‘Coolfluencing’ the world’s education with the Gurukul approach

Over 50 per cent of the youth population is in Telangana, and the youth from the state plays a major role in the country’s development. Today, for our weekly edition of Community Wise, we talk to the founder of Gurucool, an education platform that’s working with the Telangana government to integrate Gurukul learning in the Telangana Minorities Residental Schools.

Shikha Duggal

Gurucool, an education platform, ties up with the Telangana government for the Telangana Minorities Residental Schools (TMR) to integrate the “Gurukul” learning in the 204 residential schools and two junior colleges, with more than 1,30,000 students across the state.

This development has come only a month after the early access launch of the “Gurucool Padhaai — Learner App”! “Dubbed as India’s largest free learning platform, we are earning rare praises in an often criticised, highly competitive, and unsustainable commercialised India’s ed-tech industry for our efforts to digitise campuses and democratise education,” said Adil Meraj, the founder and CEO of Gurucool.

Telangana is a state that has around 50% of the youth population, so if India aims to develop as a smart nation, the youth of Telangana plays a major role in this development! Gurucool Padhaai has been designed to help students find a purposeful community, learn smart, do fun activities, and thrive in the real world.

The founder continued, “Education isn’t just cracking the entrance exam, passing the exams, and getting the degree, but having the richness of knowledge with the right sets of skills needed in the real world. Education should make us relevant. It should make us employable. It should make us great human beings.”

More than 287 million people, or 37% of the global total, are illiterate in India. If reels are free, why not education? Education makes us relevant. It makes us employable. It is a necessity, not a luxury.

The founder also said, “Gurucool imbibes the true values and vision of the gurukul of ancient Bharat as well as the coolness and progress of new India. If we create a space for quality education and make it expensive, we are only excluding most of the population. If we create an unsafe space like a colosseum and make students compete with each other at an alarmingly unhealthy level, we are only creating 1% winners and 99% losers. If we create a dumb space and try to fit everyone in the same space at the same time, we are not nurturing talents and creating leaders.”

It was in 2019 when Gurucool Learning Cafe was inaugurated! Today, you can imagine an ‘eduverse’ where you can find your community, swipe right to gurus, browse through thousands of open courses, ask quirky questions, watch purposeful reels, and much more. With more than 25 tools and a vast content pool, it is empowering educators like schools and colleges to go online and build their digital infrastructure, which enables learners to connect purposefully, find communities, and grow together in a physical reality.

“Telangana’s push for phygitisation to make quality education universally accessible, as well as skill-based and interest-focused, is really commendable. What is phygitisation? It is the process of digitising physical learning centres like schools, colleges, training centres, etc. by using technology so that students have a hybrid mode of education, anytime, anywhere. Education is the biggest tool of growth for any nation, and nobody should be devoid of it. With the help of education, even the biggest issues in the world can be resolved. Be it poverty, starvation, or climate change, an educated nation can bring out solutions and make this world a better place. It’s education that helps us better understand ourselves and each other. It makes us kinder, wiser, braver, and more empathetic,” feels the founder.

All the problems in the world sprout from ignorance, the root of misfortune. Therefore, the world isn’t in need of saviours; it is in need of more educators who are cool, competent, and empathetic. That’s exactly what Gurucool is building: a sacred, selfless, and lifetime relationship between a guru and a shishya, an educational bond over a transactional bond, or an amalgam of traditional integrity with some blossoming coolness!