Rocket Learning aims to change academic fate of kids at bottom of pyramid

How Rocket Learning is laying the foundation of education for children from low-income families

Meet Azeez Gupta, now 30. A graduate from IIT-Delhi, Azeez joined Mackinsey as a management consultant and worked there for a bit before he was seconded to the NGO Pratham. During 2017-19, Gupta headed to do an MBA from Harvard Business School (where he was supported by a merit based fellowship as an education innovator) and rejoined Pratham full time at a fraction of what he earned in Mckinsey. In May 2020, Gupta quit Pratham to start his own venture with a group of professionals : Rocket Learning.

At the very start, Gupta was joined by Utsav Kheria, now 35, St Xavier Kolkata and IIM Ahmedabad alumni. Kheria was a founding team member of EduBridge, a livelihood focussed social enterprise with revenues of US$ 7 million and 500 employees. Namya Mahajan, now 28, who was leading SEWA’s cooperative federation in Gujarat besides overseeing their childcare advocacy work threw her hat in too, bringing on the table her deep insights in community engagement. Mahajan was both an alumni of Harvard College and HBS.

Barely two weeks later, the trio was joined by techie Vishal Sunil, now 26, serial data science entrepreneur and University of Rochester alumni who had earlier founded Kestrel Agritech, a US-based artificial intelligence powered agri-tech company. Under the guidance of the Nobel winning J-PAL team, he had become passionate about using data science to alleviate poverty. 

And last but not least, a few months down the line, Siddhant Sachdeva, now 28, left his highly paid job with BCG where he’d led large private and public sector transformation projects in India and Indonesia.  With degrees from IIT-Delhi and an MBA from IIM Kolkata, Sachdeva brought his international exposure and management skills on board.

If the team is right up there in credentials, its board and advisors are no less. Chairing the board is Ashish Dhawan, founder of Central Square Foundation and philanthropist. The global executive director of J-PAL Iqbal Dhaliwal,  Mckinsey Global Institute’s partner Anu Madgavkar, Namita Dalmia who was till recently with Omidyar Network and Prashanth Prakash, partner, VC firm Accel India are either on the board or associated in an advisory capacity. 

So to anyone looking in from the outside, one would presume that such a highly qualified team of youngsters with an accomplished set of advisors would be aiming to set up the next for profit unicorn out of India. A billion dollar valuation company that can in turn enrich many others after listing on the bourses. But in fact this team of five has come to solve a huge social problem, one that they see great value in solving and in a non profit set up. All have given up their fat pay cheques and earn nominal salaries, in the start up, where parity in salary slabs is a key factor.  The team includes many from India’s premier institutes who have joined despite the monetary compensation being far below their market value.

The goal of Rocket Learning is to develop early childhood and foundational learning in India for children between 3 to 8 year olds in the bottom percentile of the population. To achieve this goal, they are attempting to pull in the parents of this cohort by changing their AIM (awareness, information and motivation). Unlike the “tiger” moms and “helicopter” parents readers of this newspaper are familiar with, there is a vast majority of parents at the bottom end of the pyramid - 75-100 million kids - who remain practically oblivious to their children’s education, future and destiny. Most of these parents - close to 200 million of them across India - are either unaware of the need or unable to take an active interest in their ward’s lives. Mostly they lack the bandwidth to be vested in their future as they are too preoccupied with making ends meet and managing the present so to speak. 

The idea is to explore whether they can make low income parents behave like high income ones to some extent and to the advantage of their children. By the age of 8, 85 percent of a child’s cognitive development is over so the idea is to pull these parents in early when their children are 3 or 4 years old. While literacy and numeracy can be taught, a lot of the brain development happens early and that gap cannot be bridged later in life. “These children are deprived of everything their high income counterparts have and we are keen to change that”, explains Gupta. Government school system operates in a sort of vacuum and parents have no idea or agency over what their children are learning or absorbing. So, the aim is really to bring about behavioural change - which is one of the toughest things to do. In the past it has been almost impossible to reach these parent communities, let alone bring about behavioural change. “At most, NGOs in the past have tried to counsel parents by reaching them directly with little or no success since behaviour reverts quickly even if changes are induced”, says Namya. In the past reaching these low income parents on the ground has been a huge challenge.

Teachers in government schools have now set up WhatsApp groups, leading to a digital community of low income parents. In rural India, 65 percent of parents whose wards attend a government school do have a smartphone now (the increase has been 30 percent over the last two years). The group includes the teacher and they add the Rocket Learning technology to the group by adding a number. The technology enables them to send audio visual content of activities that can be done by children with the assistance of their parents, even if the latter are largely uneducated but are partially literate. 

Three things the model does to bring in accountability and motivate parents is to ask them to send back content and videos to the group. “When they see the others doing it, there’s a keeping up with the Joneses effect to some extent and others too start sending”, says Azeez. Out of 20 parents in a group,  two respond and then the others begin to start taking active interest. “Incentives and social rewards like a monthly medal  are being sent by our platform which is motivating the kids and their parents”, adds Namya. Weekly report cards are being sent.  

As of now, Rocket Learning has no real competitors in the space. In terms of model, the closest is Convegenius which also works in partnerships with governments and uses whatsapp for content sharing. But there are marked differences between the two since Convegenius' area of action is mostly grade 6 and above (for which their model is very well suited) and it is a tech only company. Rocket Learning is attempting to  support the system with non-tech parent focused initiatives as well, and for early childhood education even help governments with strengthening their in-classroom instruction and system.

In Uttar Pradesh for instance Rocket Learning used Suresh Raina, a well known cricketer to make videos on how he and his wife work with their 4 year old daughter and this too has inspired parents. In the state, Rocket Learning is now in 10,000 school groups for Classes 1 and 2.  The team is around 40 people now and is hoping to reach around one million children with a budget of around US $ 700,000 to US$ 1 million. With its high powered board and advisors, funding is not a problem as of now. As Rocket Learning - powered by passion and idealism - aims for the sky, it’s own trajectory will be defined by what it achieves on the ground.