Alumni Series #8

Sangeetha Deiveegarajan entered Great Lakes after several years with Cognizant in the Life Sciences division. Trained in Electronics and Communication Engineering, she knew she wanted a management education and chose the PGPM at Great Lakes over an offer from the University of California, Irvine, in order to remain close to her roots and continue her career in India.

She describes the programme as one of the finest years of her life. A strong peer group and open doors across marketing and finance broadened her view of how firms make decisions. That exposure enabled a move into financial services. She joined Wealth Advisors India, a trusted South-India wealth management firm, where she handled client relationships, aligned portfolios with stated objectives in collaboration with a central research team, and managed periodic reviews and realignments. She continued with the organisation after its acquisition by 360 One Wealth and Asset Management, one of the country’s largest asset managers.

Alongside this work, she pursued long-standing interests in health, fitness, sustainability, and safe food. She visited farms, experimented with traditional grains and millets in formats suited to daily meals, and observed clear benefits for her family’s health and immunity. A certificate course with Stanford Nutrition at the Stanford School of Medicine prompted deeper reading of research on traditional rice and millets and sharpened her understanding of their nutritional profile. The shift from a childhood spent with books to completing two Himalayan high-altitude summits in her late thirties reinforced her belief that lifestyle and food choices matter.

After fifteen years in wealth management, she chose to build Wondr Grain. With no prior experience in food manufacturing, she established a supply chain that sources traditional rice varieties, millets, and pulses from farmers and collectives committed to organically grown crops. At Wondr Grain these grains become value-added products prepared with methods intended to preserve nutrition. The range includes classic breakfast mixes and instant rice noodles, made without preservatives or additives and using only organically grown produce.

For Sangeetha, Wondr Grain functions as an extension of her own kitchen and reflects what she would serve her family every day. Her aim is simple and exacting: make organic grains accessible to more households, especially children and young parents, so that better health and stronger immunity follow.