Avanti provides low-income high-school students a world-class science and mathematics education in India. It has a radical approach to teaching: with no trained teachers and very little conventional lecturing and yet students perform at par with some of the most expensive after-school programs in India. Avanti runs stand-alone centers in Mumbai, Delhi and Kanpur and in-school centers at the Chennai Corporation Schools-where the focus is on teaching students how to learn from books and their peers Prior to his work at Avanti, Akshay served on the founding team of HeartFlow a venture-backed medical diagnostics company. For his work at Avanti, he was awarded the Draper Richards Kaplan Fellowship and Echoing Green Fellowship in 2012. In this interview Akshay, discusses:
Avanti’s approach to collaborative learning
Why collaborative learning works so well
How Avanti’s approach to innovation was driven by necessity
What keeps Akshay motivated
The importance of setting boundaries
Avanti’s goal to teach a million children