Rewriting learning

THE EDTECH STARTUP WAS BORN WHEN THE CO-FOUNDERS ASKED THEMSELVES HOW THEY CAN DELIVER QUALITY TEACHING TO MILLIONS

- S SHANTHI

VAMSI KRISHNA, CEO and co-founder of Vedantu, says he has always had a restless curiosity and a deep desire to make an impact. Even while doing his B.Tech at IIT Bombay from 2001 to 2005, he was drawn more to building and problem-solving than a conventional corporate life.After graduation, Krishna took upa job at Larsen & Toubro fora short periodasa management trainee, but his mind was always elsewhere. “So,you could say the entrepreneurial spark was there early and matured soon after college,” Krishna says.

He and his friends from school and college — Pulkit Jain (co-founder and head of product), Anand Prakash (co-founder and head of academics) and Saurabh Saxena (moved on from Vedantu in 2017) — started experimenting with different ideas. The first turning point was a small student interaction they had arranged ina school to understand the real problems students face. The big insight was that in our society, people took up teaching more by chance than by choice, and the best of the society do not come back into education. “The interaction made us realise that there is so much value we can provide in terms of awareness and guidance. We decided to pursue this.” They started their first venture, Lakshya, in 2006, as a route to solve this.