Ola, one of India’s leading mobile apps for personal transportation, has announced it’s free after school programme “Gurukul” in association with Avanti Learning Centres to empower children of drivers on its platform to perform better in board exams. The first batch of Ola Gurukul will have 500 children studying in the ninth and 10th Standard and will be taught at Avanti’s Learning Centres in Mumbai. The programme will be extended to other cities such as Bengaluru, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad shortly and aims to get over 5000 children registered by the end of the year from first – 12th Standard. Drivers will have to register their children at the nearest Avanti Learning Centre to be a part of the programme. Apart from bearing all the expenses of the programme for the first three months, Ola also plans to provide free stationery, books, course material to top performing children.
Pranay Jivrajka, chief operating officer, Ola said, “A lot of these kids do not receive proper support after school as both their parents work leaving nobody else to coach them. Avanti Learning Centres have done brilliant work over the past few years and we hope together we can equip far more kids to perform better at school. We have always believed in bettering not just driver income but also their lifestyles and Gurukul takes a big leap in that road by offering better education to their children.”
Krishna Ramkumar, co-founder, Avanti said, “Avanti’s model was designed to support quality education at scale. Ola’s commitment to investing in their driver partners makes this a perfect partnership to take quality education to the masses.”
The programme comes as a valuable addition to Ola’s recent string of driver initiatives, aimed at bettering the lives and social stature of driver entrepreneurs attached on its platform. Having already started programmes such as Ola Pragati to provide tailor-made loans for driver entrepreneurs, Ola Premier League to reward well performing drivers, Ola Star to provide insurance, employment support for driver families, Ola now plans to empower driver children to perform on par with well coached children.