This 27-year-old has done record certifications

He dropped out of computer science engineering in 2013, took up BA in English in 2014, met with a near-death accident in 2015, graduated in 2019, and joined UST in 2020. Two years since, he has made it to three record books, all recognised globally.
Early this year, Govind Ramachandran entered the World Book of Records – London, Asia Book of Records, and India Book of Records, after loading his portfolio with 90 certifications, 3,000 course completions, and 1,800 badges.Not one to stop, he did 12 more certifications subsequently.
The 27-year-old, who is in UST’s cloud infrastructure services business, always loved computers, but not the programming part of it. But Govind’s family insisted he do engineering. Govind went ahead, but soon changed track.
“I was interested in the hardware and systems part of engineering, but programming was not my cup of tea, and the course covered a lot of that,” says Govind, who was the default troubleshooter in family and friend circles for computer-related snags. From fixing LAN connections to updating systems and installing the latest version of Windows, he would do them all. “The neighbourhood computer centres too banked on me,” says Govind.
During his freelancing days, Govind opened Facebook and LinkedIn pages to promote his technical skills and provide related services. This not only got him clients, but also many followers.
The Thiruvananthapuram youth's certification journey took off in March 2018. “I started with Microsoft certifications and cleared most of the exams in the first attempt,” says Govind. The pandemic years provided Govind time to do more courses. With two laptops and a desktop computer at his disposal, Govind became a “24/7 learner”. He took up online courses offered by UST and other platforms like Udemy and LinkedIn, and explored areas in healthcare, cloud platform & infrastructure, cloud core, cybersecurity, and project management.
While Govind was busy topping up his skills, a senior colleague at UST suggested he try for the record books. “I never did a certification with the thought of setting a record; for me, it meant career growth,” says Govind, adding that he got a promotion in 10 months that normally would have taken three years.
Govind is today Microsoft certified, ITIL certified, IBM & design thinking certified, and Google certified, among others. He says one should start from the basics and then proceed to the expert level. “This will help you analyse and understand the technologies better and crack the certifications more easily,” he says.