Living With Polio & Entrepreneur at 16, He Takes Education to Small Cities

With 1,100 Bachpan Play School franchises established in remote parts of the country, the Ajay Gupta Project may be the answer to making education accessible in India.

Ajay Gupta was diagnosed with polio when he was just nine months old. However, being disabled, he spent his life working for the cause and starting projects for the betterment of others.

Gupta used his knowledge of stocks and had an entrepreneurial spirit very early in his life. This led him to a series of successful projects when he was just 24 years old. But there was one thing that led him to focus on pre-primary education, among other reasons.

Gupta became paralyzed in his legs and left hand when he was still an infant, and was unable to attend school until the age of six. This was due to the lack of accessibility in the field of education. Throughout his school years, he noticed that this problem was prevalent in India.

And so, when he had the chance to make a difference, he did. In 2004, he started Bachpan Play School in Delhi with just Rs 30,000.

Appropriate curriculum and strategy have been the pillars upon which the preschool is built with the aim of providing quality education to the young minds of Tier II and Tertiary cities of India. As the project gained momentum, it was loved by many and spread from Delhi to Bareilly, Muzaffarpur, Dehradun and more such cities totaling 1100 franchises in India.

Today, there are approximately 1 lakh students who are benefiting from this project.

Along with this project, Gupta has also set up an NGO – ‘Hum Honge Kamyaab’, for equal access for disabled students in the field of education.

Watch how Ajay Gupta is changing young people’s lives through quality education:

Edited by Yoshita Rao