Even after facing many ups and downs in his life, on the strength of his perseverance, Lakshmi fulfilled his childhood dream of becoming a successful entrepreneur.

Lakshmi Narayanan is the Co-founder of a startup called ‘The Only Success’, a leadership academy in Chennai which he started in 2004. He is also an Executive Director of ‘Education Matters’ and Secretary of an NGO called ‘Global Education and Careers Forum’ based in Chennai. His role is to empower and mentor students at all the organizations.

Lakshmi was born in an agriculturist family and studied in a government school. He says that although he was eligible to do engineering, but due to financial constraints at home, he did B.Sc. in Math from Trichy, Tamil Nadu. He says that while traveling to his college, he was fascinated to see people speaking English. Soon he started his professional journey by taking a job in sales at Godrej to sell their telephones. After a few months, he came back to Chennai and did a door-to-door marketing job, selling vacuum cleaners for two years. After getting a good hold on sales and marketing, he worked in various companies till August, 2004. The very next month, he commenced his journey as an entrepreneur.

When asked about his role models, Lakshmi says he considers his father as his role model because he believes in everything he does. Second, he considers Naveen Bhandari, the owner of TechZone as his role model for teaching him everything about sales. He also takes inspiration from his partner Vijay and his daughter.

Recalling his childhood, Lakshmi says that his childhood was spent in extreme financial troubles due to being raised in an agricultural family. But just at the age of twelve, he had decided to become an entrepreneur.

Talking about his proud moments, Lakshmi says while climbing the ladder of success, he published a book last year called ‘Sale Success Secret’, which became a huge success. Besides this, his thirteen-year old daughter is the Founder of ‘The First Step’ channel. She interviews young achievers and also writes articles for one of the most prominent newspapers called ‘The Hindu.’ It’s the proudest thing for him.

If Lakshmi had a chance to time travel in a Time Machine, he would go back to his childhood and relive all the joyous moments that he cherishes today.

Lakshmi likes to spare some time to play Badminton. He also likes to spend time with his family, go on a walk, travel and hang out.

Lakshmi advises everyone that whatever choices you make, you should always be ready to face their consequences because choices have consequences. Further he says that you should appreciate things because that’s when your true learning begins.