of him, that too, to the best of their abilities and give him the better education.

Now, he is the CEO of the 50 crore Bollant Industries a Hyderabad-based company. In this company, he recruits uneducated and physically challenged people to manufacture eco-friendly, disposable consumer packaging solutions out of the natural leaf and recycled paper with manufacturing units in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka.

He faced the lot of problems to get into this stage. When he was in school he had to overcome one constant challenge, rejection. However, he was admitted in school for special children, where he became the topper of his class and also played chess and cricket.

He also worked with former president APJ Abdul Kalam on the Lead India project, a movement to empower the youth through value-based education. In spite of  scoring over 90 percent marks in Class 10, he had to fight for nearly six months to get himself enrolled for science batch. But, with the support of a teacher who converted all the lessons into audio clips, Srikanth scored 98 percent in his exams which is remarkable.

But his rejections didn’t end there and this time,  it was by the IIT in 2009 by stating the same reason that he was blind. Srikanth, however, secured an admission in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and graduated from there in 2012.

Srikanth Bolla launched Bollant Industries on his return to India and now employees more than 450 people. Srikanth even impressed Ratan Tata who recently invested an undisclosed amount in the company. Other investors on-board the company include the likes of Srini Raju of Peepul Capital, Satish Reddy of Dr Reddy’s Laboratories and Ravi Mantha, one of India’s more prolific angel investors.

“Compassion,” he says, “is not about giving a coin to a beggar at the traffic signal. It’s showing somebody the way to live and giving them the opportunity to thrive.”