Education has been an important part of human evolution since the beginning. All the technological advancements today are a result of a good education. India throughout the years has advanced a lot in education. But in comparison to the west, there are still certain obstacles and mistakes in Indian education. Here we will see how 45 entrepreneurs pooled to launch Tech University Plaksha.
We all know the fault in Indian education, the lack of practicals and the huge gap between job and college. Every company today wants skilled employees with certain specifications and that’s the thing that Indian colleges lack to teach. They teach from more of a bookish point of view. Moreover, the increase in medical and engineering colleges have decreased the quality of education delivered. However, the colleges today are more of money looting then providing better education.
A group of 45 entrepreneurs pooled together to construct a university which will not only well train the students but well educate them and make them ready to survive in these tech-forward companies.
The heart of the matter
Indian education is going to get a heavy boost as a group of 45 entrepreneurs have pooled together Rs 2000 Crore to launch a tech university, which will help the students become future-ready. The amount of 2000 Cr is about 4 times more than government investments in any of the IITs.
The name of the university is Plaksha University. The Tech university Plaksha won’t be just one among the hundreds of universities in India. The name Plaksha is taken from a Sanskrit word which means a tree from which a river of learning flows, nurturing everything that it touches.
Why Plaksha University?
We all know about the unemployment condition in India. The unemployment rate rose to 7.2% in February 2019, the worst in 28 months. The only way to tackle this problem of unemployment is to provide better education and make the students more abled.
According to a report by aspiring minds about 80 percent of Indian engineers are not fit or any job in the knowledge economy. And the main reason is the quality of education in the colleges of India. To tackle this problem and to bridge the gap between employers and educators. The group of 45 top entrepreneurs and CXOs built this institute.
The leaders along with special academic boards have designed the courses in the university. Most of the courses will be related to technology. The universities Gurugram campus will launch its first Tech Leaders Fellowship Programme. The university has collaborated with many top institutes including UC Berkeley, Purdue University, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania, as well as tech companies like Google and IBM among others. their Bachelor’s degree program will start in 2021.
How did Plaksha start?
Mohit Thukral, Founder and Trustee of Plaksha University (and Founder and Managing Partner at BPM platform Vivtera) had the vision to create such an educational institution. The idea of higher education in a new form which would benefit the students first came up when Mohit got together with Neeraj Aggarwal, Chairman, Asia Pacific, Boston Consulting Group; Vineet Gupta, Co-founder and MD, Jamboree Education; Ashish Gupta, Founder of Benori Knowledge; and Manas Fuloria, Co-founder and CEO of Navarro.
Mohit said that he felt that there’s not only a need to change what is taught in engineering colleges in India but also to change the way it is taught. According to reports from YourStory, After months of meetings and brainstorming, the idea of a technology university took shape.
“Every few years, there is a massive shift in technologies. Right now, there is a lot of buzz around AI and data science. But there is no educational program to train you for it,” says Mohit.
Tech university Plaksha will be one of a kind university. Which will provide education that will not only make the students more abled but will also help the country to prosper in science and technology. After two years of discussion and meetings and hardships, Plaksha was born in early 2018.
Building the team
The current 45 members include CP Gurnani (MD and CEO, Tech Mahindra), Vineet Nayyar (former executive vice-chairman, Tech Mahindra) Ashish Gupta (Co-founder, Helion Ventures), Pankaj Chaddah (Co-founder of Zomato) Ritesh Malik (Founder of Innov8), Pallav Nandhani (Founder of Fushiocharts), and Gaggan Hasteer( VP, Content Engineering at Netflix), among others.
The main task was to build the core team. And after that, they just required to gather people who have the same thought and zeal towards the development of education.
The core team has been all involved in gathering the team of 45 entrepreneurs. One of the people who was greatly involved in the creation of the team was Pankaj, who left Zomato last year. Pankaj has been involved in creating the first batch of the fellowship program for the last few months.
As most of them among the 45 entrepreneurs have run their own company and most of them are related to technology. It would be easier for them to have a good vision regarding a technological institute. As a matter of fact, all 45 entrepreneurs have a common goal in like manner to build a world-class university with collective philanthropy.
What about Education?
Team Plaksha believes that technical education at the highest level is the only way the Indian students can fulfill the needs of high pace tech-oriented companies. According to Mohit in Plaksha rather than concentrating on grades experiments and practices should be looked upon more. The students who want to study at Plaksha will need to take an online test for conceptual understanding of technical fundamentals and attend an interview.
The fellowship program will select 60 students through a rigorous screening process and provide scholarships to all 60 of them. 20 will receive 100 percent scholarship; 20 will be granted a 50 percent scholarship and the remaining 20 students will get a 25 percent scholarship, based on merit and financial situation. source- YourStory.
Apart from regular education, the students will be given advanced training on AI and training on other such technologies. The fellowship program will help in developing startups. And the students will be allocated among groups to think out new ideas for their startups.
Conclusion
The team of Tech university Plaksha or the board of directors is all highly qualified persons. The Plaksha team hopes to increase their strength of 45 to more than 100 people in the next three years. The institute will provide the best education and experiments for the students. Moreover, apart from academicians, industry veterans and practitioners of AI and data science will share their wisdom with students. Thus, we can conclude that Plaksha will overall work for the betterment of the education of India and will help India in being future-ready.
