In times of Sony PlayStations and mobile phone texting, Sudhir Udayakanth (29) was into mind mapping for the ministry of defence in Singapore. What’s that, you ask? It’s text-based training on air defence artillery. Example: Calculating how an F 22 can escape a missile fired from a ship. No practicals, only theory, but with an accuracy of plus or minus 10.
Today, Udayakanth is applying the same logic on a different tangent. He runs Edge Academy, a finishing school that helps people discover the edge that lays hidden in them. And that means chalking out personal equations that could refurbish your overall image and set you apart from others and makes others want to relate to you positively.
There are tools and there are techniques culled from books and people that Udayakanth is putting into use. And some of the people helping him in this endeavour include fashion and grooming consultant Prasad Bidapa, theatreperson KM Chaitanya, foodie and event manager Ajit Saldanha. These aside, he has Dr Jean Letschert Ascharyacharya, who has conducted several meditation camps and spiritual art workshops in France, Belgium and Switzerland. Not to mention Ghouse M Naghnoor, who has taught meditation and conversational English in the US and Hungary. “I always like to surround myself with smarter people,” says Udayakanth. “When you are amongst men of greatness, you end up becoming one.”
His education has helped him. After a bachelors in psychology, English literature and sociology, the Bangalore-born lad did a course on 3D animation from a multimedia institute (‘I was more of a visualiser and had to think out of the box and yet be within’). Imbued with confidence, he decided to market his talent for animation. After nine months in Singapore, he set up e-genre, a web solutions company in Singapore, Germany and Bangalore in 1998. Among his clients was the ministry of defence in Singapore. “We gave them web and computer-based training,” he says. “Hard work may pay. But why take chances when smart work always works?”
His smart move got him to travel most of Europe on business: Venice, Monte Carlo, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Dubai, Monaco. And it was here that he learnt the finer aspects of commerce. “At a business dinner, my techie burped and I lost a possible investment of $400,000,” says Udayakanth (now 29), whose first salary at a multimedia company was Rs 1,250. Today, he hires a principal for Rs 22,000, when he is not busy solving a puzzle on his PDA or dictating a new idea on his dictaphone. “And most ideas come to me when I am in the loo,” he smiles.
When he is back to basics, Udayakanth is at his best. “Do you know, we take three seconds to scan a person before we form our impressions?” he gets into his spiel. “There are 150 checklists to make sure your body language makes a favourable impression on others.”
And guess what the guys want to learn at his school? “They want to know how to find out if a girl is interested in them,” says Udayakanth. “Most of our clients are women and youngsters.”
If you want to wade your way in today’s look-conscious society, consult Udayakanth. “We enhance a person’s inner and outer beauty, from getting the right skin tone to how to hide a paunch to wearing socks that match the shoes. I always carry a shoe brush and polish in my car besides a toothpaste, perfume and three sets of neckties. You never know when they might come in handy.”
Now you know. But if you want to understand more, email him at info@ealpl.com.
(First published in City Reporter in 2003, a now defunct weekly tabloid in Bangalore)