Roman Saini cracked his medical entrance exam at the tender age of 16 and got admission in AIIMS. Later at the age of 22, he cleared civil services entrance exam to become an IAS officer.
Now after giving service as an assistant collector for two years in Jabalpur, he left his job to become an E-tutor.
He may neither earn like a doctor or wield clout like a babu but to pursue his passion, he teaches students for free.
The thirst to serve the country made this 24-year-old boy leave his lucrative job.
On January 10, Saini wrote, “In 2011, Gaurav Munjal, whom I have known since school as the closest friend, called and spoke about his new idea ‘Unacademy’ which he had started on YouTube by posting a bunch of videos.”
“He (Munjal) had a vision of free education – and he asked me to join him. Four years later, ‘Unacademy’ is now India’s one of the largest YouTube channels with 1.1 crore lessons delivered and over 5 Lakh students benefited,” he said.
“For him, it meant that he would have to step down as the CEO of Flatchat, for me sadly it meant resigning from the services. We are together joined by Hemesh Singh, who was also a Co-Founder at Flatchat, and Sachin Gupta as Co-Founders at Unacademy who was experimenting with his own education startup,” Saini wrote on his Facebook page.
After receiving crores of views, they decided to start a full-time online project. “We used all our experience we had gathered in the last four years, then with a four people team we created the platform,” said Munjal.
The response was astounding as many of their followers cracked the civil services exams. They also received over 1.1 crore views on their tutorial videos.
‘Unacademy,’ has over 21K Twitter followers and 64K Facebook likes.
Aman Mittal, a follower of ‘Unacademy’ achieved a high 20th rank last year. Thanking Saini and Munjal, Mittal posted on Facebook: “I came to know of the initiative (Unacademy) around 10 days before prelims. I remember watching the ecology and history lectures… I have to admit they were quite impressive. As I was preparing at home, I needed a constant source of motivation. So, after the mains, I watched his (Saini’s) videos and the TEDx talk later which was really inspiring.”
‘Unacademy’ aims to make free lectures available to those who can not afford much on tuition and also those who can not travel miles for coaching classes.
“Right now we have lessons on computer programming, economics, geography, biology, law and other subjects,” says Munjal.
“An IIT scientist takes care of science and technology, a French teacher is teaching French, and other passionate students of Unacademy are coming forward to create high-quality lessons. For instance, Prudhvi Tej who topped IIT-JEE 2011 is teaching physics.” Lessons are currently conducted in English, but plans are on to provide them in other Indian languages from February.
Saini concludes this by saying “What excites me is the idea of creating the impact because many people cannot access education or afford it,” said the former IAS officer. His only focus is to make quality education accessible for all.
India needs more people like Roman Saini who have the audacity to leave the job and pursue their dream.
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