Abhishek Dubey, a 26-year-old guy who has marked a new benchmark for the people who think that social welfare and corporate world are two different things. Four years ago, this guy set up a start-up by the name of Muskan Dreams. Muskan Dream is a digital education-based startup, which mainly focused on making digital education a reality for the students of Government Schools.
Until now, Muskan Dreams has been able to serve clients like Vedanta, M.P. State Government’s Education Department and much more. Abhishek, along with his friends and fellow workers at Muskan Dreams had a different plan for their startup. Unlike every startup, where the entrepreneurs focus on yielding funds from the pockets of investors, this startup yields their funding from the CSR funds of the big corporate.
Abhishek started his plan from Gwalior. His first project involved two schools which he was able to digitize with the help of CSR funds of Vedanta Group. Primarily, they procured funds from their clients which were big corporate houses to invest the amount in providing digital education to underprivileged students.
What is CSR Funds?
CSR Funds or Corporate Social Responsibility Funds are the accumulated profits of the companies which are allocated separately by the companies from their annual profits. This is mandated by the government of India via the Companies Act and Income Tax Act. The companies which have a turnover or profits beyond specified threshold limits, have to allocate a part of their income for social welfare activities.
Almost every company you would have heard of comes under the ambit of CSR Laws. These companies use the allocated funds to undertake social welfare activities and projects. These activities may include funding a hospital, a school, research, a co-operative society or undertaking social welfare activities at your end as well.
How the idea of Muskan Dreams came up?
Abhishek was an engineering student with dreams of making a great career in Computer Sciences. He was studying in IMT, Gwalior when he parallelly started teaching underprivileged students for free. While teaching the students, he learned that the students are having a weak command on the English language. Unlike clichéd ways of imparting education, Abhishek sought to digital methods of teaching English to these students. He would make small videos and program series to make his students learn English innovatively and easily. This popped an Idea in his mind of resourcing schools with digital technology and training teacher digital methods to make education innovative and different for the students. This gave birth to the idea of Muskan Dreams.
Initial Problems
Abhishek himself was graduating at college when this idea popped up in his mind. However, implementing this idea was not easy because he did not find ways to earn funding to formulate his dream idea. Apart from this, being a college student, self-study, homework and college assignment was a regular thing which would consume a lot of Abhishek’s time. He had to leave his graduation program in between to make his dream a reality. However, this decision was opposed by his father and family. They even asked him to choose between family and social welfare. However, Abhishek never asked hope and worked harder every single day to bring a smile to the face of students.
Muskan Dreams
Until now, Abhishek has used the CSR funds of many companies and corporate houses and diverted them in the welfare of various educational institutes. Abhishek’s Startup Muskan Dreams is currently working on a project, where around 70 schools from Gwalior and Bhopal will be benefitted with Digital Education Facilities.
Apart from raising funds for the educational welfare, Muskan Dreams also train teachers and employees for using Digital Technology to impart education, as well as setting up digital classrooms, training teachers and students to learn about the same. Muskan Dreams has set up a target to reach around 3000 schools across India with more than 10,000 digital classes covering 10,00,000 students by the year 2025.
Muskan Dreams has also received recognitions and awards from various authorities for their notable work in the field of social welfare and education.
Well, we sincerely hope that Abhishek and his fellows at Muskan Dreams will soon be able to materialise their goals of putting Muskan (Smile) on a million faces. Shiksha News wishes them all the best in the initiative.
