The placement season at premiere institutions such as the Indian Institute of Management–Bangalore (IIM-B) is where salary packages worth lakhs or even crores are negotiated.
Which is why it is not every day that one gets to hear of students opting out of the process to set out on an adventure of their own.
Aditya Kulkarni, a student of 2011-2013 batch at IIM-B, is one among this elite group, who has opted out of the ongoing final placement season. As many as 379 students are vying for the cream of employment opportunities in the choicest corporate companies in the placement process that started on Tuesday.
Mr. Kulkarni, a 25-year-old from Nashik, Maharashtra, told The Hindu on Wednesday that he had no regrets about passing over the opportunity. Instead, the BITS-Pilani graduate, along with friend Rishi Kar, an alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, is channelling his learning into ‘Learning Outcomes’, a company that aims at making child assessment in schools a holistic process.
“I was always interested in education. I used to teach in coaching classes while I was studying engineering and was also a teaching assistant at college,” he said.
How did IIM-B help him? “I majored in marketing and operations. IIM-B has an incubation centre and there is a good entrepreneurship environment there. I got plenty of guidance from the professors as well,” he explained.
Mr. Kulkarni, who did not even participate in the summer placements of IIM-B, chose to do an internship with the Planning Commission of India in the education vertical. This was his first tryst with policy making, as he got to participate in the formulation of the 12th Five-Year Plan.
Speaking about his company — which comprises a team of five (including Aditya and Rishi) — he said, “There are quite a few standard tests available today to evaluate a child’s performance, but there is a serious need for an effective diagnostic tool. We will focus on making assessment a pedagogical tool, find learning patterns and make it an internal assessment. The feedback could help teachers use remedial measures for the child.”
At present, ‘Learning Outcomes’, which is about two years old, has tie-ups with schools in Pune, but is venturing into partnerships with schools in Bangalore and Mumbai.
