Aditya Vishwanath

Aditya is building agency at scale for all stakeholders in the Indian education system – from students to teachers to the administration – to break the culture of telling children what to do, which essentially stifles society’s ability to adapt and hurts young people’s ability to join the workforce.

Today’s children are growing up in an increasingly interconnected world, with exciting technological innovations and advancements coupled with complex social problems. Inspired by the global maker movement, Aditya is challenging India’s reliance on rote learning by empowering every level of the education system to be able to take risks, think innovatively, and develop entrepreneurial mindsets with the final outcome of forming job creators and a highly employable youth population. Aditya strongly believes that right from their school years, young people should not be afraid to fail, and should have a thorough understanding of the world they live in, how it operates, and how their actions affect the world around them.

In 2019, he co-founded MakerGhat, starting with a space in a Bombay school that impacted 1,500 students within six months. The immediate success of this initiative led to the rapid expansion of MakerGhat, which now operates over 10,000 spaces across India, benefiting 1.8 million youth. These spaces serve as hubs for hands-on learning, fostering critical 21st-century skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication, thus addressing the employability crisis.

Aditya’s strategy is multifaceted, focusing on creating community-driven innovation through public-private partnerships, comprehensive teacher training, and continuous research. The teacher training model equips educators to become facilitators of self-directed learning, ensuring the sustainability and effectiveness of the spaces. Programs are contextualized to align with local curricula, integrating seamlessly into existing educational systems. For example, in Tamil Nadu, MakerGhat’s activities are directly linked to state board textbooks, encouraging a shift from rote memorization to experiential learning. By embedding his work deeply into the system and partnering with government bodies, Aditya aims to achieve systemic reform where every school has a space for making and every community fosters a culture of innovation and problem-solving.

The Indian education system has faced significant criticism for its reliance on rote learning, which has led to a generation of students who often struggle with employability despite years of formal education. This approach emphasizes memorization over critical thinking and practical skills, resulting in graduates who may excel in exams but lack the competencies needed in the workforce. Rote learning is characterized by memorizing information without deeply understanding the underlying concepts. This method is prevalent in Indian schools, where students are often taught to regurgitate facts for exams rather than engage with the material critically. This educational style not only stifles creativity but also hampers the development of problem-solving skills, leaving students ill-prepared for real-world challenges. In general, the culture itself is one where children are told exactly what to do and parents’ expectations of the education system are built on favoring memorization over understanding, with a strong focus on testing performance.

India is facing a profound job crisis, with 180 million youth expected to enter the workforce over the next 15 years, over half of whom come from marginalized backgrounds. Yet, the current education system leaves over 54% of Indian youth unemployable, and 37% of college graduates without jobs. Further statistics reveal that only 1 in 4 MBAs, 1 in 5 engineers, and 1 in 10 graduates are considered employable. This is largely due to a mismatch between the skills taught in academia and the skills required by industry.

Recognizing that individuals entering the workforce from the current education system are often underprepared, major companies have begun establishing their own trainee programs – yet these only reach the people they want to hire and invest in. Additionally, attempts by the Indian government have fallen short because of the focus on providing tools, which can easily be outdated, rather than overall capacity building. Other existing efforts toward creative and employable youth focus solely on post-school skill development, by which time the foundational learning is already set in rote learning and a lack of conceptual understanding.

Aditya drew inspiration from the global maker movement, but his research in the US showed him clearly that this movement was focused on white middle class affluent systems and needed a significant revamp to benefit a global south population. The core of his work and philosophy is the child at the center – who naturally seeks agency, finding their own path and so, Aditya’s work is about building the right conditions at every level. Aditya’s research also taught him that making – understood as hands on experimental learning with an arts, crafts, and tech focus – is a fundamental part of foundational learning. He is building a system that brings this core idea of agency through making to all actors of the system.

Aditya has a top-down and bottom-up strategy where he gives the teachers the confidence to move their power to the students. In their teacher training program, they help teachers become facilitators and enablers of learning environments that foster self-directed and hands-on learning and give the students a safe space to not be afraid of failure. This in turn allows the teachers to experience the joy of making as well.

A cornerstone of Aditya’s strategy with MakerGhat is the robust teacher training model, which is integral to the successful implementation and sustainability of the innovating spaces. Recognizing that teachers are pivotal in shaping students’ learning experiences, MakerGhat has developed a comprehensive training framework designed to equip educators with the skills and confidence needed to facilitate hands-on, experiential learning. The training model focuses on enhancing teachers’ understanding of the maker mindset, familiarizing them with the curriculum, and providing ongoing support to ensure the effective integration of maker activities into their teaching practices.

The teacher training model is built on three key pillars: capacity building, continuous professional development, and community engagement. Initially, teachers undergo intensive workshops that introduce them to the principles of maker education, covering a range of topics from basic maker activities to advanced problem-solving techniques. These workshops are designed to be highly interactive, allowing teachers to experience the activities first-hand and understand their pedagogical value. Following the initial training, MakerGhat provides continuous professional development through regular follow-up sessions, peer learning groups, and access to a resource-rich online platform. This ongoing support helps teachers refine their skills, share best practices, and stay updated with the latest educational innovations.

