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.

A 3D visualization of a classroom with 60 students, a teacher, and a digital backend. The digital backend has 4 layers: digital assessments, teaching assistants, course authors, and academic researchers. The layers are connected to the classroom with curved lines.

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.

Image of a digital war room for disaster management. People are working on laptops in front of a large LED wall that displays a dashboard of COVID-19 statistics.

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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Image of a doctor is on a video call with another doctor on a mobile phone. The doctor is in front of a laptop that is displaying a dashboard of the CARE software. The dashboard shows a live view of a remote ICU.

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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Ayushma AI

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.

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OUR 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

Icon of a teacher and students in a classroom.

24 Million

Students

This is Leadership in Teaching Excellence - the LITE programme.

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A 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.

Illustration representing the goals of NEP 2020 for modern classrooms, focusing on the next generation's education and advancements in teaching methods and technologies.

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.

An illustration of Pupilfirst education stack with 7 layers. The layers are labeled as follows: Regulatory layer, Research layer, Pedagogy layer, Curriculum layer, Institutional layer, Faculty training, and Classroom layer. On top of the stack are icons of schools, colleges, and universities, representing the 1500000 schools, 50000 colleges, and 1073 universities in India.

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.

Map of India highlighting states with successful implementation of LITE in universities.

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.

Illustration demonstrating the healthy unit economics of Pupilfirst's classrooms delivery model, with a contribution margin of 5200 INR per student.

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.

POLICY
Profile photo of Sanjay Vijayakumar

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.

OPS
Profile photo of Suma Sundararajan

Suma Sundararajan

Chief Operating Officer

With a double masters from US and a decade of work experience at IIT Chennai's rural technology incubator, Suma has deep operational expertise across students, academia and industry.

TECH
Profile photo of Hari Gopal

Hari Gopal

Chief Technology Officer

Hari is a full-stack software engineer with 14 years of experience and leads engineering efforts at Pupilfirst.

TLO
Profile photo of Dr. Reena Singh

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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