Our founders, Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah, started LEAD in 2012 with a vision to provide disruptive school ed-tech solutions.
Since then, LEAD has grown into a team of proficient individuals striving to transform education.
Together we aspire to make excellent education accessible and affordable to every child.
Sumeet Mehta is Co-Founder and CEO, LEAD, India’s largest School EdTech company and the first unicorn in the segment.
As Co-Founder of LEAD, Sumeet’s vision is to make excellent education accessible and affordable for every child, by transforming low-fee schools across India. Sumeet draws inspiration from his journey of growing up in a family of teachers in a small town in India, to running businesses in consumer products and education companies. His experience in running schools with his Co-Founder helped him develop LEAD’s Integrated System and scale the company to its current size.
Before founding LEAD, Sumeet was the Chief Executive Officer at Zee Learn (2007 to 2012). Sumeet successfully scaled Zee Learn 5X with presence across pre-schools, K-12 schools and school solutions. Prior to this, Sumeet spent eight years at Procter & Gamble Singapore, where he led Healthcare and Skincare businesses across the APAC region.
An alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad and PEC Chandigarh, Sumeet grew up in Pathankot, Punjab, and currently lives in Mumbai with his family. He is an avid reader and traveller.
Smita Deorah is Co-Founder and Co-CEO at LEAD, India’s largest School EdTech company and the first unicorn in the segment.
A chartered accountant-turned-educator, Smita has over 22 years of experience in Finance, Leadership and Education. At LEAD, Smita is responsible for education research, product development and capability building. She has been instrumental in developing the LEAD integrated system, which is benchmarked with the best education systems globally and contextualised for Affordable Private Schools in India.
Smita is passionate about excellence and values in academia. Her goal is to bring quality learning to underserved communities and to bridge the gap between India’s high-fee schools and its affordable private schools, so that every child can be nurtured to his or her true potential.
Prior to co-founding LEAD, Smita founded Sparsh, an NGO that worked for the uplift of Anganwadis in Mumbai in association with the Maharashtra government. She also implemented a ‘pre-school in a box’ solution in 16 Anganwadis to prepare students for school, and to reduce dropouts and low attendance.
Before that, Smita spent nine years at Procter & Gamble Singapore and India as a leader in Finance, Treasury and Strategy.
Smita is a great believer in continuous learning. After graduating from Narsee Monjee College of Commerce and Economics and becoming a Chartered Accountant, she completed Executive Programs from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Smita is the only leader from India to be conferred the 2022 Power of Women (POW!) award for her work in providing equal access to the future through quality education for all.
She lives in Mumbai with her family and loves travelling to different parts of the world.
Shantanu is an esteemed personality in the consumer business segment in India. Managing an array of consumer marketing functions for over two decades now, he currently offers his expertise to Crompton Greaves’ Consumer Business as the Executive Vice President and Managing Director. His immense experience, expert leadership, and management knowledge have expedited LEAD’s journey from an aspiring start-up to an organization that supports over 3500+ schools. He has been a board member of LEAD since 2017.
Shantanu had been on the path of excellence long before extending his proficiency to LEAD as a board member. He is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and holds the degree of Masters in Business Administration from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta. He has also served as the Managing Director of Procter & Gamble.
Sandeep is Founder & Managing Partner at Elevar Equity, a firm driven to work with early stage companies that foster economic development for low income communities. For over 25 years, Sandeep has been working in diverse areas – from providing formal financial services in emerging markets to guiding non-profit organisations in education, healthcare, and agriculture sectors. Sandeep strongly believes that LEAD can truly transform the Indian education landscape. He has been a board member of LEAD since 17th August 2017.
Sandeep has an integrated law and arts degree from the National Law School of India University (NLS). He established Unitus in India, and actively partnered and supported many leading microfinance institutions and banks in India during their formative years.
Sandeep is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of WestBridge Capital. He has over two decades of experience in both public and private sectors, serving as an investment advisor as well as a board member in several companies. Sandeep believes that LEAD’s innovative and focused approach holds great potential in making quality school education accessible for all. Sandeep has been a board member since mid 2020.
