Jeyalakshmi Venkatanarayanan

Jeylakshmi Venkatanarayanan is the founder and CEO of Universe Power Systems. She is a student of engineering with a background in electronics and telecommunications. She is a trained dancer, choreographer, and Carnatic singer, and a qualified instructor. When she established the dancing school "Nruthya Kendra" in 1984, her entrepreneurial path officially began. In 1997, Jeylakshmi founded Universal Power Systems with Tata Liebert as her business partner for UPS due to her desire to work in the power industry. Despite having no prior clients, Universe has increased its customers to over 2000 prominent companies in various sectors, including IT, healthcare, pharmaceuticals, government, education, and research.

Under the skillful direction of Jeylakshmi, Universe has expanded the scope of services it provides by introducing Complete power solutions, green power alternatives, Precision cooling (PAC), AHUs, Server racks, and data centers, as well as setting up Cleanroom labs and maintenance services. Jeyalakshmi became an entrepreneur in less than five years despite the industry being predominately male, being the only independent female business partner of VERTIV (previously known as Emerson Network Power India Pvt Ltd).

Through her success story, Jeyalakshmi has inspired lots of young girls and women to work towards pursuing entrepreneurial vocations. When the Global Economic Council gave her the Rashtriya Rattan Award on Indira Gandhi's birthday in 2000, she was recognized for her exceptional commercial achievements. By the Kannada Prabha newspaper in 2008, she was given the moniker Powerful Woman, which eventually turned into a book of the same name. It's clear how remarkable Jeylakshmi Venkatanarayanan is because Goldman Sachs selected her from among 10,000 female entrepreneurs worldwide. She even received the Mother Teresa Achievement Prize for her management course at ISB in 2010. She was featured by Workshop magazine in the year 2013