Mr. Kanak Gupta

Mr. Kanak Gupta's "We Heard You" session was built as an open house — a locked box of curated questions he had not seen, with the floor invited to push back. He began with the one thing he felt the corporate office needed to get better at: prioritisation. Schooling is now 365 days, 24x7; the corporate office runs about sixteen events, and too often it assumes that once a plan is made, everyone understood. Better, more transparent communication alongside sharper prioritisation would move schools and corporate toward the same results.

The questions from the floor were the real content. On spoken English in catchment areas where the home environment does not support it, he was candid that AI will democratise access — pointing to Rehearsal Junior — and unapologetic about Indian-accented English, recalling his London keynote and the double standard that celebrates French and German accents while Indians pull down their own. He took a request for promoter-focused workshops modelled on Jagriti, and committed to planning one within six months, alongside the Promoter Toolkit.

He reported progress on what the room had already asked for. A J-Learn management dashboard for promoters — so they can see teacher usage, course completion and lesson-plan adoption — had shipped that week, with usernames and passwords sent. On books, he gave hard commitments: the book list would reach schools by 1 October, with stock ready by 15 October, improving year on year. On curriculum consistency and undeclared holidays, he acknowledged the gap and pointed to Jaipuria Edge, city-level calendar improvement, and the NEP move from horizontal coverage toward vertical depth.

On AI reaching every student, he outlined QR codes across books, diaries and online presence for tools spanning communication, problem-solving and question-paper generation, with AI elements woven into all sixteen events and parent workshops. Asked whether some schools are now ahead of corporate on AI, he embraced it: AI is the great equaliser that ignores pin codes, and corporate should learn from the schools. A best-practices board and a principals' WhatsApp group were set up to make that exchange formal.

The session's most personal exchange was on values and nation-building — a promoter's worry about corruption and whether Jaipuria is instilling honesty and patriotism. He was bullish on India, pointed to students who greet with Vande Mataram, to the SPICE values (I for Integrity), and to the reflection chronicle on Panchkosh Vikas that goes to every child from grade 3 up, with positive feedback documented across schools. He even changed his mind on one piece of promoter criticism: corporate presence at marquee events like annual days matters more than he once thought.

He closed the way he opened — with humility. Promoters raised real operational pain: heavy school bags, the need for a centralised teacher-recruitment mechanism with transfers and checks, and what an "ideal school" looks like. He took each one — supervising timetables and bag weight, JGrow's AI-empowered recruitment, and the honest answer that the sixty-two schools in the room are themselves the ideal, each unique — and left the room with the long view: school is a long-term play; give it ten to fifteen years.