BANGALORE: Ola, India’s leading mobile app for personal transportation, announced it’s free after school program “Gurukul” in association with Avanti Learning Centres to empower the children of its drivers to perform better in board exams. The announcement comes on the occasion of Teachers’ Day when the whole of India celebrates the birthday of ex-president S. Radhakrishnan, a beloved teacher himself.

The first batch of Ola Gurukul will have 500 children studying in the 9th & 10th STD and will be taught at Avanti’s Learning Centres in Mumbai. The program will be extended to other cities such as Bangalore, Delhi, Chennai, Hyderabad & shortly and aims to get over 5000 children registered by the end of the year from 1 – 12th STD. Drivers will have to register their children at the nearest Avanti Learning Centre to be a part of the program.  Apart from being bearing all the expenses of the program for the first 3 months, Ola also plans to provide free stationery, books, course material to top performing children.

Pranay Jivrajka, Chief Operating Officer at 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 program comes as a valuable addition to Ola’s recent string of driver initiatives, aimed at bettering the lives & social stature of driver entrepreneurs attached on its platform. Having already started programs 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.
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