Ganendran Tharanya has won Best Healthcare Startup Leader of the Year Award

Ganendran Tharanya has won Best Healthcare Startup Leader of the Year Award

• September 26, 2024

I am Ganendran Tharanya from Jaffna, Sri Lanka and am currently residing in Colombo. I am pleased as punch to win the award titled ‘Best Healthcare Startup Leader of the Year’ from Women icon, powered by Times Women. My parents are delighted and proud to know that their daughter has achieved this recognition at an international level as my father always used to say that our community should mention him as the ‘father of an achieved daughter’.

I have completed my bachelor’s degree in Food Science and Nutrition with a specialization in Applied Nutrition from Wayamba University of Sri Lanka. Previously, I was working as a trainee in Srijayewardenapura General Hospital to complete my internship in dietetics. After that, I was able to join as a dietitian in an international healthcare. With the two years of experience gained from there, I got an offer at ‘The One Rehab and Healthcare’ clinic to start a wellness clinic with my directors’ investment and, work as the head of wellness. The wellness was named as Elegance Wellness Retreat. I need to really thank my directors, Mr. Ganatheepan, Mr. Dhusyanthan, and Dr. Prem, to have given me this opportunity and appointed me as the head of our wellness.

Our wellness clinic is successfully completing its 6 months this September 2024. We provide plenty of services, like scientific weight loss, beauty treatments, yoga classes, detoxification treatments, pain relief treatments, and body therapy. In addition to being a dietitian, I am handling all the operational activities, like doing weight-loss consultations, handling the advanced slimming machines like Coolscuplt, Emscuplt, lipolaser, EMS, and heat belts, giving proper training to staff, and monitoring the overall functions of our wellness. I had a great interest in the advanced machines, so I learned about those from the place where I worked first and from an international aesthetic tutorial center. My dream regarding my workplace is to establish the names ‘The One Rehab’ and ‘Elegance’ as brand names, hopefully very soon in the future, and I am working very hard to uplift our wellness clinic.

My career was started as a dietitian. Most of our nutrition graduates, after completing the degree, join in other fields as the scope for this field has been reduced in Sri Lanka. Actually, food is one of the basic requirements for a human being. Therefore, everyone is keenly interested in knowing whether what they eat is healthy or not. It is mandatory for everyone to know about basic nutritional facts. The role of the dietitian plays a key role in giving proper advice on food and nutrition to everyone to improve their health and nutritional status and reduce the rate of non-communicable diseases. I wanted to reveal the importance of dietitians to our country, so I worked hard to establish myself. I appeared previously on my brother’s YouTube channel to talk about food and nutrition and its impacts on obesity and non-communicable diseases. After that, I got some opportunities to appear in Sri Lanka’s famous TV channel interviews to talk about nutrition-related facts. I started to do online consultations with people all over the world by publishing advertisements on my brother’s YouTube channel and my social media. I had also associated with a non-government organization to provide diet counseling on a programme held by them. I was already selected to present my research thesis on ‘Teachers’ and parents’ perceptions on secondary school food and nutrition education and school food environment’ in a nutrition conference held in England, but unfortunately I was unable to attend it because of the lack of time period. I will definitely try my maximum to attend the same conference next year.  I always love being a dietitian, and I need to prove that this field is really important to our country. In addition to this, I am learning pharmacology as a certificate course, because I am handling the patients’ diet plans who are admitted to our clinic’s rehabilitation wards. Therefore, I hope that pharmacology will be an additional benefit for me when dealing with patients’ Bed Head tickets.

I couldn’t have achieved this award without my parents and brothers, who have been supportive enough from my childhood onwards. Their support means the world to me. In addition to them, I would like to convey my special thanks to Dr. Shehan Laad, Ms. Mala Abeywardane, Prof. Renuka Silva, Mr. Patrick Ratnaraja and my friends, including Mr. Mohammed Ijas and Mr. Dishan, to have given me proper advices on my career development.

The mottos of my life are ‘dream for your signature and identity’ and ‘women should be financially independent’. At the moment, the Women icon has really helped me to show my identity to the whole world. The last four years of my carrier journey with multiple positive and negative incidents, struggles, pains and continuous efforts means nothing to me right now after I have achieved this award. This provokes me to move continuously to the next levels and gives me the confidence that our efforts and hard work will never be meaningless. I am eternally grateful to Women Icon, powered by Times Women, for having given me this international recognition.

Thank you!!