Azeez Gupta

Azeez Gupta is transforming early childhood education in India by leveraging technology, behavioral science, and government partnerships to reimagine how millions of children receive foundational learning. Through Rocket Learning, he is embedding early education within India’s public systems, equipping teachers and parents with AI-powered tools and science-backed curricula to ensure that every child, regardless of background, receives the cognitive stimulation they need to thrive. Azeez is demonstrating that systemic change in education begins in the earliest years and is orchestrating reforms in early childhood education in India.

Early childhood education (ECE) in India has long been overlooked, treated as an afterthought rather than a critical foundation for lifelong learning. While India has one of the world’s largest public preschool networks (1.4 million government-run daycare centres known as Anganwadis), these centres have historically focused on nutrition and healthcare, with little emphasis on structured learning. Anganwadi workers, essential community caregivers, are often untrained in early learning methods and lack the resources to support cognitive development.

Rocket Learning is redefining early childhood education through a three-pronged approach: redefining the role of Anganwadi workers, designing structured early learning curricula, and creating digital learning support systems for parents and caregivers. By embedding structured learning into daily routines, Rocket Learning ensures that Anganwadi workers move beyond their traditional caregiving roles and become facilitators of cognitive development. The organization has designed simple, evidence-based curricula that integrate seamlessly into existing government structures, ensuring that early learning activities are not just accessible but also scalable. To further drive engagement, Rocket Learning has developed digital learning communities for Anganwadi workers and parents, using WhatsApp and AI-enabled tools to deliver bite-sized, science-backed activities that require no additional materials. These digital networks foster peer learning, motivation, and real-time feedback, transforming how caregivers engage with children’s development. Simultaneously, Rocket Learning is influencing national and state-level policies, ensuring that early childhood education is prioritized in government budgets and curricula. By combining grassroots engagement with systems change, Azeez is creating a scalable, sustainable model for early learning that is set to reach 50% of India’s vulnerable preschoolers by 2029.

Despite overwhelming evidence that 85% of brain development occurs before the age of six, India has historically under-invested in early childhood education. Of the 60 million children under six from low-income communities, the vast majority enter primary school without foundational cognitive and socio-emotional skills. This early disadvantage compounds over time and children who start later often stay behind, leading to poor educational outcomes and limited economic mobility. The issue of lack of quality Early Childhood Development shows up in dismal educational outcomes with 43% of the children from low-income backgrounds being unable to recognise alphabets and 35% of them being unable to recognise numbers in grade 1.

Public pre-schooling in India is primarily delivered through Anganwadis, which were originally designed to provide nutritional support rather than education. As a result, learning is often absent from their mandate, and Anganwadi workers who are central to the system are trained primarily as caregivers rather than educators. Parents, many of whom have limited formal education, often do not realize that they play a crucial role in their child’s early learning. Post-pandemic, parental disengagement has increased further, with many assuming that education begins only when a child enters primary school.

Meanwhile, with the proliferation of smartphone access, nearly 70% of Indian households now own one. There have been few structured approaches to integrating digital tools into early learning. Without clear engagement models and the right support systems, technology alone is not enough to create meaningful educational impact.

To address these gaps, Azeez co-founded Rocket Learning in 2020, leveraging technology and behavioral science to embed early learning within India’s public education system. The platform’s behavioral nudges and gamified engagement features help sustain participation, ensuring that learning becomes a habit rather than an occasional activity. Additionally, Rocket Learning has worked with policymakers to institutionalize early childhood education, securing government partnerships to scale its impact and integrate structured learning into Anganwadi centers nationwide.

Azeez’s approach focuses on three key areas: strengthening the role of Anganwadi workers, developing structured early learning curricula, and leveraging digital tools to engage parents and communities. At the grassroots level, Rocket Learning equips Anganwadi workers with structured, research-backed early learning activities, shifting their role from caregivers to educators. At the curriculum level, the organization co-develops government-approved preschool curricula that translate cutting-edge learning science into simple, visual, and activity-based frameworks. Finally, Rocket Learning integrates these efforts with a digital learning support system, where AI-powered WhatsApp communities foster engagement, provide habit-building nudges, and connect parents with educators. This three-tiered approach ensures that early childhood education is institutionalized, scalable, and deeply embedded in India’s public education framework.

Azeez’s approach is both systemic and scalable. Azeez operates at multiple levels - grassroots level, operational level, and policy level - to ensure that early childhood education is prioritized and institutionalized across the system. At the grassroots level, Rocket Learning engages Anganwadi workers and parents through digital learning communities, providing them with structured, research-backed early learning activities. Rocket Learning equips Anganwadi workers and parents with simple, engaging, and scientifically designed learning activities delivered through WhatsApp. These activities take just 15-20 minutes a day and use everyday materials, making them easy to integrate into daily life. More than just content, Rocket Learning’s platform creates digital communities where parents support each other, share best practices, and receive encouragement, turning early learning into a social movement. At the operational level, the organization partners with state governments to integrate its programs within existing public education structures, ensuring large-scale adoption and implementation. At the policy level, Azeez has embedded Rocket Learning within India’s education policymaking. The organization was a key technical partner in India’s first national early childhood education policy, “Poshan Bhi, Padhai Bhi” (Not Just Nutrition, But Education Too), advocating for budgetary allocations and systemic reforms that embed early learning into India’s public education framework.

