Avanti Learning Centers

About Avanti Learning Centers

Avanti is an award winning social enterprise established by IIT alumni in 2010 to provide an affordable, high-quality education to disadvantaged students aspiring to study at India’s top colleges. At present, we have 80 full-time employees and 300 volunteers, and support over 1200 high-school students in 12 locations across India.

Avanti’s work is helping create a dramatic shift in how students learn Math and Science. We implement a pedagogy called Peer Instruction that reduces teacher dependence and enables collaborative learning. Students consume lecture content in the form of recorded videos and reading material before attending class. In place of conventional lectures, classroom time is used to get students to work collaboratively on problem sets and clarify doubts by interacting with subject experts. Over the past 2 years, we have shown that our students outperform the most expensive after-school programs in the country at less than one-fourth the cost.

Avanti is a PanIIT Alumni initiative, winner of Stanford BASES 2010 and recipient of the Echoing Green, Ashoka and Draper Richards Kaplan Fellowships for our work in reducing education inequity. Our co-founder was nominated to the Forbes 2014 List of 30 under 30 social entrepreneurs. Our last investment round was led by the Pearson Affordable Learning Fund. Our academic board is chaired by Prof. Eric Mazur, Dean of Applied Physics at Harvard University and world-renowned expert in Peer Instruction.