YesGuruJi.com for Inclusive education

Nicknamed Bala (LinkedIn): CEO & Cofounder

Corporate Strategist turned mentor, Bala coaches applicants for admissions applications to Postgraduate Courses with top universities worldwide.

MBA (Yale University, USA − 2003-05), Bala is the Strategist and Business face for YesGuruJi.com. After having spent 8-years in USA, he returned to India in 2010 to manage Corporate Strategy for an Industry leader.

His client-students connect with him from S.E.Asia, Middle East, Europe, US and more for guidance with admissions applications to coveted post-graduate courses in Universities including NWU (Kellogg), UPenn, INSEAD, LBS, LSE etc.

Bala’s early education and college in two worst-hit Hindi-belt states, a Masters at JNU (top-ranked nationally), and MBA at Yale affords him a unique view of how access to education shapes mindsets, creates opportunities and transforms communities, setting them up to succeed. 

An ultra-marathoner, qualified mountaineer and Everest base-camper, Bala is also a National record-setter in team-rappelling.

1)_Problem:

1. Nine states (650 Million) residents form the Indian Hindi Belt, and suffer from the worst development-indicators, skewed sex-ratios and abysmal girl-education.
2. 15M students (6.6M girls) appear annually for 10th & 12th school-clearing exams in Hindi medium from this belt.
3. Infrastructure for education-delivery lacking. Use of unfair means rampant.
4. Covid-19 Context: Underprivileged communities distanced from education further.

2)_Proposal:

1. Standardised audio-visual lessons, contextualised in local language, delivered via internet.
2. Piggyback on deeply penetrated mobile-internet services, and internet-enabled devices.
3. Use common language and shared social mores to facilitate standardisation, scalability and convenience to improve education delivery.
4. Use versatility of model for contextualised, regional applications to improve education standards worldwide.
5. Improve self-help modules for teacher training.
6. Use AI-powered bots to answer queries (including subject-related ones).

3)­_Impact:

1. Widened access for more inclusive education.
2. Contextualised education in local language improves education receptivity.
3. Reinforced self-help & teacher-training modules, anywhere, anytime.

Context: 85% of the 650-Million residents populating the Indian Hindi-Belt live in small towns and villages, and face serious hurdles in accessing affordable education across levels. Education delivery infrastructure for affordable schooling is dreadfully inadequate (30% per KPMG-2019 report). The poor quality of education reflects in appalling student performances despite rampant use of unfair means.

This belt sends 15-Million students (6.6 Million girls) annually for 10th & 12th grade school-clearing exams in Hindi-Medium.

1. Conventional teaching is expensive, and inefficient. Teachers & education infrastructure miserably short.
2. Multiple barriers including poverty, gender, social-standing, caste-status & physical distances to schools affect access to education adversely.
3. No systematic, standardised platforms (online or otherwise) contextualised to Hindi Medium.
4. Subject matter gets complex; conventional teaching without concept repetition/clarification fails to simplify problems or resolve doubts. Success-rates in school-clearing exams among the lowest nationwide. Maximum dropouts recorded between grades 8th-12th.
5. Girl-students struggle against patriarchal norms, social restrictions and risk of sexual assaults, gender stereotypes and taboos around menstruation. Distances to schools aggravate the issues. Absenteeism soon becomes drop-out.
6. Adolescent girls burdened with domestic chores to prepare them for marriage/ family needs; school timings and demands conflict with these responsibilities.

Yesguruji.com provides audio-visual content for secondary education in a simplified form, online. We target covering curricula for grades 8th-12th in Hindi Medium, since nationally this group experiences the highest dropouts.

The content on YesGuruJi is contextualised and tailored for students from disadvantaged Hindi-medium backgrounds, and aims to boost Gender & Socio-economic inclusion, anywhere, anytime.

1. As Indians embrace technology-backed learning, education-apps and students drive mobile-internet usage to 36 Mins of Audio-visual content/day/user & smartphone-penetration to top-3 worldwide; Case-in-point: Byju’s.
2. The YesGuruJi.com content, contextualised with examples from users’ daily lives makes complex science concepts easier to understand.
3. Content-delivery supported on all Smartphones/Tabs/PC/Macs, even with low Internet speeds.
4. These lessons can be paused, repeated, speed-varied, resumed and shared.

Incorporated in Aug-2018, we’ve continually evolved, getting better when Covid-19 unfolded.

Benefits: YesGuruji enables

1. curriculum at student’s choice of pace and time for broader access and better learning. This promotes equitable & inclusive access regardless of gender, social-status, mobility and/or time-constraints.
2. Repeat-able lessons: Pause/ Repeat/ Share/ Ask questions (POC pending)
3. Raise doubts for clarification anonymously (no fear of getting judged)
4. Creative, collaborative, and exploratory activities for deeper learning.

