84 | FORBES ASIA JULY 2016
FORBES ASIA
SAMPARK FOUNDATION
says he was inspired by how he grew
up listening to dialogue from movies
on tape—popular Hindi movies such
as Sholay and English movies such as
Mackenna’s Gold.
The emphasis in Sampark’s project
is on what Nayar calls “frugal innova-
tion,” so no fancy iPads or laptops. The
cost is just $1 a year per child, totalling
$15 million for the duration of the proj-
ect. “If it’s not frugal, it’ll not scale,” he
says. “We can only be the incubator for
the idea. The scale has to come from
the state.”
The aim is to ensure that within one
year of implementation at least 80% of
the children can speak and write 500
new words in English and form 100
sentences. They should also be able to
do basic addition, subtraction, multi-
plication and division.
There’s nothing revolutionary
about the materials, but they’re easy
to use and structured around the cur-
riculum, so the students steadily build
up a knowledge of the concepts. Take
10-year-old Sawan Kumar, one of Ma-
thyal’s students at the Model Govern-
ment Public School in Mehragaon. He
uses a wad of plastic play money in his
classroom to understand addition and
the concept of money. He can touch,
feel and play with the money, so he
picks up the idea easily.
Sampark has around 100 employ-
ees based in the two states—many are
graduates of the premier Tata Institute
of Social Sciences—and they regularly
visit classrooms to monitor the chil-
dren’s progress and make sure the kits
are being used effectively. Sampark,
which means “connection” in Hindi,
has also set up a helpline at the states’
education departments for teachers
to call with questions or requests for
guidance. If a high number of calls
originate from a certain school district,
the foundation provides refresher
training. The project started off as
a pilot program for 500 schools in
2013; it was scaled up to 5,000 schools
in 2014, and it now reaches 50,000
schools.schools and 7 million children in the
next few years. The foundation boasts
$100 million in funding, supplied
entirely by the Nayars and represent-
ing more than half their wealth. “The
business of philanthropy is the business
of change, and this is large-scale social
change,” says Vineet, 54. “I want to be at
the center of innovation.”
Many of India’s government schools
in rural areas fail to teach their students
very much. Some 76% of children in
grade five can’t read simple sentences
in English, and one out of five can’t rec-
ognize numbers above nine, according
to the 2014 Annual Status of Educa-
tion Report, compiled by Pratham,
an Indian nonprofit. Moreover, the
government’s “no detention” policy
allows students to move up from grade
to grade, until eighth grade, regardless
of whether they learned anything in
the previous grade. “Currently, primary
education doesn’t create the founda-
tion necessary for further learning,”
says Rukmini Banerji, Pratham’s CEO.
“Half the children in grade five aren’t at
even the grade-two level. They cannot
make meaningful progress after grade
five, when the textbooks get bigger and
the curriculum gets heavier. More and
more children lag behind.”
Nayar’s vision is to dramatically raise
the level of math—and also English—
skills of primary school students. He
believes that this can be done by mak-
ing the classroom more exciting, using
toys, folklore, stories, games, audio les-
sons, songs and hands-on activities to
increase the students’ attention spans.
(In a typical classroom the teacher uses
only textbooks and the blackboard.)
For instance, for teaching English
Sampark launched an audio device with
a voice mascot called Sampark Didi
(“older sister” in Hindi). It needs to be
charged only once in 15 days, important
because of frequent power cuts in rural
areas. When the device is switched
on, a zesty female voice starts off with
a hearty, “Good morning, children,”
reminiscent of a Bollywood actress in a
hit movie. She then belts out stories and
rhymes that are primarily in Hindi but
gently introduce new English words.
In one story a fish called Nimmy brings
up new words such as “tortoise,” “crab”
and “sea.” These lessons are also for the
teachers, who often are not confident
about speaking in English. (The bulk of
the teaching in government schools in
northern India is in Hindi.) At the end
of the lesson the kids are quizzed on the
new words they’ve learned.
Nayar chose the device because
audio doesn’t engulf the senses and
leaves more room for the imagination.
It’s also less intimidating, inexpen-
sive and easier to handle in schools
with little or no infrastructure. HeNew tools: “The kids take a lot of interest when we use these things. They don’t see it as work.”
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