Introducing Shunya, Inc - a mission & purpose

Behind every Story, is a deeper Story

Circa Sept. 2016, after the loss of my first daughter, Eshna in less than 36 hours, a realization stuck me, and I captured it like this.

Over the next few months, I started giving car lifts to children on their way to school. Partly in an effort to fill the sudden void in our life. These were children across low access, marginalized socio-economic backgrounds, that would often ask for lift to any two wheeler vehicle passing by.

These kids always existed, but I suddenly started observing them. Strangely they always found it amusing(and even mentioned so on a few occasions) that a woman, in a car stopped to give them lift to the school. Over many such the subsequent car rides, all these distinct children, started to become a natural part of me. During these car rides, I learnt that about the public schools(and that they in-fact liked going to school and thought positively of their teachers, some of them even remarking that their favorite subjects were Maths and Science - something I had not expected to hear). During this time I also learnt how parts of their socio-economic background were connected in simple, but invisible ways that the market had not noticed as a holistic solution. It was a small sample set and a small window to their world, but just thinking of the car ride that I would take with these strangers filled me with enough courage for the first 2 weeks after Eshna's loss. (I resumed work in a week - partly to shift the focal point on work)

Between all this, I did occasional story telling for kids in our community, and in limited ways helped the kids of our support staff. Then came a BIG BANG in Jan 2019, when I first opened up about those 15 months after her loss and the real beauty her loss left in our lifes. This talk about her legacy is most sacred part of our lives.

Over the course of the year, this experience teared me more, and I kept questioning about the legacy of my work. This incidentally started when a Sr. leader casually asked me about my value systems, to which I effortlessly replied "fulfilment, people and an insanely deep need to learn & evolve". It was the first time I actually wrote, or reflected at how much odds I was wrt what I wanted more from life, and what I wanted to build.

Then came Dec 2019, when I took a trek to Sandakphu-Phalut and met two warm girls. As I left that place, a part of me, din't come back.

I started to question if one could be successful, but also do something professionally that aligns with the larger purpose, meaning & fulfillment. And that's when all the experiences of the past started coming back to me. Every action in me became more purposeful, more spirited, compassionate, yet pragmatic - as if it was trying to find something between the fogginess of trying to find something larger than life itself - and moments of absolute clarity .

I went back to my notes (I kept a diary with insane details during the first 6 months after Eshna's loss, partly to self-heal) and here's what I connected from the conversations in the past. Because of poor quality and low access to water, bad hygiene and far off non-commutable geo dispersed areas - their learning outcomes differed substantially. This was one major reason for absenteeism, not the quality of education, alone per se. This conversation stuck me when I was listening to Robert F Smith on one of my commute, where he recalled how much difference just the distance from school made to his personal journey. Interested and intrigued, I reached to a friend who's working with kids in Jharkhand(a for profit impactful Business model, that is re-thinking frugal innovation) - and he confirmed not only this, but also gave me more interesting insights about their world, aspirations and limitations. This followed a lot more interesting conversations spanning schools, parents, teachers, NGO's working on Education in marginalized socio-economic backgrounds, and others working on empowering communities to solve their own problems. I didn't stop there. I went to understand how a man taught a full community in Brazil to read and write in 45 days, and how a man is instilling the love for science in low income public schools, and many more of these uniquely beautiful journeys.

I came to one conclusion - that focussing on content alone was much like bringing a horse to the river - you can't make it drink. And from there began an Odyssey to define the problem space and the purpose of what I would build.

When I got the conviction that not only was I ready, but also that this was NOT an emotional decision that would chisel off a slow death - I narrowed down the space I wanted to leave impact on and this became the purpose of Shunya, Inc.

Introducing Shunya - the purpose & vision manifests foreground

Shunya derives from ?ūnyatā(Sanskrit) - that "all things are empty of intrinsic existence and nature". 

Shunya is a process to condition a state of emptiness, a fresh perspective to look critically at everyday things around us, to reflect and learn by self-inquiry. It is to draw connections about what we don’t know from what we know, and build a base of knowledge from that as a starting point. 

What does Shunya work on ?

The premise is - the 4450 EdTech startups in India are mostly built for children who have English as a first/Second language. And there is a big gap, when you dig deeper into the learning outcomes of this vastly under-served segment. While we say Edtech - there is hardly any differentiating tech in the current scope of solutions, while the push has been to more content, bigger content, live classes etc. Online doesn't have to mean "mode" of delivery alone. It has to be at least as good or more as the real world to be able to differentiate and supplement the real world of learning.

Neither is Language "understanding" and translating the content to vernacular., alone the problem What's worse, the current solutions alienate the one person that knows the most about a child.

Closing the aspiration gap in learning with an intuitive human centered Technology at scale.

Ping 1:1 to know more.

What are we looking for the team ?

1. Infectious & Relentless passion & very very high integrity. You do what you say, you will.
2. Commitment & responsibility for the outcomes that you will be jointly responsible for.
3. Humility to un-learn and re-learn from each other

Let's make tomorrow, today !