Pupilfirst is at the vanguard of the digital transformation of Indian classroom education.
The Indian classroom education system will soon be the largest in the world. It is a complex ecosystem that is difficult to visualize. However, the simplest unit of this ecosystem is also its most important one - the classroom.
What we do
The Gold Standard for Engineering Education
The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the statutory body for technical education in India, has approved our curriculums as national model curriculums. The reason they’ve done so is that students who finished our courses are working on life-saving essential tools that have been recognized by the United Nations as a Digital Public Good.
SINCE 2021
Digital War Rooms for
disaster management.
The skills learned by our students were demonstrated through the rapid scaling of COVID war-rooms with oxygen management capabilities during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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SINCE 2022
TeleICU Systems Empowering Healthcare Professionals.
To overcome the acute shortage of healthcare professionals in district hospitals of rural and remote India, our students have built TeleICU systems that connect them to medical colleges in state capitals.
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SINCE MAY 2023
Ayushma AI: Empowering Nurses with Multilingual ICU Protocols.
Leveraging the recent rapid advancements in AI technology, our students are building multilingual interfaces that assist nurses in rapidly upgrading their knowledge about ICU protocols.
Read MoreOUR GOAL
Mandate to Scale
Because we've established the gold standard for education, while being aligned with the National Education Policy, we received a mandate from AICTE to scale our tools and curriculum to train:
1 Lakh
Teachers
24 Million
Students
This is Leadership in Teaching Excellence - the LITE programme.
Read More about the LITE ProgrammeA SHARED VISION
LITE envisions the future of classrooms
The All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the statutory body for technical education in India, has approved our curriculums as national model curriculums. The reason they’ve done so is that students who finished our courses are working on life-saving essential tools that have been recognized by the United Nations as a Digital Public Good.
THE NATIONAL STANDARD
LITE implements NEP 2020
The vision that we just demonstrated implements NEP 2020's goals for the next generation of classrooms. LITE implements this new combination of regulatory requirements to transform students into well-rounded, productive, and upstanding global citizens.
A FULL-STACK APPROACH
Aligning the ecosystem
The successful implementation of LITE hinges on well-trained teachers. We work with institutions to train their faculty members in the areas of leadership, pedagogy, and curriculum through the AICTE Training And Learning (ATAL) academy.
Once faculty members are trained, universities and their affiliated institutions can then implement NEP 2020 and offer our courses. We work with industry professionals to develop course content that focuses on in-demand industry skills.
These courses are delivered using Pupilfirst LMS - an open-source Learning Management System (LMS). It empowers teachers to monitor student progress and reduce monotonous workload using AI-powered automation, freeing up their time to focus on students who need help the most.
Academic researchers draw insights from learning outcomes data and combine it with qualitative feedback from teachers and students to create research reports that enable a closed feedback loop with regulators for continuous improvements.
PRESENCE
Live in 8 States & 13 Universities
After successfully implementing LITE in the pilot group, over 103 institutions have signed up, and are in the process of integration.
ACCEPTANCE
Embraced by Stakeholders
Listen to the experience from university administrators, leadership of affiliated institutions and faculty members who are leading the change on the ground.
Social Impact
Sustainable, Scalable, and Inclusive
Working directly within the regulatory framework allows us to avoid costs associated with advertising and sales. We also use cutting-edge technology as a lever to deliver high-quality courses at scale. This combination enables us to pass on savings to parents, making our courses affordable to a much wider demographic of students.
Our course fees are approved by AICTE under the National Educational Alliance for Technology (NEAT) program. For every three students who pay the fees, one student from an economically disadvantaged family gets a full scholarship.
THE PEOPLE BEHIND IT
Balanced Leadership Team
Pupilfirst is led by an experienced entrepreneur, a teacher, a technologist, and an administrator, all of whom bring a passion to transform the national education system.
Sanjay Vijayakumar
Chairman and CEO
Sanjay is a serial entrepreneur, co-author of India's Student Startup Policy and Governing Board Member of Kerala Technical University.
Suma Sundararajan
Chief Operating Officer
With a double masters from US and a decade of work experience at IIT Chennai's Social Incubator, Suma has deep operational expertise across students, academia and industry.
Hari Gopal
Chief Technology Officer
Hari is a full-stack software engineer with 14 years of experience and leads engineering efforts at Pupilfirst.
Dr. Reena Singh
Head of Teaching Learning Operations
Before joining Pupilfirst, she was an Assistant Professor at MIT, Manipal. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from IIT Mandi, and now leads our teaching efforts.
shareholders and advisors
Backed by Professionals
Modernizing the classroom education system is a complex, time-consuming endeavour that requires high-risk, patient capital. We’ve assembled a diverse group of professionals who have contributed the capital necessary for undertaking this mission.
Siddarth Pai
Siddarth Pai is partner at 3One4 Capital. Siddarth believes that Pupilfirst is on track to create a sustainable organisation that delivers annuity returns to its shareholders.
Girish Mathrubootham
Girish Mathrbootham is co-founder at Freshworks. Girish believes that Pupilfirst has found the right model that aligns interests of all stakeholders for enabling students to learn in-demand skills from industry experts at classrooms.
Shreyas Shibulal
Shreyas Shibulal is partner at Electric Vehicle Fund Micelio. Shreyas believes that Pupilfirst can not just improve the quality of education but also create a learner community focussed on electric vehicles.
Vinil Bhandari
Vinil Bhandari is Director of Engineering at NYSE and advisor to the leadership team. Vinil believes that the open source technology being built by Pupilfirst in tight collaboration with India's higher education regulator can result in massive social impact for millions of learners in India and developing countries.
Max Michaels
Max Michaels is a seasoned executive with experiences at IBM, Cisco, AT&T, and McKinsey & Co. He is an active investor in over a dozen startups and funds including Stride Funding, and GSV Ventures. Max views PupilFirst as an EdTech with scalable impact in India and beyond.
If you would like to join this group, learn more about how we operate and why you should invest in Pupilfirst.