Nasscom Don

Harish Mehta is a COEP alumnus, Electrical 1972 batch. He went to the US to do his MS in Control Systems. His room partner, a Sardarji who had done his BS from the US, was doing his MS in Computer Science. He brainwashed Harish into dropping out of Control Systems and getting into Computer Science. … Read more

Work Hard Be Nice

The Knowledge is Power Program, commonly known as KIPP, is a network of free open-enrollment college-preparatory schools in low income communities throughout the United States. Their motto – Work Hard. Be Nice. I think we can look at that as a positioning statement for our school. KIPP schools work from 8 to 8. Had asked … Read more

What is not Marketing

When we were hunter gatherers, we had limited needs. All that we got was used for satisfying our own needs and possibly our immediate family members. Then agriculture happened – and our nomadic life got replaced with village life. That was around the time we realised that all us people need not be involved in … Read more

Waldorf Schools

Pune’s Waldorf School, Swadha, was started by Shefali in 2012. One of the main ways of marketing the school is through parent presentations. I attended one recently along with 8 other parents. Most of them had heard about the school through a friend. Almost all of them had visited the School website – swadhaschool.org. There … Read more

From dropouts to Entrepreneurs

Had been hearing about Vigyan Ashram a lot – so last week team Bulls Eye Pune decided that we must spend half a day there. We got in touch with the school principal, Anand Gosavi, who said that we can visit any weekday – so we made the 2 hour journey to Pabal. Pabal can … Read more

US Schooling System

Rajesh Rengan, who stays in Boston, visited the school and interacted with teachers and students of 1st to 4th. Made valiant efforts to speak in his American accented Hindi. Rajesh talked about the differences in the education system in the US and in India. Most students enter schooling late in the US. As a result, … Read more

Toy Maker

Tidbits about Arvind Gupta and other great teachers. Arvind’s father was an illiterate in a small town in UP. He ensured that his four children received a good education. He sent all of them to the best convent school in his town. Arvind was a bright student – but given his family background, he could … Read more

The Old Men Speaketh

Josephites visit PTP, 29 Dec, 2018 The Joseph gang landed up on Saturday for a visit to Peepal Tree School, Pune. Vinod Nair was the first to come, followed by Rohitesh, Gautam and Amarjeet. The trio of Rex, Rajiv and Balbir landed up 45 minutes later. The gang trooped into different classrooms to spend about … Read more

The Inventor Professor

Attended a session by Dipankar (he insists on just using the first name). Dipankar is an interesting combination of academia and entrepreneria – he is a Professor at IIT Bombay, a place where he also did his B.Tech before going to Rice Univ for his doctorate in physics. He has been entrepreneurial since his student … Read more

Tech in Classroom

Ajay is a COEP Electrical batch of 1990. He joined Tata Electric, immediately after campus. There he was looking after testing of power plant equipment. Later on he was deputed on a project that Siemens was doing for NTPC in Dadri, where he represented Tata Electric. He continued to be in charge of testing of … Read more