Youth Mentor, Author and Eminent Speaker
Hyderabad based Vijay Banda is a Cyber Security expert by profession. But what sets this dynamic leader apart is his growing fame as a Youth Mentor.
Founder of the non-profit organization – ‘Yes Mentor’, Vijay envisions mentoring 10 lakh youth across India on future skill readiness in the next five years, thus increasing the availability of skilled professionals in the country.
Citing Sathguru, Vijay says, “True success cannot be just individual success but needs to be inclusive and contribute to other’s success too”.
Adhering to this divine guidance, he recognised the importance of converting his experience and competency into service by mentoring the youth in India, which in turn led to the formation of ‘Yes Mentor’.
‘Yes Mentor’ is a platform that connects industry SMEs to youth for active and focused mentoring on both future skills and industry alignment. Established in 2015, the organization has grown from strength to strength. It aims to bridge the skill gap by connecting college students and entry level professionals with industry subject matter experts via personalised and focused mentoring. They prepare the mentees for building successful professional careers and provide guidance, support, encouragement and constructive feedback.
Vijay himself is of the opinion that Mentoring is not training, and it is certainly not coaching. Mentoring is the sharing of knowledge, skills, and life experience to guide others towards reaching their full potential in an effective and efficient way thus making it a journey of shared discovery. Further, through Quality mentoring you can connect much deeper with young persons to help them realise their true potential thus enabling personal growth and development and improved social and economic opportunity, feels Vijay.
What set this mentorship initiative rolling was Vijay’s return to India from the USA. After pursuing a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Bangalore University, India, Vijay went to complete a master’s degree in computer science from Wayne State University, Detroit, USA.
Following his education, Vijay worked with various Fortune 100 companies across the globe, spanning five different countries, including 12 years in the USA holding multiple leadership roles across companies in Automotive, Government, Banking and Telecom verticals.
Today, he has 26 years of experience in the lucrative field of information technology. His day job sees him working as Senior Director, Cybersecurity, Qualcomm India. Through his experience and expertise, he is also guiding India’s MSME’s on Cyber security best practices. He hopes that all these efforts will realise the goal of a more robust and self-reliant India.
Vijay’s core competencies include building and leading high performance delivery teams involving cutting-edge technologies in the areas of Cloud, Cyber Security and Global capability centers.
Interestingly, Vijay decided to return to India after living in the US for more than 13 years. He flew back as he wanted to stay closer to his parents, his family members, culture, and had a strong desire to contribute to his motherland.
Ever since his return, he has been providing free mentoring sessions across schools and colleges in India. Armed with deep insights into the current education system and the resulting skill gap, he guides youngsters on their path.
With industry 4.0 driven technological revolution at their doorsteps, Vijay sensed that this is also the right time to author and publish a self-help book – Skill Up India: 4 Mantras for Future Skill Readiness, that targets the youth in India. His creation recently became Amazon India’s bestseller.
He is now an acclaimed Author, Mentor and Eminent speaker across various technology and leadership forums. He writes blogs and articles regularly to inspire, guide youth and young professionals of India become future skill ready.
But what Vijay truly aspires to do is to achieve the goal of transforming India’s youth into powerful skill-based professionals aligned to the future of work through ‘Yes Mentor’. In addition, he also has a parallel objective of imparting a new mindset towards learning and skill development to children and college students of government schools and colleges.
Vijay is a true example of multi-faced and holistic leadership. We are honoured to feature him as Men Leaders To Look Up To as a part of this work and wish him the very best as he evolves to be The Mentor Man of India!
