Ajit Mohanty belongs to a middle-class family from Ganjam district of Odisha. His father has been in the Police service, but to support a large family has been a concern over the time. Young Ajit since his school days had thought of embarking and doing something on his own to support the family economically. He completed matriculation examination and thereafter joined the Government Industrial Training Institute of Chatrapur by pursuing a domain skill course on electrician trade. Post the training, Ajit started doing petty work in electrical repairing but this was not one that could sustain him in the long run.
One fine morning, Ajit happened to attend a public session at the ITI college where the visionary Subroto Bagchi was delivering a keynote address on skill development in Odisha. It was from there, that Ajit drew inspiration to join the Nano Unicorn training programme in Bhubaneswar. Ever since, Ajit never looked back. He completed the training successfully, received a loan amount of one lakh rupees and with his own savings ventured into a full-fledged electrical workshop. He also explored different other avenues to strengthen his business and also got an additional loan from the Central Bank of India.
“The training by OSDA helped me in gaining confidence on the domain where I had expertise (but lacked confidence) and build on further to start an electrical business on a commercial (big) scale”
Ajit started grooming the four youths whom he had employed in his business. His greatness was such that he did not only consider them as his employees, but encouraged them to become self-dependent. It was no surprise that his motivation and mentoring resulted in transforming three out of those four youth to become Nano Unicorns of subsequent training batches. Today, Ajit is a successful Nano Unicorn and a mentor for younger batches, running a prosperous electrical business in Chatrapur town of Ganjam district. He earns on an average more than Rs 40,000 as profits on a monthly basis. To this date, he has also repaid back the entire one lakh loan amount that he had availed from the project and has been the second Nano Unicorn to do so. Ajit is a role model for many as he continues to keep inspiring and paving the path of self-employment for many un-employed youth of the region.