Annually, 15 Million students (6.6-Million girls) across nine states appear for their school-clearing exams (10th /12th) state boards in Hindi Medium. A majority of these students enrolled in Hindi-medium education in small towns and rural areas face serious hurdles in accessing affordable education. Education delivery infrastructure for affordable schooling is dreadfully inadequate and reflects in deficient student performances despite rampant use of unfair means.

Our target segments (grades 8th-12th) currently demonstrate the highest drop-out rates. Difficulties in access, clash with school timings for adolescent examinees burdened (domestic chores for girls or (labour-participation for boys) and unhealthy teaching approaches are the top reasons. Expert studies also highlight the poor infrastructure, incompetent teachers and administrators, widespread corruption rackets that use unfair means, shocking education standards and low school-retention among students.

Such inadequate education feeds further into unemployable graduates, and unending cycles of poverty and exploitation, and higher propensity to crime & violence.

YesGuruJi provides a simple, conducive and relaxed learning environment for students from Hindi-medium, underserved backgrounds. In the medium term, we are confident we can change mindsets from the current emphasis on unfair means to a future of instilling learning and capability through education.

Problem: Hindi-medium students face hurdles in access to education & learning, in addition to socioeconomic and gender discrimination. No organized platform, online or otherwise, provides scalable solutions.

Project: Piggybacking on high mobile internet penetration and deep Smartphone density, we supplement educational curriculum and target inclusivity across genders and socially disadvantaged. The local language and contextualized content delivery model can also be expanded to other regional languages for convenient, scalable and organized education.

Community: Due to their common language and shared socioeconomic status and problems, underserved populations facilitate standardisation, scalability and convenience to improve education delivery.

Our diverse co-founders are established professionals, reputed experts in their respective domains. Our profiles span IT, Medicine, International Conflict Resolution expert turned Academician, Video-Journalism and Corporate Strategist turned Mentor. Besides sharing common roots from the Hindi-Belt and close friendship, we believe strongly in creating access to inclusive education for long-term progress. The educational needs of today must be addressed before they explode into grave problems of unemployability, poverty and tragic socioeconomic failures in 10 years.

High rates of school-dropouts, effective denial of education to millions, corruption in teacher-employment processes, and undelivered teaching duties have all deeply impaired education and worried us. The precipitating cause however was the Million+ students (in one state alone), who skipped their annual school-clearing examinations when unfair means were controlled.

We looked for solutions, scalable and robust enough to penetrate hinterlands and small towns. Contextualized education in Hindi-medium, both engaging and structured, in audio-visual formats fulfilled our requirements. The ubiquitous smartphone & mobile-data made efficient, online delivery possible anytime, anywhere.

Focussed researches validated our hypotheses of effectiveness of such education, permeation of mobile-internet & smartphones and data from historical points/ comparables and refined our strategies ahead.

86 years of growing-up in the Hindi-Belt (cumulative) between the cofounding team, and strong roots to the region together give our team an in-depth understanding of the local systems and processes.

Data shows these states continue “keeping India backward”; access to genuinely affordable and inclusive education continues to be denied; girl-students and communities with lower socioeconomic standing continue to be discriminated against. Consequently, the Hindi-Belt stays the highest source of out-migration (21 Million per 2011 data).

Over the last 15-years, our cofounders’ varied career journeys have earned us eminence in our respective areas, and stationed us in the National capital – Delhi. As privileged and lucky Indians to have secured excellent education, we feel our journeys have uncovered a strong correlation between good education and overall societal elevation. Without favouring reductionist approaches, we understand the deficient education delivery & infrastructure (lacking by 30% across UP) begs urgent steps with efficient, robust solutions and a lasting impact. Our years through the Hindi-Belt education system and our deep passion to bridge yawning gaps in education with simpler, relaxed learning environments for local language backgrounds, will enable realising YesGuruJi’s aims to supplements school studies, and strengthen and improve education delivery.

Our cofounder's are uniquely well-positioned to design YesGuruji’s approach to teaching:

1. Our diverse co-founders are established professionals in dissimilar organizations, settings, and roles. (IT, Medicine, International Conflict Resolution expert turned Academician, Video-Journalism, and includes Corporate Strategist turned Mentor. The resultant diversity of opinions makes our team at once capable, balanced and democratic. Our close friendship keeps us glued.
2. Our strong passion: We believe strongly in creating access to inclusive education for long-term progress. We believe the educational needs of today must be addressed before they explode into grave problems of unemployability, poverty and tragic socioeconomic failures in 10 years.
3. Our common roots and 86 years (cumulative) of experience in the Hindi-Belt gives us insights that make our blueprints watertight; the wide exposure each partner has had makes us quickly understand what works and what doesn't, including lack of data sanctity from regions and plans to reach kids from those regions as well. This unique combination is another big strength and differentiator for our team.
4. Contextualising education in simple and conversational language for students, along with standardised teacher-training modules for students from underserved communities requires localized thinking.

