Smita Deorah, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of LEAD, was recognized with the ‘Power of Women (POW!) 2022’ award
MUMBAI, Apr 6 (The CONNECT) - Smita Deorah, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of LEAD (Leadership Boulevard Private Limited), India’s first School EdTech unicorn, was recognized with the ‘Power of Women (POW!) 2022’ award at the ASU+GSV summit, an annual event that brings together global leaders who are transforming the future of education and work.
Smita is the only leader from India to win the prestigious POW award this year.
The POW awards ceremony was held in San Diego, California earlier this week. The awards recognise female CEOs leading and achieving successful outcomes for companies at scale in the learning and talent technology sectors.
LEAD is India’s largest School EdTech platform and serves over 1.6 million students across 4,000+ schools. LEAD was started in 2012 with a mission to transform school education in India. It combines technology, deeply researched curriculum and pedagogy into an integrated system of teaching and learning, thus improving student learning outcomes and teacher performance in schools across the country.
Smita has been instrumental in developing the LEAD integrated system with extensive benchmarking with the best education systems in the world and contextualizing them for the unique needs of affordable schools in India. Her goal is to bring quality learning to underserved communities and bridge the gap between the top high-fee schools and affordable private schools, so that every child can be nurtured to his or her true potential. With its vision of making excellent education accessible and affordable for everyone, LEAD aims to make a difference to the lives of 26 million school students across 65,000 schools by 2026.
Before co-founding LEAD, Smita founded Sparsh, a non-profit working with the Govt. of Maharashtra in pre-schools in Mumbai. She implemented a pre-school in a box solution in 16 pre-schools around Mumbai to get students school ready and thereby reduce dropouts and low attainment. Before that, Smita spent 9 years in Procter & Gamble Singapore and India as a leader in Finance, Treasury and Strategy.
LEAD is India’s largest School EdTech company and is promoted by Leadership Boulevard Private Limited. LEAD was founded in 2012 by Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah, with the mission to transform school education in India. It combines deeply researched curriculum and pedagogy with technology to deliver an integrated system of teaching and learning that improves student learning outcomes and teacher performance in 4000+ schools across India. LEAD’s integrated solutions are available to schools in 400+ towns and cities across India, reaching 1.6 million+ students and empowering over 25,000 teachers. LEAD Powered Schools provide children with international standard education and national-level exposure for all-round growth, with a focus on helping them succeed in life.
