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Avanti
Providing affordable tutoring, mentoring & financial aid to bright students in need
Avanti runs high-impact after-school programs for underserved high-school students in 7 cities across India. Each year bright, motivated high-school students are selected for a 2 year program at Avanti’s learning centers. These centers employ a blended learning model that uses recorded videos and online testing coupled with high-impact tutoring. The use of technology frees teachers to focus on giving students the individualized attention they need to succeed at India’s highly competitive college entrance exams. Students at Avanti’s centers have consistently outperformed students in traditional high-end classroom coaching programs. Their work is supported by the largest student volunteer organization in India (over 250 student volunteers at India’s top schools) and brings public school systems, policy makers and the private sector together to drive systemic change through India’s educational system.
Avanti Fellows
790 Church Street
Apt 201
San Francisco, CA 94114
www.avantifellows.org
- Leader
- Impact
Akshay Saxena
Akshay Saxena, Avanti’s President, worked with the Boston Consulting Group, the UN World Food Programme and the International Save the Children Alliance before serving on the founding team of two venture backed medical device companies. Akshay graduated with a bachelors and masters degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and is currently on a leave of absence from the MBA program at the Harvard Business School.
Avanti’s genesis came from the student mentor program at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, where Akshay and his co-founder Krishna Ramkumar helped mentor first-year students through a team of student volunteers. Over 6M high-school graduates in India are denied access to a quality undergraduate education. Student’s from low-income homes are massively underrepresented at India’s top colleges – primarily from a lack of quality teaching and mentoring when in high-school. After a few years working in the corporate and non-profit sectors, they co-founded Avanti in 2010 to mobilize student volunteers across India to help tackle this problem. They won the Stanford BASES Social E-Challenge in 2010 and were chosen as an Echoing Green Fellows in 2012.
Impact
- Since its inception in 2010, Avanti has reached over 60,000 students through direct and indirect programming
- Students at Avanti's learning centers are outperforming students high-end classroom programs that cost up to 8 times as much
- Avanti's efforts are supported by over 250 student volunteers across India's top college campuses who've delivered more than 15,000 hours of mentoring and tutoring till date