An independent evaluation by J-PAL between 2021 and 2023 validated Rocket Learning’s impact, showing that its refined model improved cognitive abilities of children enrolled in Anganwadis by 0.2 standard deviations over five months, with significant gains in both mathematics (0.217σ) and language (0.154σ) outcomes. The study also found that the intervention nearly tripled parental engagement and quadrupled teacher participation in early learning activities, confirming the model’s ability to transform stakeholder behaviour at scale. With a per-child cost of just $1.17, Rocket Learning is also one of the most cost-effective early childhood interventions in the Global South.

To sustain impact at scale, Azeez has embedded Rocket Learning within India’s education policymaking. The organization was a key technical partner in India’s first national early childhood education policy, “Poshan Bhi, Padhai Bhi” (Not Just Nutrition, But Education Too), which allocated an additional $150 million to integrate structured learning into Anganwadis. Rocket Learning also co-developed Adharshila and Navchetana, India’s first government-approved curricula for preschoolers and children under three, translating the latest research in learning science into simple, visual weekly activity calendars. Every activity includes guidance on inclusion and accessibility, ensuring that children with disabilities are equally served.

Rocket Learning has also pioneered the use of AI in early education, developing an AI-driven virtual coach that provides personalized habit-building recommendations for Anganwadi workers and parents. The platform tracks engagement in real time, using behavioural nudges, gamification, and digital report cards to sustain motivation. These interventions have doubled the time that caregivers spend on structured learning activities, significantly improving children’s school readiness.

By integrating these innovations within public systems, Rocket Learning is ensuring that early childhood education is not just an intervention but a fundamental part of India’s education landscape.

Since launching in 2020, Rocket Learning has rapidly scaled its reach and impact, engaging over 250,000 Anganwadi workers and benefiting more than 3 million children across 10 states. By embedding its AI-powered digital learning communities within government systems, Rocket Learning has secured formal partnerships with 10 state governments, ensuring its approach is institutionalized rather than remaining a standalone intervention. Supported by a strong funding base including grants from Google.org, Central Square Foundation, and USAID. Rocket Learning raised ₹54 crore ($6.5 million) in the last fiscal year, enabling it to sustain and expand its initiatives. Over the next three years, Azeez aims to expand Rocket Learning’s reach to cover 50% of India’s vulnerable preschoolers by 2029, deepen AI-driven engagement models for educators and parents, and further influence state and national policies to embed early learning as a core government priority. Unlike other organizations working in early education, which focus on a particular stakeholder like parents or teachers, Rocket Learning is not just delivering content or training teachers, it is driving a systemic shift by ensuring that foundational learning is integrated into public education structures at scale.

Azeez Gupta’s journey into social impact began in childhood, shaped by the values of service and optimism that defined his family. Raised in the rural hinterlands of Punjab, in small towns like Jalandhar and Ropar, Azeez grew up watching his parents and grandparents serve as civil servants, tirelessly working to solve the problems of those who lined up outside their home-offices every day. Though he enjoyed the privileges of a middle-class upbringing, his daily exposure to deep-rooted inequalities left a lasting impression. His parents instilled in him that success was not measured in wealth but in the impact one had on others, an ethos that shaped Azeez’s lifelong commitment to public service.

His first encounter with the realities of educational inequity came at the age of fourteen when he volunteered as a teaching assistant for underprivileged students in his school’s afternoon program. Assigned to Grades 4 and 5, he was shocked that most children could barely read a single paragraph of a simple story.

This realization ignited his desire to take action. In high school, Azeez founded Samvedna, a small NGO that provided remedial tutoring in government schools. With modest funding from family and friends, the initiative helped children grasp basic literacy and numeracy skills. Though the impact was difficult to quantify in the short term, he saw firsthand the joy and confidence children gained when they finally understood something they had struggled with. This experience cemented his belief that learning was the most powerful tool for change.

After graduating from IIT Delhi, Azeez joined McKinsey, where he worked on both business strategy and global development projects. As part of the McKinsey team advising Ashoka on the Globalizer program, he gained a deeper understanding of how to scale social impact at a systemic level. However, he longed for a more direct way to drive change. This led him to Pratham - one of India’s largest non-profits focused on improving literacy, numeracy, and workforce readiness for underserved communities - where he spent three years leading vocational training programs and helping young adults develop employable skills. Yet, as he worked to bridge the gap between education and employment, another realization dawned on him. By the time these young people reached skill-training programs, it was often too late to undo the foundational gaps in their learning. No six-month training could compensate for what had been lost in the first six years of their lives.

Determined to tackle this issue at its root, Azeez pursued an MBA at Harvard Business School, where he delved into social enterprise development, and spent time at Harvard Graduate School of Education learning about education policy, and early childhood development. While trying to understand the root of the problem, he stumbled upon the first Annual Status on Education Report (ASER) report on learning outcomes in India, which revealed that nearly half of all fifth graders in India could not read a simple sentence. The injustice was stark: children from low-income families were falling behind before they even had a say in their future. Returning to India, Azeez co-founded Rocket Learning to ensure that every child, regardless of background, had access to early cognitive stimulation and foundational learning.

Today, as both a social entrepreneur and a father to a young child, Azeez’s mission has taken on even greater personal significance. He sees Rocket Learning as more than an organization; he sees it as an effort to fundamentally shift how India values and invests in its youngest learners. By combining technology, behavioural science, and government partnerships, he is working to ensure that millions of children in India get the strong start they deserve, proving that true change begins in the earliest years of life.