Meet Sridhar Vembu, the billionaire who turns schoolmaster for rural kids in Tamil Nadu

Chennai: Silicon Valley star Sridhar Vembu has traded his business-class life for a humbler yet crucial role as a Tamil Nadu teacher. For the locals of Mathalamparai village in Tamil Nadu, Vembu is filling the role of the teacher who moves around the village in a bicycle and ensures that the rural kids are getting access to proper education.

Vembu initially began his educational venture started six months ago as home tuition for three children. He would spend 3-4 hours each day in the classes. Now, the project is starting to expand as many as 4 teachers are needed to teach the students mostly belonging to families of farm labourers. The billionaire now says that he is looking to take his "lockdown experiment" to the next level.

Vembu doesn't believe in conventional education and has come up with a new model which doesn't only place emphasis on degrees or certificates. He has plans to set up "a rural school start-up" that is different from a conventional schooling system.

The motive behind this school, Vembu says, is to provide free education as well as food to the children. For now, Vembu's school will not seek affiliation with any conventional educational board. While managing Zoho University, he has successfully helped many Class 10, 11 and 12 dropouts to turn into IT professionals. A truly impressive feat!

Some of his former students have even gone on to work in his firm. Vembu's school classifies children based on what they know rather than putting them in separate classes as per their age.

However, Vembu's task has been made a bit difficult by the coronavirus-induced lockdown. Many of the students could not attend online classes as they did not have smartphones.

He currently conducts open-air classes for around 254 students with social distancing. Some of the students, he noted, have no food before coming to school.

To facilitate the process of learning, which, frankly, is difficult on an empty stomach, the 'school' provides two meals a day, and snacks around 4.30 pm before children are sent home.

One of the major challenges he has faced until now is retaining the dropouts of students in the village. Alcoholism, he shares is another big problem.

The scarcity of teachers in the village, Vembu says, is another big challenge. Most teachers travel from town which is situated at least 30-40 km away. 

Vembu stresses the requirement of accomodating the non-traditional learners in the system.

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