Sandeep holds an MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, an MS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Illinois, where he was awarded the Abraham Lincoln Fellowship, and a B. Tech. in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. He has previously worked with Hindustan Unilever and The Boston Consulting Group and had also co-founded Sequoia Capital India Advisors Private Limited.
Anupam Gurani is the Chief Business and Marketing Officer at LEAD, India’s largest School Edtech company.
In addition to leading overall Marketing strategy and implementation, Anupam is responsible for driving customer success and revenue generation at LEAD, with a focus on continually delivering results for all school stakeholders.
An accomplished Sales, Marketing and Strategy professional with over 18 years of experience, Anupam has previously led teams in leading multinational organizations such as Disney+ Hotstar, Vodafone, Google and Reckitt, across India and Southeast Asia. His work experience spans a diverse set of functions, including Marketing, Digital Marketing, P&L management, Brand building, Sales, Key Account Management and Channel marketing.
Anupam is an alumnus of IIM Bangalore and Delhi College of Engineering. He grew up in Gurgaon, and currently lives in Mumbai with his family. He is a voracious reader, a fitness enthusiast and loves cooking.
Harsh drives the day-to-day development process of all our applications, ensuring that LEAD is equipped with adept technological capabilities and that all our resources are used efficiently, profitably, and securely by all our stakeholders. Under his leadership, evaluation and implementation of new systems and infrastructure are never amiss. He works closely with the senior leadership to develop the company’s strategy to offer our solutions to every corner of the country.
Highly skilled in building scalable and high performance internet architecture, Harsh started off as a Software Developer at Lutron Electronics, USA, Harsh has held senior positions in technology teams across industries. He worked as Head of Technology at Edutech company MeritNation.com. Harsh has a Masters in Human-Computer interaction from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh.
Ajay drives the design and development of products at LEAD for all users, i.e, teachers, students, parents, principals, academic coordinators and school owners. He ensures that the users have a seamless and delightful experience, while delivering the best education possible to the students.
Ajay comes with 16 years of experience in product management, entrepreneurship, data science and consulting. In his last role, he was the CEO and Founder of Boxx.ai, which was later acquired by Netcore. Prior to that, Ajay has worked in McKinsey, RedPill (later acquired by IBM) and Crayon. Ajay is an alumnus of IIT Bombay.
Gaurav Sharma is Chief Academic Excellence Officer at LEAD, India’s largest School Edtech company and the first unicorn in the segment.
Gaurav is responsible for the execution of LEAD’s integrated system and methodology across its partner schools, pan-India. His team is passionate about bringing academic excellence to our schools, teachers and students.
Before LEAD, Gaurav was the Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Customer Officer at Furlenco. He was a part of the Furlenco growth story and scaled up operations and built best in class customer experience over 4 years. Prior to Furlenco, Gaurav was a Business Consultant with Accenture and also worked at HP in the global CXO’s office.
Gaurav is a gold medalist from IIM Kozhikode and an alumnus of IIT Bombay. He was an integral part of a National Award winning film on RD Burman and has written two coffee table books on the maestro. He takes leadership sessions around RD, his music and management and is a speaker at many forums.
Deepak Hariharan is the new Head of Expansion at LEAD, India’s largest School EdTech company and the first unicorn in the segment.
As the Head of Expansion at LEAD, Deepak will further the organization’s vision to make excellent education accessible and affordable for every child, by transforming affordable private schools across India. He will play a pivotal role in driving forward the vision of LEAD – “to provide propulsive learning opportunities to over 26 million children by 2026.”
Prior to joining LEAD in mid-2022, Deepak has been a Business Leader, Entrepreneur, Consultant, Public Speaker and Mentor in his 15+ year experience:
Driven growth and scaleup for unicorns such as Zomato and Tata 1mg (2018-2022)
Founder and CEO of MentorYes, a student mentorship platform – his first venture into edtech (2015-17)
Business consultant with Feedback Infra (2008-2016)
TEDx speaker
Advisor & mentor to several youth / entrepreneurship platforms – including the Centre for Entrepreneurship at Ashoka University.
An alumnus of IIM Calcutta and NIT Calicut, Deepak grew up in Bangalore, and currently lives in Delhi with his family. He is an avid reader and dabbles with writing & painting when he can.
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LEAD is an integrated system of education that equips schools with innovative...
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