It’s Not Just About Knowing Your Abc

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: I would like to be known as a teacher rather than an entrepreneur,” says Geetha Narayanan, founder-director of Mallya Aditi International School and Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in Bangalore. In 1982, when Geetha, along with five other like-minded friends founded the Ujwal Trust, her only experience was 10 years of teaching in different schools in Bangalore. However, she had a vision — to provide high-value education that is free from the clutches of a conventional teaching system.

With oodles of spirit and no entrepreneurial skills, Geetha, along with her friends — Anne Warrior, Tara Chandavarkar, Valli Muthaiah, Latha Jaganathan and Jyotsna Bhandarkar — kickstarted the journey towards educational excellence and thus was born Aditi International School which today has become a renowned educational institution in the country.

“In 1984, we started the school out of a small house with Rs 1,000 as investment, a whole bag of ideas and lot of hard work,” says Geetha. The school functioned out of a shed till 1994 when Vijay Mallya donated money for the building and it was renamed Mallya Aditi International School.

Geetha Narayanan

During this period Geetha worked closely with Anne Warrior in building a vision and translating it into a viable active working school. One of the key achievements for her as the founder-director includes the setting up of a fully-integrated Learning Lab that caters to the emotional and learning needs of all students. It is a life-skills programme that focuses on the increasing need for character and value education and a programme called DOD that focuses on the development of skills in areas other than academics—this includes leadership and outward-bound experiential learning.

Once the flagship venture started running smoothly, Geetha founded Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology in 1996 along with Poonam Bir Kasturi, well-known industrial designer. “The idea was to start an institution which offers art, design and technology training under one roof.’’ Today Srishti is the only college in India offering all three courses, she says.

The undergraduate programmes offered in Srishti focus on India, the needs of its people—both rural and urban —with special emphasis on ecology, health and education. ICICI Bank provided financial support to start Srishti, Geetha remembers gratefully, and the school is moving to a new campus shortly.

Managing this new project did not, however, diminish Geetha’s interest in her other ventures. In 2003, she started the Drushya Kallika Kendras with Anita Reddy, a social activist who works in the area of housing, rights and crafts. The venture also has the support of the Ramanarpanam Trust. The Project Drushya initiative is one aimed at providing the opportunity of high- value intensive learning to Bangalore’s urban slum kids. It has a unique learning programme that will help to learn quickly and effectively. ’’Building institutions has taken up all my time. In all of the above I have been the key player in terms of idea creation, value creation and development of working business models to sustain the innovations.’’

So what were the challenges faced by Geetha down the years? Challenges continue even today, she says. In the beginning, the challenge for Aditi school was one of credibility. Today there is the challenge to keep the institution out of large, vested interests. There is always the challenge of sustainability of value through innovation and use of technology. Personally, Geetha is on the verge of completing her doctoral research on her pet topic, education. It is with Sheffiel Hallam University in the United Kingdom and the research is on the impact of globalisation and technology on the growth and development of educational institutions in India.

Geetha is also an advisor to a National Science Foundation project on learning environments for young children being developed at the Media Lab MIT, USA, and teaches in many universities both in the UK and in the US. Looking into the future, she wants to deliver more value in education for less money. “I want to set up a facility based on the ‘Principle of Commons’, which, along with whatever it provides, could be shared by many schools in the country. She does not believe in the mushrooming of international schools in the country which charges hefty fees. “A school is not a theme park,” she stresses. She has a good collection of antiques and art. But about her hobbies she says, “My passion is both technology and media. I am interested in new and old media and feel I will spend much time now learning how to work in this field. I read a lot of everything and have an extensive personal library.’’