Master to 2 Crore Students

Bill Gates made his children listen to his lessons. LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner interviewed him. A business tycoon like Ratan Tata is excited to work with him. Salman Khan… Founder of the world’s largest online school “Khan Academy”. More than 2 Crore students are studying  for free inside this Internet University…!

“Two crore people studying because of one man is not a small thing. I wish to be part of that journey.” Business Tycoon Ratan Tata said in a meeting announcing his investment in the company. It is obvious to think that the company is a large business if Tata is investing. But Khan Academy is a free education portal. It includes lessons, practice sessions, quiz type questions for classes from first till Ph.D. Started 6 years back, the classroom has about 2 Crore customers. Thousands of teachers across the globe teach lessons.

Salman Khan is an American born of Indian descent. He is very smart right from his childhood. Instead of ranks, he focused more on learning. He doesn’t have any competition in school for talent related subjects like Maths, Sciences. But he used to feel bore with Subjects that require to memorize. As a result, even though he was known to be smart, he never was a ranker.

Khan attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating with Bachelor of Science degrees in mathematics, electrical engineering, and computer science. Later got his Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science. He got many job offers by then. He felt to do job after two years. So he completed his  MBA from Harvard Business School within those two years.

After completing his MBA, he joined as a financial analyst in the famous financial company “Hedge Funds”. Even though most of his colleagues are university level toppers, he observed that they faced difficulty to do a financial statement. To help his current colleagues and any new joinees in the future, he took some time out in office and recorded his teachings and shared with his colleagues. These videos landed with the CEO. Khan feared that he would be offended for wasting office time to record such videos. But CEO encouraged him by saying “You have started a new culture in Hedge Funds. Please continue the same”. This encouragement increased the self confidence in Khan.

Khan’s cousin. Nadia, leaved in another state. She was having trouble in Maths. Khan had a passion for Maths his whole life. Khan began tutoring his cousin one hour daily over the internet using Yahoo Doodle notepad. Soon word got around the family that “free tutoring” was going on, and Khan found myself working on the phone with about 15 cousins. Since it was getting difficult to teach so many at once, Khan felt Youtube as the right platform. He recorded few lessons every day and uploaded them to Youtube. And soon many people (thousands) who were not his cousins were also watching. He found interest in teaching than the job, so he resigned to Hedge Funds. He started online portal “Khan Academy” to bring all kinds of lessons from elementary school to MBBS.

Currently, Khan Academy website has 5000 courses in 65 languages like Hindi, Urdu, Malayalam, Bengali, Chinese, etc. All subjects have practice sessions along with quiz competitions.

Forbes estimates that if the Academy has been run for Money, Salman Khan would be among the Billionaires of the World. But Khan’s mission is to provide a free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. For locations in the countries of Africa and Asia where the internet is not available , he supplied televisions and sends his website videos regularly in the form of CDs.

Khan Academy was spread so wide.. World’s richest Bill Gates claimed that he made his children listen Khan Academy lessons. Philanthropists like Bill Gates, Carlos Slim, Ratan Tata and Google have invested crores of rupees to give free education to all through Khan Academy. When asked about fee from students, Khan says that “Our students success is our Tuytional”.