A star for everyone

Through simple, accessible videos, Shriya Shankar has helped thousands of children in Karnataka access learning support

The story of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry deeply resonated with Shriya B Shankar as a child. It got the young student thinking about how adulthood forces people to change perspectives and accept the expectations of the world. The 24-year-old was motivated to help young people find direction — to find their ‘star’ so to speak — inspired by the book. Shriya founded ‘Sitara Akka’, a social enterprise building educational resources for students from low-income communities. 

Working at a children’s home in J P Nagar was also a lesson for Shriya. “When I asked the girls there what they wanted to become, they would not be able to answer and would shy away,” says Shriya. 

Shriya identified a gap in learning and decided to record a few videos on YouTube. She began explaining basic scientific and mathematic concepts in Kanglish (an informal blend of Kannada and English) to Class 10 students. Within a week, the videos hit over 20,000 views.

The videos contained simple explanations of scientific concepts included in school syllabi and were fashioned in the style of a friend explaining what they learnt in school. “Visual representation of scientific concepts by Sitara Akka on YouTube helps students understand what oxygen, for instance, actually is,” says child rights activist Vasudeva Sharma.

“Despite developments in the education sector, several schools across rural Karnataka lack teachers who are proficient in the concepts themselves. I believe that the use of Kanglish by Shriya and her team is the reason why it has had a great impact in rural Karnataka,” Vasudeva Sharma adds. 

Shriya was 19 years old when the Bengaluru-based Sitara Akka took shape. Wanting more people to join in, Shriya posted on her Instagram, calling for volunteers. Three to four of her acquaintances responded. 

“Suddenly, a whole new world opened to me. I started to fall in love with teaching, and tried to be the teacher I always wanted when I was in school,” says Advait Kaluve, the organisation’s co-founder.

As the pandemic hit, Sitara Akka grew into something much bigger. The lack of access to labs and offline classes created a need for online demonstrations of scientific concepts. 

YouTube data showed that the videos had viewers from all 31 districts of Karnataka.  This realisation prompted Shriya to expand her resources to support students across the state who needed to study outside school hours.

Medha, a student, was tutored by the organisation before her Class 10 exams. Today, she is pursuing a BSc degree. “I would not be so confident about myself had I not met Shriya akka when I was in high school,” she says. Meeting Shriya and seeing a support system in her changed Medha’s perception of herself and her life. 

 Shriya says she wants more people like Medha to come forward to become akkas and annas in the future. 

Kubra, a student from Chikkaballapur, explains how the organisation has impacted her. "Shriya Akka was one of the best teachers in my life.” Sharing her experience of being demotivated by her teacher’s remark on her low grades, Kubra took it as a challenge to prove her teacher wrong. 

“I followed Sitara Akka classes for both math and science. From their support, I got 100/100 on my science annual exam. I secured the third rank in our school and I was awarded Rs 12,000,” she says. 

Collaborations 

Shriya B Shankar

After college, when the enterprise began to take shape, Shriya faced skepticism about her credentials. “When we started the venture as Project Sitara in 2019, it was easy for us to persuade teachers in government and private schools to conduct educational sessions. But when it came to the point of making this full-time, the actual challenge emerged. No one was ready to take 22-year-old engineering graduates seriously in the education landscape,” she says.

Despite difficulties, what started as a student initiative evolved into a tech-enabled organisation when Shriya secured the incumbency of the Nadathur S Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL) in the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore. 

Nachiket Kulkarni, assistant vice president of NSRCEL, says, “When she approached us after the pandemic, it was still a pilot project. What stood out was that nobody else was creating educational content in Kannada at the time. Though it was an experimental model, it transformed to become a mentor-enabled entrepreneurial model.” 

The centre helped her provide personalised learning support to thousands of students across Karnataka. Sitara Akka now has over 34,000 subscribers on YouTube. They also have an app which consolidates SSLC-related study materials—notes, formula sheets, videos, and past question papers—into one easy-to-use platform, ensuring thousands of students can study efficiently. Over 5,000 students use the app. 

The organisation has six full-time and three part-time employees, and a volunteer community of over 200 akkas and annas. At least 15 volunteers are active at any given time, based on engagement and workload. 

“The ‘akka’ concept helped students build bonds with the team members of Sitara. Kids started going to the volunteers for advice and mentorship beyond academics — in areas like mental health, career guidance and overall support,” adds Nachiket. 

Along with IIM-B, The Circle India, an education-oriented NGO, supports Sitara Akka by means of resources and funds.

Collaborating with government

Shriya B Shankar

Rishabh Nand, a programme manager with Sitara Akka, says that a pivotal moment was when they were able to form strategic partnerships with government bodies.

After signing an MoU with the Mysuru Block Education Office last year, team Sitara Akka expanded its outreach to over 1000s of students in Mysuru.

M Vivekananda, the Deputy Director of Public Instruction (DDPI) of Bagalkote, is a strong advocate of their work. Vivekananda says, “When they first came to meet me last year when I was the Block Education Officer of Mysuru Rural, I did not take them seriously. Later, I realised, they had good resource materials and strategies to help.”  

With Vivekananda’s support, they also launched an analytics solution to monitor student performance across 500 schools in Bagalkote, impacting over 35,000 students. This system helps identify struggling students advance through their grade points, enabling schools to implement timely interventions. Members of Sitara Akka present the outcomes, in terms of their grades on each exam, to assist the schools in understanding what areas need improvement. 

Last year, a government school in Varuna taluk saw 36 Class 10 students fail in their annual exam. Vivekananda says that the school is now seeing improvement after the Sitara intervention. 

The change in children’s approach to the future is also palpable. 

Settled into a classroom in the taluk, Shriya asked children what they wanted to achieve by 2070. The responses were stunning. The students were able to articulate their dreams, which, according to a senior teacher Uma M, was difficult for students from semi-urban backgrounds. 

“They are exposed to the opportunities of the city, but are deprived of the means to get them. Having a support system like Sitara absolutely gives my students more confidence in themselves,” she says. 

Shriya wants to increase the number of students in the coming years so that more ‘makkalu’ get better opportunities.

At the core of her vision is the idea that education should keep changing with time. “ I am here to reinvent ways of thinking and learning in order to make a difference,” she says.