Bangia: nurturing curious thinkers

Gurugram-based ANEESH BANGIA is co-founder of Open Door, an initiative of Think-First Education Pvt. Ltd (estb.2013), an edtech company headquartered in Bengaluru which offers K-12 school programmes to leverage the “power of inquiry to transform young learners into curious and better thinkers”. Open Door has signed up over 200 top-ranked schools in India — (Children’s Academy, Mumbai; Sulochanadevi Singhania School, Thane; Welham Girls, Dehradun; Lakshmipat Singhania Academy, Kolkata; Salwan Public School, Delhi; Chinmaya International Residential School, Coimbatore among others) — the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain and Qatar

Newspeg. To celebrate its eighth anniversary in July, Open Door launched its Wow Video Series — math and science content videos featuring hands-on experiments.

History. A mechanical engineering alum of IIT-Madras, Bangia quit a high-potential job at Ashok Leyland — India’s second largest commercial vehicles manufacturing company — within a year of appointment, to turn edupreneur. “I found my true calling when I began teaching physics to my workplace colleagues who had surprisingly limited appreciation or understanding of science,” recalls Bangia, who began teaching children at home and at a test prep centre while fleshing out his entrepreneurial plan.

In 2013, after a chance meeting with Abhishek Kariwal, a like-minded junior at IIT-Madras, the duo decided to team up and teach children maths and science in rented learning centres in Bengaluru and Pune. Their unconventional, questions-driven science and math pedagogies soon became popular among forward-looking parents and Open Door was registered the same year. The following year, the duo launched their flagship Mastery Assessment programme and successfully completed a pilot project at Pune’s Millennium National School.

Business model: Under the company’s business model, partner schools pay Open Door an annual per student fee (Rs.790-1,490).

Direct talk. “India’s school system places strong emphasis on rote learning and examination success. Thousands of school-leavers are graduating with high grades but with little or no real learning. We believe this is because they haven’t been taught to think and question. Schools urgently need to switch to inquiry-based pedagogies. The more students question, the deeper their understanding. Open Door teaches children to think deeply, question and learn. Our flagship programmes Mastery Assessment, and Thinking Classrooms stimulate the minds of children with thought-provoking questions which develop critical thinking and application skills. Our other services include teacher training, workshops on critical reading, concept design and thinkshops,” says Bangia.

Future plans. Bangia has drawn up ambitious plans for the future. “We have finalised a blueprint to expand our partner schools network in India and the Middle-East. Our mission is to improve and sharpen the thinking skills of 1 million children around the world in the next five years,” says Bangia.

Wind in your sails!

Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru)