Priya Kumar

Early life

Priya Kumar was born on 4 March, 1973 to Kirti Kumar and Sona Kumar in the city of Chandigarh, India.

Her father was a medical representative with Anglo French, a pharmaceutical company. Her mother, Sona Kumar, was a banker and worked with the Reserved Bank Of India.

She moved to Mumbai with her family when she was 13 years old. In Mumbai, Priya completed her schooling from Gyan Kendra Secondary School.

Priya started writing at an early age. Writing essays, reading books, completing her friend’s homework were her favorite things to do in school. She participated in every essay writing contest there was all through her student years and won several accolades for that.

Priya started working as a Tuition teacher at the age of 13. She taught her classmates and then grew the venture to having taught French to 1900 students all through till her graduation. “I was young and chilled out as teacher because I was still a student and that position of student-teacher led to my popularity”, she says.

She then progressed to becoming a motivational speaker at the age of 24. She added the profile of author with her first book I Am Another You at the age of 35, which won critical acclaim and went on to be her first bestseller.

After completing her schooling, she studied Science as a subject, in Mithibai College. She switched to Commerce, with MMK College. And finally, she graduated from University of Mumbai, with a Major in Economics.

Priya has a postgraduate qualification in marketing and sales from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS).

Priya has also done a course on Film Making from The New York Film Academy, in 2017. She is greatly interested in film-making and direction, and is always looking for avenues to expand her skills and grow as an individual.

Columns

Kumar started writing professionally in the year 2006. She was a regular columnist with Midday, Financial Express, Economic Times, B Positive, DNA, Mint, Dainik Bhaskar, Complete Well Being and several others.

Her contribution to various leading newspapers in the form of weekly columns culminated in her decision to write a book. And so, the idea of 'I Am Another You' was born, and Priya has never turned back. She continues to spread her message through her books, and occasionally writes columns for magazines and newspapers.

Motivational speaking

Dr. Niranjan Patel mentored Priya Kumar. He held anti-nicotine and anti-alcohol workshops, for the youth. Priya, through her resources, would organize programs for him. When Dr. Patel died in 1998, Priya continued to complete his mission and conducted the seven workshops he was supposed to speak at. This was the beginning of her career as a speaker and she moved from doing workshops on Anti Nicotine and Anti Alcohol to motivational subjects. She believed that - "you can’t change people, you can inspire them to make the necessary changes in their lives to be happier."

Priya became a motivational speaker at 24 years of age, making her the youngest motivational speaker in India in 1998.She conducts workshops with multi national corporate houses across the world. Her areas of expertise are corporate training, leadership, motivation, team-building, and personal breakthrough. She engages people in activities like fire walking, glass walking, steel bar bending and board break for strengthening their body and mind, all for attaining peak performance in life. All her sessions are based on experiential learning where people learn lessons not via theory or lectures but by direct experience of the concept.Priya's writing style is compared to that of Paulo Coelho and Deepak Chopra.

Early in her career, apart from doing corporate workshops, Priya was also a visiting faculty in the Indo American Society, where she did workshops on Personality development for the youth, for over 2 years.

Through the course of 18 years, Priya Kumar has had over 800 clients, globally.

Priya's positivity, upbeat attitude and undying spirit have made her one of the most sought-after motivational speakers in the country.

Books

Priya has authored ten books, out of which four are non fiction and six are fiction. Her style of writing is very versatile, where she has authored four inspirational fiction books, she has penned two books of original quotes, written two biographies and a non fiction tale of her adventures with the shamans.

Awards and honours

As of July 2017, Priya Kumar has won a total of 13 international awards, along with several national awards.

YouTube Channel

Apart from being an Author and a Motivational Speaker, Ms. Kumar is also a social media influencer. She initiated her eponymous YouTube Channel a few years ago, and she has recently introduced the 'Creators Of The Future' workshop, which is a 52-Week Workshop, focused on personal growth and development. It helps one track his/her progress through the course of the year, and looking back at how far they have come, and procured their goals.

You can visit her YouTube Channel by clicking on the link alongside: https://www.youtube.com/user/priyakumar1973

Quotes

Other interests and qualifications

After completing her graduation, Ms. Kumar felt she should have taken up painting, music and writing as vocational subjects, all through her learning years. She is passionate about these skills, and continues to hone and nurture them.

Priya is also a painter. She paints with oil and acrylic as a medium.

Priya did a Super Diploma course in French, from Alliance Francais, and has a diploma in German from Max Mueller. She taught French as a tuition teacher for 9 years, all through her school and college years. She taught over 1,900 students, in that term. Priya taught French to her class mates, and then her students, from other schools/colleges from 1989 to 1998.

In 1998, Priya quit her career as a Tuition teacher, and took to motivational speaking. At the age of 24, she was the youngest motivational speaker in the country.

Philanthropy

Priya Kumar is the co-founder of Sona Sarovar Trust, started by her mother Sona Kumar. The trust has adopted over 50 children, from the Anand Nagar slum, looking after their health, education and vocational training, allowing them a chance at leading better lives.

The organisation aims at improve the living conditions of the economically backward people, especially in the rural areas through water conservation, employment generation, education, health, awareness etc. Additionally, it aims at providing medical assistance to needy, particularly to the physically & mentally challenged, and working with slum children, to inculcate a strong value system, providing much needed culture, and encouraging them to study & making them good citizens of India.

Firewalking

Priya Kumar specializes in Fire Walking. She got her fire-walk certification from Sundoor, and went on to assist Fire Walk instructors across the world, before she introduced Fire Walking as a part of her Motivational Speaking agenda.

She has found that walking on fire is a great tool for transforming beliefs, and instilling in people a renewed confidence, about handling challenges. It challenges past beliefs, where the person has learnt that fire burns and now takes it head on, and walks on it, without as much as a sting.

The experience serves as an analogy, that the past does not equal to the future,and that what one sets one's mind to, one can conquer and achieve.

Ms. Kumar is popularly addressed as 'A Speaker with a difference', since her workshops focus on personal breakthrough and all-round development, instead of just one-sided communication.