Education is the ray of hope which can fight any kind of darkness. One who has been oblivious to the real meaning of education has never understood the life, the way it is meant to be understood. But what is more important than education. A Guru, who introduces you to the concept of education. One who imparts the knowledge to you is the real god who needs to be worshipped because they are the ones who taught you to fight the darkness of oblivion and illiteracy.

In the modern world of technology and internet, the faces of the Gurus and their methods of teaching might have changed, but their job of imparting wisdom remains the same. This article will tell you about some of such educators and teachers who have been transforming education with their innovative ideas and establishing a literate society.

Abhishek Chakraborty

Abhishek Chakraborty is an educational entrepreneur who comes from Dhanbad, Jharkhand. He was always an enthusiast to become an entrepreneur. At the age of 16 only, he started an initiative which helped rickshaw pullers to earn their livelihood. However, one thing that he has always been passionate about is building an excellent platform for education. To materialize his passion, he left his corporate background behind and started an initiative in 2010 by the name “Build A Class”. It is a non-profit organization which is focused on providing quality education to students coming from lower-income family backgrounds by building affordable school facilities.

Abhishek used his entrepreneurial skills and adopted concepts like “Economies of Scale” and Hybrid Marketing Channel Business Approach to make his social enterprise reach as many as 3.5 million students across India today which started from 1000 students.

The organization works on a concept of providing 4 ‘As’ which are crucial for imparting quality education to the masses by overcoming infrastructural and human resource challenges. These 4 As are making quality education affordable, accessible, acceptable and adaptable. 

Abhishek has collaborated with a “Hurrey”. It is an edu-tech entity which has patented content delivery technology. They are targeted to develop a society where every individual has access to learning through curated content. Hurrey is also operating in countries out of India including Africa and South-East Asia region trying not to miss any opportunity for learning.

Abhishek’s Build A Class along with Hurrey has been able to build 20,000 affordable and accessible classrooms across the nation and have educated 3.5 million students since last decade. They are collectively aimed at changing millions of lives through education. Abhishek is intended to let people access education and curated content anywhere and everywhere through hybrid technology model.

Shaheen Mistri

Shaheen was only 20 years old when she was enthusiastic about imparting quality education to the children and develop educational equality in society. To work on her dreams, she set up the Akansha Centre, a non-profit entity to provide quality education to students from low-income families.

She started the centre by registering 15 children from low-income families and started them imparting quality education by employing her friends and volunteers as teachers. Soon, their collective efforts proved the worth of the concept and Akansha Centre turned into Akansha Foundation, a non-profit organisation. As of today, over 6500 children get education from Akansha Education Centres spread locally across Mumbai & Pune.

Shaheen always made efforts to bring educational equality in India. She has built a network of excellent leaders who are committed to this goal and it is ever-expanding. Her efforts resulted in the difficult task of making “Teach for India” program a reality in 2009. At ‘Teach For India’ there are several enthusiastic volunteers and leaders who have left behind a high paying job to join Shaheen and Akansha foundation in the noble deed of imparting quality education.

In conversation with The Logical Indian she said, “For the past decade, we’ve worked towards the daunting vision of education for all children in India. We’ve created a movement of leaders for education and each one of them gives me and all of us the hope that the education system can change”.

Shaheen is an inspiration for many and this is the result that hundreds of young professionals have come forward to take part in this mission.

Gaurav Munjal

You would have heard of the famous online learning application and platform “Unacademy” but have you ever thought about the person behind the concept and the story of its success. Gaurav Munjal is the person that you need to thank for the curated educational content that you get on the go on your mobile phones.

Gaurav, a young enthusiast who was focused to bring a change in the field of education with his efforts, started a youtube channel in the year 2010. He would record the videos sitting in his college’s dorm room. The videos were very much appreciated, liked, viewed and shared around the world. He started the channel intending to provide education to the students who were enthusiastic for the competitive exams like IIT-JEE, CAT, NEET, UPSC etc but could not afford the hefty fees of the educational institutes.

Gaurav’s efforts did not go in vain. In 2015, his friends IAS qualified Roman Saini and an educator Hemesh Singh joined Gaurav back. They used to run ‘Flatchat with Gaurav’ previously and now they planned to establish a formal educational platform to make education accessible and affordable for everyone. They developed an online educational platform “Unacademy” where teachers and learners could come together. The concept soon became a great hit will millions of aspiring students visiting Unacademy daily. Currently, Unacademy has around 10,000 teachers on-board who channelize educational content through videos regularly and getting over 1650 million video views in a month.

Recently in February 2019, the founders have launched a paid version of the educational service “Unacademy Plus”. Although the main aim of the founders to create Unacademy was to create a free platform for students where everyone had free access to quality education. However as described by Gaurav in a conversation with CNBC-TV18, the aim behind the Unacademy Plus is to monetize the platform to retain the interest of the educators. At Unacademy Plus, students get the facility of live streaming online classes using their mobile or laptop devices with a very nominal subscription fee. Unacademy has also received a funding of $88.6 million.

The efforts made by these enthusiastic entrepreneurs in the field of education are remarkable. They have changed the face of the educational world with their ideas and innovations. Their kind of deed has enabled millions of students across the country to access and afford quality education. Education is one of the basic rights and needs of every individual and everyone should have and claim the quality education. Thanks to these individuals that quality education is not only a word but a transforming reality.