N Shiva Kumar's day starts at 4 am in the morning. He stacks newspapers in his bicycle set to deliver before the sunrise. Anyway, he will have to change this habit from now on as he will be attending the PG curriculam of prestigious Indian Institute of Management at Calcutta.

 

Nothing less than a fairy tale saga, he managed to get admission to this premier business institution by cracking CAT 2012. This 23-year old newspaper vendor was pursuing his Engineering studies, and his father is a truck driver. The daily meagre income of 150 he got by selling newspapers was a great relief for this family struggling under debt and poverty. 

 

He has grown up in an atmosphere where people daily used to queue up his home to collect the borrowed money back from his father and the earning from the truck was not sufficient to meet up the daily needs by his father. Earlier, as a child he used to sell flowers and garlands on street and later he managed to get the job of this newspaper vendor.

 

In Std 9, when he had no money to pay the fee authorities threatened him to throw out of school. He begged the mercy of his old newspaper customer, Krishna Veda Vyasa, who checked with the school management for his credential and for his astonishment found that he was a topper. From then onwards, he is funding and managing all money for all his studies. 

 

His priority after IIM is stabilizing his family and he has a distant dream of starting a charitable organization, to educate the underprivileged and poor of Indian society. With a plan to specialize in finance, with the support of education loans, he aims to work hard for a bright future.