Sridhar Rajagopalan, Co-founder and Chief Learning Officer at Educational Initiatives
The Venture
In 1996, three men in India (including Sridhar Rajagopalan) left their high paying tech jobs to start a school intending to teach students to understand deeply instead of memorizing facts. In 2001, they started their company Educational Initiatives (Ei) and launched their first product, the Assessment of Scholastic Skills through Educational Testing (ASSET) to find and address gaps in students’ learning. Again, this product focused on problem solving skills and avoided rote learning. Ei now offers additional assessments focused on reading, computational thinking, and more. They also provide an adaptive (self-adjusting) teaching tool called Mindspark.
The Founder: Sridhar Rajagopalan
Sridhar Rajagopalan earned an engineering degree from IIM Madras, followed by a PGMD (similar to an MBA) at IIM Ahmedabad. He worked at IMB India in a lucrative tech position, but left to open a school with two other former tech workers. He places a high value on problem solving over rote learning, and finding gaps in students’ understanding. His company is well known for conducting rigorous educational research with the goal of better meeting students’ needs. The management team and research team are both highly qualified and well respected.
Reflection
I admire the process that Sridhar Rajagopalan and his team have undertaken in the past 23 years. They released an assessment product to learn about students’ misunderstandings. They used the data they collected to release products supporting students, and also to release yet more assessment tools to even better understand issues that students have. It is an intelligent and valuable contribution to education, and I hope their cycle continues. I will be looking further into the research they have conducted and the adaptive teaching tool Mindspark.