Udhyam Shiksha

Unlocking student agency and human potential

As the youngest country with just 10% formal employment, a radical shift in mindsets is needed to realise youth potential. Our programme develops entrepreneurial mindsets using experiential pedagogy and real-world projects, facilitated by government school teachers in resource-constrained environments. Through this journey, students build transformative agency and learn to thrive in complexities.

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HundrED 2025

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Overview

HundrED has selected this innovation to

HundrED Global Collection 2025

Web presence

2017

Established

2.9M

Children

1

Countries

Target group

Students upper

Updated

May 2024

For individual students, the shifts in mindsets enable them to be agentic and capable, helping them to make independent and informed decisions related to personal growth, choice of employment and choice of education. At the systematic level, we seek to push the education system to become more trusting of student agency, by focusing on experiential and participatory learning in the real world.

About the innovation

Why did you create this innovation?

India’s youth instead of pursuing their true potential spends most of their lives preparing for examinations with selection rates of less than 1%. This leads to high inequity and limited pathways for growth. This innovation was created for youth from underserved communities to be more agentic and economically productive, fostering their agency and potential.

What does your innovation look like in practice?

Udhyam Shiksha fosters entrepreneurial mindsets in youth through a 4-year curriculum facilitated by teachers at scale in government schools. Each year offers a unique real world project opportunity to students.
Across all grades, students select project ideas based on their interests and contextually relevant opportunities. These projects are aligned towards social innovation, community concerns or local economic challenges.
All entrepreneurial projects are done in teams with robust real world engagement. Students conduct local need assessment, market research, build prototypes, interview customers, speak with mentors, take expert guidance, and present their solutions.
Throughout their learning journey, students consistently reflect on their mindsets and competencies in collaboration with each other.
These projects are accomplished using minimal resources and technology to prepare students for the out of class real world actions.

How has it been spreading?

Over the last 7 years our programme has seen increasing interest and adoption by governments, educators and other non profits.
We are now in 12 states across 8300 government schools and institutions.
Entrepreneurship mentors and institutional volunteers across India play a pivotal role in students’ journeys. Our alumni have formed a student-led community to encourage other young entrepreneurs. Funders and successful entrepreneurs are also contributing to this journey financially.
Researchers from McGill University have established a lab in collaboration with Udhyam to understand youth agency and entrepreneurial mindsets more deeply in India. Findings of this longitudinal research will be used for policy reforms.
We aspire to reach 20 million students in the coming 2-3 years.

If I want to try it, what should I do?

Our curriculum, implementation process and MEL documents are all open source and have been adopted by 4+ organisations already. We encourage educators to read through those documents and reach out to us at shyam@udhyam.org. We engage with our ecosystems intently to help adapt our programme to their contextual needs. We fully assist in co-creating, piloting and implementing the programme.

Impact & scalability

HundrED Academy Reviews

Wow! What a phenomenal, well-developed, and comprehensive program that is making a real impact and teaching the skills we desperately need our youth to be learning. This innovation has tremendous potential for impact in the areas needed most.

Udhyam Shiksha's free, adaptable curriculum and success in government schools show promise for growth. Collaboration with educators and volunteers helps spread the program further.

- Academy member

Academy review results

Impact

Scalability

Exceptional

High

Moderate

Limited

Insufficient

Exceptional

High

Moderate

Limited

Insufficient

Implementation steps

Contextualize and adapt the open source curricula.

Modify our entrepreneurial mindsets curriculum according to contextual relevance and local needs. Integrate agency-focused and experiential pedagogies to inform classroom practice. Base the curriculum on principles of collaboration and real world engagement for a sustained period of 6 months.

Teacher training on experiential facilitation

Utilise our best practices for teacher professional development to identify master trainers/teachers/educators who will undergo the training modules, focused on participatory pedagogies. Create learning circles and communities of practice for continuous practitioner support. Establish quality control protocols for implementation of the programme.

Tools for measurement and learning

Utilise our existing toolkit for large scale assessment. Develop qualitative fieldwork and interview protocols for on-ground observations of classroom practice and student journeys. Monitor overall program health through large scale data collection of curriculum completion, project stages, & fieldwork observations across settings. Track student shifts in mindsets pre- and post-program intervention against a comparison or a control group along with measures of life outcomes longitudinally.

Provide student nudges and scaffold student participation

Establish standard practice for continued engagement with students over the course of the program depending on needs. Incorporate student incentivization through consistent and innovative nudges and multiple touchpoints over the course of the programme. Set up technological support and scaffold the journey for mentoring students across all project stages.

Provide opportunities for student showcase

Organise events and opportunities for students to practice critical competencies of communication, collaboration and creative thinking by presenting their work to a wider audience of local communities, industry experts, entrepreneurs and government officials. This enables students to view themselves as capable, self-efficacious and agentic. Success stories highlighted in the media incentivizes student practice and engagement.

Evaluate impact, gather insights, and scale

Use insights generated from long-term analysis to iteratively refine curriculum and pedagogy based on the principles of design-based research. Large scale evaluations by reputed third-party organisations and scholars can be used to establish programme validity and overall impact. Longitudinal tracking of students till they reach their age of work and employment is crucial to improve the programme.