In addition to skill development, MakerGhat’s teacher training model emphasizes the importance of contextualizing the curriculum to meet local needs and standards. For instance, when partnering with the Tamil Nadu Education Department, the training includes aligning maker activities with state board textbooks in subjects like science and math. This approach not only ensures relevance to the students’ academic requirements but also incentivizes teachers to adopt experiential learning methods over traditional rote memorization techniques. Furthermore, the training empowers teachers to adapt and develop new thematic areas based on emerging local needs, ensuring the program’s relevance and sustainability across diverse educational contexts. For example, MakerGhat is collaborating with the Piramal Foundation to integrate project-based learning in Rajasthan’s government schools. During a menstrual hygiene project, teachers and students identified the underutilization of the school’s sanitary pad incinerator. This realization led them to expand the project to focus on sustainable pad creation, proper incinerator use, and alternative disposal methods, with a group of girls starting the “Arahi” brand to raise awareness and distribute cloth pads in the community.

Aditya compliments the teacher training model with a top-down strategy where he ensures his work is embedded deeply into the system by helping the administration see that achieving their goals – attendance, test scores, graduation – can be done through his model. He has been able to embed his own project team in the government and district offices of Tamil Nadu to help them achieve their goals and formalize and standardize the process. In another instance, he partnered with Niti Ayog to revive the existing Atal Tinkering Labs across India. While old efforts were focused on infrastructure and tools only, he has shown that building capacity on the how-to’s is the key to success. Under this partnership, Aditya is revamping these labs by bringing his curriculum and facilitator training, expanding on his community spaces model through these existing lab spaces.

MakerGhat’s programs are designed to build key “21st-century” skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, self-efficacy, and communication through hands-on training. The structure includes several core programs tailored to different age groups and educational contexts. For students aged 14-18, there are School Kits and spaces for making. School Kits are affordable kits provided at the classroom level to facilitate hands-on learning experiences, while spaces for making are high-end labs established in schools or communities serving as hubs at the block or district level. For youth aged 16-21, the College and ITI programs offer workshops on career readiness and foundational skills. Additionally, the Entrepreneurship Incubator program, aimed at ages 18-24, collaborates with colleges and youth networks across tier 2 and tier 3 cities to incubate ideas that tackle local problems and generate employment.

Partnerships play a crucial role in Aditya’s strategy, enabling the organization to scale and deepen its impact. Collaborations with government bodies and nonprofits focus on capacity building through a train-the-trainer model. In Tamil Nadu, for instance, MakerGhat is expanding district-wise. Similar expansions are taking place in Odisha with 1,000+ model schools and colleges. Other notable partnerships include pilots with government schools in Punjab, a program with Polytechnic colleges in Kerala, and initiatives with the Ministry of Agriculture to create agriculture-focused spaces and incubator programs.

The impact of MakerGhat’s programs is measured through a combination of internal evaluations and external studies. Aditya’s impact has shown that a $0.10 kit is as effective or more, than a $50 kit – for example, teaching students about electricity with a pizza carton. Two Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) are currently in progress, including one with a Stanford University research team to assess critical thinking, problem-solving, self-efficacy, communication, and collaboration skills. Findings from 24 classroom observations across three programs indicate that 70% of students could follow the materials easily, 87% asked questions, and 66% planned activities in a coordinated way. Data from 281 students across seven centers revealed that 67% understood what the teacher taught in all classes, 68% participated in making activities, and 80% found the learnings useful. Through these rigorous evaluations, MakerGhat ensures that their programs are effective and continuously improving, ultimately aiming to address the employability crisis by fostering a culture of innovation and problem-solving at the grassroots level.

Currently, MakerGhat impacts 1.8 million youth across the states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Karnataka, and Telangana. Also, Aditya is building a new set of data and measurement approaches – for example, using AI and classroom audio recordings to predict how well students are taking charge of how they learn and how teachers are shifting that power to the student.

By making the MakerGhat model open-source and flexible, Aditya aims to enable schools across India to adopt makerspaces easily. The model can be implemented with varying levels of investment, ensuring accessibility for all schools. Aditya envisions a future where every school in India has a space for making, akin to having a library, and teachers are trained to use it in every subject. This systemic reform would embed a culture of problem-solving and innovation at the grassroots level, fostering creativity and critical thinking in every community.

In terms of numbers, MakerGhat is on track to reach 5 million youth by the end of 2025 and in the next 5 to 10 years, Aditya plans to demonstrate large-scale evidence of the MakerGhat model’s impact, driving systemic change through robust research and evaluation. Aditya’s vision is to tackle the employability crisis by creating a strong cohort of graduates who are exceptional job seekers and potential job creators. Recently, a significant grant was received to create the IGNITE Program in Tamil Nadu, focusing on launching an incubation center for rural entrepreneurship and innovation. This program will incubate 20 youth entrepreneurs, with plans to scale to 1,000 youth over the next decade.

Aditya’s journey into the world of education began at a young age, deeply inspired by many educators in his immediate family. He pursued his PhD in Learning Sciences and Technology Design at the Graduate School of Education, Stanford University, driven by a passion for learning and teaching. Even before his doctoral studies, Aditya volunteered in schools across India, beginning at the age of 18. Every break from university saw him returning to rural schools in India, eager to make a difference, but also to try and understand the systemic issues that plagued the country’s education system. His early career in the USA saw him founding an edtech company in the K-12 market, Inspirit, where he developed experiential learning tools for education.

A pivotal moment in Aditya’s life occurred between 2015 and 2016 while volunteering in a school in rural Tamil Nadu during his undergraduate degree. He had always believed in the power of technology, but during this period, the biggest conundrum in his mind was “technology is the answer, but what exactly is the question?” He realized that the missing link in education wasn’t just tech tools but the space – physical, intellectual, and emotional – for students to explore and grow. This insight fueled his drive to create holistic educational environments that foster not just academic success but lifelong learning and personal growth. Aditya launched MakerGhat in 2019 while continuing his research studies and running the company in the US. He completed his PhD in 2023, and now focuses all his time and attention on systemic reform in education.