Smita Deorah

Smita Deorah is Co-Founder and Co-CEO at LEAD Group, India’s only School Edtech unicorn. With over 22 years of experience, Smita has built innovative curricula to transform teaching - learning in India’s schools; and has also trained educators across India. At LEAD Group, Smita steers 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 contextualized for India’s schools. The LEAD Integrated System transforms a school’s learning outcomes by empowering teachers, school principals and students. It achieves this by combining deeply-researched curriculum, pedagogy, and technology into a simple school-in-a-box solution. LEAD Group today reaches 8000 schools across India, impacting over 3.5 million students; and empowers more than 50,000 teachers.Prior to co-founding LEAD Group, Smita founded Sparsh, an NGO that worked for the uplift of Anganwadis in Mumbai in association with the Maharashtra government. Recognised by The Economic Times as one of India’s Top 29 Corporate Leaders, Smita is also a recipient of the ‘Woman Ahead’ award at ET Startup Awards. Smita has been recognised as one of the top 100 female entrepreneurs who are building and shaping India.