Hi I am Prasad, don-t let my INSEAD MBA fool you I- ve been a lifelong entrepreneur and this is my story.  The educational challenge that struck a chord with us was poor employability. It's unacceptable that in a nation of a billion, only 10% of our graduates were employable, just 10%! We started a school- Vishwajyot High School, New Bombay (www.Vishwajyot.com) - close to a decade ago and have some insight into the space. Our employability problem stems from trying to paint every learner with the same brush, without understanding how and what s/he wants to learn.   Poor employability contrasted against rising aspirations and fattening wallets of our vast populous outside of major metros presented me with a major opportunity. As a way to get started on closing this need gap we have started at the very beginning, with schools and preschools (prevention is better than cure). We hacked our way into the labs of neurobiologists and cognitive scientists to design a superb learning program, which understands each learner and personalizes the instruction to his/her interests and capabilities. Read more at www.WunderbarKids.com   At Wunderbar Kids, we believe that every child's world is unique. Based on this belief, our continuously evolving educational model is built around some basic pillars.  - Personalized Curriculum: We know that each one of us learns differently, we have different interests and are differentially skilled. Yet most of our schools put us in batches based on age and hold all of us to the same standard in everything. At Wunderbar we see the absurdity of this approach and build systems that allow each child to learn at their pace and based on their interests - so that they all achieve their potential. This may either seem so ambitious that it's off the charts, or so extreme that it is mechanical, but at Wunderbar Kids, we- ve found a way to make it work- and for each individual child.  - Skills vs Content: In a pre-internet era, content (what do I know) was certainly the biggest focus area for our educational system. However, our educational system seems to be untouched by the fact that today content is available instantly, and at your fingertips. The focus should have, by now, shifted to skills (what can I do). It is how certain skills are deployed that will have real value in the employment game. Have you ever yourself thought about the fact that it's a skill that leads to success- For example, it is the way that someone looks at failure that makes them creative- Or that the way certain cognitive thought processes are developed can make you a better manager- At Wunderbar, the focus is a lot more on building these skills, instead of simply trying to spoon feed children content.  - Natural Curriculum: It is a well-known fact that in the absence of a pre-defined goal, kids love to learn. The goal to learning should be learning in itself! Yet traditionally, we take all the fun out of learning. Remember how you learnt your mother tongue- You probably just heard your family speak and naturally started to understand it. On the other hand, think about how English is taught in our schools today. We start with the abstract like the A B C's that have no meaning for the child. At Wunderbar we have turned this method on its head and in the process, gone back to a way of learning that's comes naturally to kids.  We- ve been at it for two and a half years now and it's been one of the most exhilarating but terrifying period of our lives. Amrut and I haven- t had a day off since he got back from his MBA at Duke, but all the little achievements keep us going. Our ability to personalize learning has enabled us to learn that Samarth (1.5 years), though initially very cranky, loves stories and 6 months on he is happily coming to school learning through stories and relaying them to his grandfather. Raj who was painfully shy went on to compete and win a nationally televised dance reality show. Our 400 learners in the small town of Phaltan (whose commute to a school we cut by 60 km/day) within 6 months were talking, playing and thinking in English! Our model is working! We now have 27 schools/preschools in total and are pushing the pace to set up 40 new schools in the next 4 months!   The plan is to accelerate the pace a few more notches - get bigger, better, faster! Schools are only the start, we will use our schools as beachheads to give us a local presence and tackle the problem of employability through a variety of products and technologies which we are developing. Our sights are set on having 100,000 learners on the books. Yep, challenging is an understatement, and as our Angel Investor & Advisor SrikantDatar (Sr. Associate Dean Harvard Business School) says - we need some equally crazy people to make it happen!   Over the last couple of years we- ve hired a management team comprising of CXO's, Brand Managers, and entrepreneurs from leading schools like ISB, IIM and S P Jain. We- ve also hired a fantastic academic team from IIT, TFI and TISS. Over the last year they have been on field, pushing a manic growth rate which would have otherwise been impossible.   To achieve great things, we need more awesome people (we are little over 250 people at the moment) and that's why we're here. We are looking for - The Academic Head (AH)- . A visionary who sets his sights on creating a superlative Academic product for our schools and pre - schools.  Rapid advancements in cognitive and neurosciences are changing existing understanding of a child's learning and growth (wish all Indian parents knew a bit of this). So what the AH does is to understand the impact of data on learning through the latest research. There is a catch though. It's not about googling, copy-pasting, and making a prezie to celebrate your genius. It's a rigorous research process which you drive where tightly controlled experiments are conducted and based on the results of these experiments our content and curriculum is modified. The other catch is, you- ll not be doing this in isolation, but in tight concert with the teachers who are actually delivering the content so that you can learn from the grassroots and continue to improve the program and in turn the learning outcomes of the learners.   It's not enough to have great results with a couple hundred kids; the real challenge is to scale those results across thousands - from metros to villages. To ensure that each child that comes in contact with your work is left better-off - cause of it. To achieve this, the AH will have to build systems - building content in a scalable way so as to transform education for millions of learners.  In addition to this you- ll be responsible to train, mentor and lead a team, constantly innovate, contribute to the noise at the boardroom during brainstorming sessions, establish processes and systems & ensure the academic deliverable takes place on-time, on-budget and is simply the best! The role will also be very hands-on, so we are looking for people willing to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty. If you have the hunger to make it big, drive to create a huge impact, the courage to face uncertainty, the willingness to take the risk and would like to work directly with the CEO, then get in touch with us. But instead of just a CV, tell us a problem you are looking to solve in education and how YOU would go about solving it.   Prasad Dhumal

Mumbai

Wunderbar Kids - Academic Head 

Wunderbar Kids - Academic Head  ,Job Description for Wunderbar Kids - Academic Head  in Mindseed in  Mumbai for (5-15) years of experience. Apply Now!

Job Description for Wunderbar Kids - Academic Head  in Mindseed in  Mumbai for (5-15) years of experience. Apply Now!