In this episode, Pranav Kothari was in conversation with Vineet Nayar, Founder-Chairman of Sampark Foundation. Vineet is also the former CEO of HCL Technologies, and the author of the acclaimed management book Ëmployees First, Customers Second. Sampark Foundation hopes to catalyse innovation-led social change to impact the education of 20 million children by 2025. 

In this episode, Vineet and Pranav speak about how to design good EdTech, and Sampark's innovative ways to improve classroom engagement between teachers and students. They also discuss Sampark Foundation's self-imposed expiry date of 2025, and ways to catalyse change in education over a short time period of time, ensuring that costs remain low and that impact is sustainable.

In this episode, Pranav Kothari spoke to Rathish Balakrishnan, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Sattva Consulting. Sattva is a development consultancy firm motivated by the vision of ending poverty in our lifetime.

Rathish and Pranav talked about ways to strengthen India's social sector through innovative funding methods like Development Impact Bonds, value-based funding, the Social Stock Exchange and more. They also spoke about how civil society organisations can achieve greater freedom and agency in their work, and how and when to create meaningful collaborations for social impact. Finally, they discussed the role of government in scaling social impact, COVID's impact on learning, and ways to actively involve parents in their children's education.

In this episode of Ei Dialogues, we speak to Dr. Rukmini Banerji, CEO of Pratham Education Foundation. Pratham works to improve learning outcomes through high-quality, low-cost, and replicable interventions, and is world-renowned for its Annual Status of Education Report.

Dr. Banerji spoke about how Pratham helped children learn during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the growing importance of parents in ensuring high-quality education. She also talked about the National Education Policy (NEP), 2020, Foundational Literacy and Numeracy, and their importance in the context of the pandemic. Dr. Banerji sounded a note of optimism while positing a path forward for our education system, believing that with concerted efforts to help students catch-up our system can be stronger than ever in the years to come.

In this episode of EI Dialogues we speak to Aditya Natraj, Director of the Kaivalya Education Foundation. KEF works to improve public education in India by developing leadership among school, district, and state officials.

In this conversation, Aditya Natraj spoke about KEF's philosophy of leadership and it's application in the education sector, as well as the need for equity between private and public education and ways to enable this. With several insightful examples, Aditya emphasized the importance of partnering with expert stakeholders to achieve large-scale impact, and the role of empathy in working with governments.

This episode originally aired on 10th February, 2020.

In this episode of EI Dialogues, we speak to Dr. Santhosh Matthew, the Country Lead, Public Policy and Finance at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). BMGF works to improve people’s health and lift them out of hunger and extreme poverty.

Dr. Santhosh Matthew also has extensive experience as a civil servant and a Ph.D. in Development Studies. In this conversation, he spoke about his work as an IAS Officer, being an entrepreneur within the government, the growth of philanthropy in India, solving for capacity constraints in Indian education and the role of EdTech in improving learning outcomes.

This episode was originally launched on 24th December, 2019 

In this episode of EI Dialogues, we talk to Ashish Dhawan, founder of the Central Square Foundation (CSF). CSF is a non-profit organization that works to make high-quality school education available to all children in India, and improve the learning outcomes of children, especially from low-income communities.

Ashish Dhawan is also the founder of ChrysCapital and a founding member of Ashoka University. In this conversation he spoke about his switch from the corporate sector to philanthropy, his approach to giving, the application of management principles to running and scaling a non-profit organisation, and his beliefs regarding the current needs of the Indian education sector.

This episode was originally launched on 27th February 2020.

In this episode of EI Dialogues, we talk to Saransh Vaswani, a co-founder of Saajha. Saajha works to build the capacity of School Management Committees (SMCs), which were mandated by the Right to Education Act. These SMCs comprise the school principal, a teacher, parents, a local ward councilor, and an educationist. Inspired by the potential of parent-teacher engagement, Saajha tries to create an ecosystem of support in government schools for child development.

Before founding Saajha, Saransh was a Gandhi Fellow and, later, a Young India Fellow at Ashoka University. During the conversation, he reflects on how these fellowships played a role in the conception of Saajha, how it went from training 90 schools to 1000+ schools in Delhi, and why it is important to create opportunities for a parent to support their child’s development.

This episode was originally launched on January 27, 2020.

In this episode of EI Dialogues, we interact with Prachi Jain Windlass. She is currently Director-India Education at the Michael and Susan Dell Foundation (MSDF). In her role, Prachi leads the foundation’s efforts to improve the fast-growing affordable private schools sector and other high-quality market-based solutions for education in India. She is also on the board of several for-profit education companies and advisory committees to state governments and education departments. During the conversation, she elucidates on Michael and Susan Dell Foundation (MSDF)’s investing strategy in education, the rising significance of Development Impact Bonds (DIBs) and MSDF’s role as outcome funders, the need for technology to bridge the last mile gap when it comes to improving children’s learning outcomes, and what education entrepreneurs should keep in mind while doing business. This episode was originally launched on September 16, 2019.

In this episode, we talk to Sridhar Rajagopalan, the President and Chief Learning Officer of Educational Initiatives. During the conversation, Sridhar talks about why he co-founded Educational Initiatives after running a school for 6 years, the idea behind doing Assessments and using EdTech for improving learning outcomes. He further tells us about the discipline of Science of Learning, what investments we must make in education to yield maximum outcomes at scale, how can India do better on tests like PISA, and the role of nurturing gifted students for them to become leaders of tomorrow. This episode was originally published on July 31, 2019.

In this episode, we converse with Vishal Talreja, co-founder of Dream a Dream, an organisation working towards empowering children and young people from vulnerable backgrounds using a life-skills approach. An active writer on development challenges and human-interest stories, Vishal is an Ashoka Fellow, an Eisenhower Fellow, and a Board Member at PYE Global.  During the conversation, he shares more about the life skills approach, his journey with Dream a Dream, scaling it, and collaborating with Governments. This episode was originally published on February 8, 2021.