With 15+ years in dissimilar organisations, our cofounders are authoritative voices in their respective domains. As CEO therefore, aligning voices of friends (as equals) to move fast (as colleagues) but together (as team) posed enormous challenges.

Oct-2019, during a hyperactive work-schedule, we registered our first press coverage. The long, complimenting story was our first public endorsement and free publicity, and delighted me. Breaking the story to the team however, brought forth only a restrained cheer.

Puzzled, I had an unrelated friend revisit the story. That’s when I realized how the story attributed entire initiative to me with scant mention of the team, though I had categorically mentioned us as equals. The reporter’s story, with its hierarchical approach threatened to destabilise our trust.

I compiled news-stories of team-based start-ups, and demonstrated how press-reporting tended to idolise the CEO. Additionally, I explained my stand transparently (organization before person) and delegated press-communications to another articulate member.

The new-formed trust-gaps addressed, we got back stronger, and better prepared to weather future storms.

More importantly, the experience taught me how designing solutions required trust and human-motivation as much as visions and plans. Aligning goals and motivations together ever since, we have forged far ahead.

12-Jan-2020 board meeting; we set Sep-2020 to launch YesGuruJi formally, at incredibly low subscription-fees (~US$5 annual), PLUS subsidies for the needy. We set aggressive milestones and planned various steps to accelerate adoption. Excited, we spent days to improve each video, and website experience.

Mar-22nd − the harshest lockdown began, lasting nearly 3-months. The unprecedented crisis flung millions of daily-wagers, migrant workers and the poor into hunger, unemployment, depressions and suicides.

Individually, we coordinated emergency food-distribution efforts. Organizationally however, the sudden shock was excruciating as we looked at our excitement and investment nearing US$50K melting away, and our launch postponement by 9-12 months.

Coordinating food-distribution, as I interacted with humans reduced to begging on day-5, it suddenly dawned on me how our actual purpose remained inclusive education for the underserved. Clear in my mind thereafter, I discussed it with my partners, and we agreed, and immediately opened-up YesGuruJi access for free student-access and use during Covid-19 disaster.

The initiative has been highly applauded, and talked about, especially since our act enabled Covid-relief dollars to fulfil emergency needs.

The truly mind-changing experience taught me how leadership involves taking bold initiatives with a clear conscience for a larger purpose and lasting impact.

Not applicable

NO organised player exists in India in private, online, education in Hindi medium for secondary classes

• An AI bot that can answer questions asked by the users by identifying the questions and choosing from a pool of stored answers is in progress (POC pending).
• Our innovative website design ensures adaptive video playback even in slow connections (including 2G connections). 
• Access to populations in small towns and rural hinterlands is made possible through piggybacking on well-penetrated mobile internet and the ubiquitous smartphone devices. 
• Use of proprietary combination of animation and audio-visual lesson plan enables students to refresh their subject concepts from junior grades, while also learning the relevant concepts. 
• Generous and appropriately interwoven mentions of daily life applications of the subjects they study make difficult science concepts interesting and help them associate with the subject matter.

• YesGuruJi content is in conversational Hindi contextualised with examples adapted to student’s daily lives. This helps simplify complex scientific concepts and forms our most important approach in demystifying subjects considered most difficult for students.
• EdTech space is abuzz with comparable business models, including unicorns like Byju’s (Highly expensive), Khan Academy & Unacademy (All content focused on English speaking and privileged Tier-1 town students).
• Our team members hail from small-towns, with Hindi mother-tongues and backgrounds. The diversity of our professional profiles (Doctor, IT-lead, Business Strategist, Academic Professor and Photo-journalist) brings in diverse ideas and a treasure of experiences from their respective fields.

1. Our launch plans, originally scheduled for late September (2020), were hit badly by Covid-19 lockdowns. To enable school children to continue their studies during the stringent lockdown, we opened our website to all immediately, and made it completely free. 
2. Due to the harshest lockdown worldwide in India since Mar-22, we have opened our website and lessons to FREE & Unrestricted personal use, doing away with the need for registrations (or any such data that force users to share personal details). As such we are not able to give any numbers on that. We did however see an uptick of 1000 new users in June (from data given by our Social Media manager). 
3. We have also committed to keeping YesGuruJi.com completely free during Covid-19 Pandemic.  Yet, we have 100+ registrations, and 900+ regular visitors, doubling every 22 days. Once we have critical mass, and the economy affordable enough for people to reconnect their phone connections, we expect a rapid rise in the registrations
   • By Dec 2020, we expect to have 5K registered users. 
   • By Sep 2021, we expect 50K registered users.
   • By June 2025, we expect our registered user base to be around 2 Million.