A business owner, a father, and a neighbour running to be Abbotsford-Mission's voice in Victoria. Many roots, one valley.
Holding the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects for Blade Runner 2049, a film he worked on.
Coming to Canada
Virender grew up in Ambala Cantt in northern India, the son of a steelworker. He spent 18 years in visual effects in senior creative and technical roles, and came to Canada in 2014 to join Industrial Light & Magic's Vancouver studio as a technical director. He went on to work at DNEG and Digital Domain on films including Blade Runner 2049, First Man and The Revenant.
Blade Runner 2049 won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. He lived first in downtown Vancouver, then Surrey, and moved his family and his company to Abbotsford in 2021 for the mountains, the trees and a shorter commute.
Building a company in Abbotsford
Virender founded Wellness Extract, a Canadian health supplement company that sells in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia. It was registered in 2017 and brought its first products to market in 2019.
The company began with his mother. Her cancer diagnosis in 2015 sent him looking into nutrition during treatment, and that search became a business. Wellness Extract now employs about 40 people worldwide, 10 of them at its Abbotsford office, and expects to add around 50 more local jobs once its packaging line is running. Because of long federal approval delays, many of its products are sold in the United States and other countries before they can be sold in Canada.
He has spent the past year looking for a larger building in Abbotsford for packaging and manufacturing, and has learned first-hand how scarce serviced industrial land is and how slowly permits move.
SmartVeda: teaching children to think
Virender and his wife Upasana run SmartVeda, a learning centre in Abbotsford that teaches mental math and creative activities designed to build children's focus, memory and confidence. Upasana, who loves education, does the teaching. They started it after parents kept telling them the same thing: the report card says proficient, but my child cannot do long division.
The Santosh Care Foundation
Virender founded the Santosh Care Foundation, a registered Canadian charity named after his mother. Its purposes are nutrition support for low-income Canadians living with chronic illness, public education on the safe use of supplements, and restoring the land: tree-planting drives, soil improvement and native planting. His daughters plant trees with him.
Family
Virender and his wife are raising two daughters in Abbotsford. For him, many roots, one valley is not a slogan. It is his family.
He is a member of the Abbotsford Chamber of Commerce, and the family lives in Abbotsford East.
Stand with Virender.
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