Shantanu Gupta, founder, and director of the Ramayana School has a unique aphorism for imparting education.
"Morals before Maths, character before coding; this is our motto," he says, definitively.
Now visualise a man who is said to have been born 18 million years ago. Ideally, he should have lived a comfortable life being the successor to his kingdom. Instead, he was sent to exile for 14 years to honour a promise by his father to his stepmother.
Despite living a tough life in a forest and fighting a war to get his abducted wife back home, he never gave up the path of righteousness.
Valmiki’s Ramayana
The story is more than familiar to hundreds of millions of Indians, the legend of Hindu deity Rama chronicled in Valmiki's Ramayana, which has now become the core value proposition of this Delhi-headquartered EdTech firm, The Ramayana School.
It offers life lessons to children in the age group of 7-14 years, using chapters from India’s immortal classic.
Traditionally, EdTech platforms in India offer academic courses aligned to the school syllabus or offer technology programmes like coding.
Gupta, however, told Moneycontrol in a telephonic conversation that their approach is to 'go back to the roots'.
Walking the talk
The Founder of this unique school walks the talk - his own children are being home-schooled.
Starting in April 2020, Gupta says that The Ramayana School has now completed workshops with 2,000 students.
While the 7-14-year age-group remains the core focus for the company, Gupta explains that the platform has conducted workshops for college students as well as corporates.
The early days
Gupta's eight-year-old son Abhiram often asked a lot of questions about the Ramayana. While his father tried to answer them to the best of his knowledge, sometimes he wasn't sure.
The fact was also that parents, typically, didn't have time to narrate these stories and nuclear families meant it wasn't always possible for children to be with their grandparents for such story sessions.
"I met scholars of Ramayana and understood that the text has a lot of significance. During my travels, I also realised that the Ramayana is a significant part of the culture in South East Asia and it wasn't just a religious epic. This prompted to think about setting up a formal structure to offer the lessons," says Gupta.
Shantanu Gupta, founder and director, The Ramayana School
First workshops
The first batch of paid workshops began in the last week of April 2020. Since this was also a period of COVID-19-induced national lockdown, the courses were delivered online.
According to Gupta, it is a mix of workshops, lessons, quizzes, and workshops.
Unlike a traditional school academic structure where there is compartmentalised education, their model helps the lessons be more engaging.
"We could have a day-long session on Hanuman to give lessons on loyalty. The child can then have a puzzle to solve that will make the lesson interesting and engaging,``says Gupta.
Courses are priced between Rs 2,000-5,000.
18 locations
So far, The Ramayana School has offered these programmes to children at 18 locations, including India. About 60 percent of the customers are Indians living abroad, while 40 percent constitute resident Indians.
Apart from the regular programmes, there is also a full-fledged nine-month course on publishing books on offer by The Ramayana School. This is priced at Rs 37,000, as per their website.
Gupta says that this is meant for children who want to publish books and need hand holding with refining their idea.
The services provided include ideation, improvements in writing styles, book designing, editing and actual publication and marketing.
"We have 20 customers so far in this segment. Since I have published books, I am able to guide them on the process," he adds.
Conducting workshops
Apart from school-led partnerships for offering workshops, Gupta says that the Ramayana School has conducted workshops for the Mumbai University, BIMTECH (Birla Institute of Management Technology) and has also partnered with the Hindu University of America in Florida to offer a dedicated course module.
"In the business-to-consumer (B2C) category, the age group we cater to is 7-14 years. But in the business-to-business (B2B) category, we have done workshops across age groups," he points out.
Apart from the workshops that are conducted online, parents can supplement the lessons through games, puzzles, and quizzes, which are available for purchase on their platform.
Next phase of growth
Now, says Gupta, schools themselves are reaching out to get workshops conducted. This includes storytelling, puppet making and puzzles to explain the multiple stories in the Ramayana and the lessons that can be imbibed.
No surprises then, says Gupta, that the platform has raised Rs 40 lakh from four parents at a valuation of Rs 20 crore within a span of one year.
"We have collected a revenue of Rs 60 lakh between April 2020 and April 2021. Now that we are planning an expansion, we are in talks to raise about Rs 2 crore-Rs 3 crore soon. In addition, we are also in discussions with a large EdTech firm with a presence in the Middle East to widen our reach," Gupta says with satisfaction.
The funding, he points out, will be used to expand the team, trainers, and offer additional content online and offline.
Once the lockdown lifts, Gupta is also planning to conduct physical retreats and offer a Ramayana-circuit tour with external partnership to its customers.
Quizzed about whether The Ramayana School could also expand to other epics/scriptures like the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Gita, he said that work has already begun on that front.
What about texts from other religions? Would the Ramayana School incorporate lessons from them through its course modules? "We have not thought about it right now. But are open to the idea," says Gupta.