Q. What does Meru mean?
A. It was Sri Tridandi Srimannarayana Ramanuja Chinna Jeeyar Swami who sowed the seed for the name of the school. The word ‘Meru’ signifies the highest point in a mountain and whoever touches it turns into gold. Symbolically, we want all our students to aim high.
Q. You were first involved with the Yashoda Academy of Medical Education & Research and also played a role in the establishment of JIMS homeopathy college. Tell us about the transition to school education.
A. I feel blessed to have been given an opportunity by the family to come on board the homeopathy and nursing college. My father-in-law is passionate and I just shadowed him to be honest. The real estate vertical is well-known and ‘My Home’ wanted to give full value to residents and minimize the work-to-home time and we embarked on starting schools. We have two schools; one at Miyapur with a strength of 2,200 within five years and 350 students at Tellapur in the first year itself.
Q. Managing schools is not easy but you have done it with aplomb. What is the secret?
A. Whatever I take up, I do not over promise or under promise. I started at the age of 29 and I must confess I learnt a lot from Meru. I fell in love with the sector and wished to give back to the society. The success of the schools, to a large extent, is also the faith restored by parents. They believed in us. We get parents who want their children to go to the next level and we take that responsibility with the utmost seriousness.
The strong value system that benefited me during childhood, is also something I wanted the current generation to have. Meru parents appreciate the strong values that are inculcated in their wards, from a young age.
Q. Post Covid-19, schools have had many challenges, from span of attention to disinterest in studies by students. How did Meru manage?
A. The first thing we did when schools resumed, is that we suspended the first period and allowed the students to just amble around the campus. Children had just lost the idea of moving around. Screen time usage has increased manifold and we have put in placea robust program, the – Meru Career Leadership Academy Program (MCLAP), in which mental balance, emotional quotient and leadership qualities are
given importance.
One cannot get slack. We need to identify and mould students as per their state of mind. It was a cherished moment for us when we received record admissions, even during the Covid year.
Q. Technology integration has now become inevitable. Your comments.
A. There is no doubt that the use of technology has penetrated in all sectors, more so in education. We have deeply researched the edtech ecosystem and curated age-specific technology interventions to improve learning outcomes. We are also about to launch an improved Robotics/AI program from Class 6 and integrate it into our ICT program. I do have an issue with technology in the sense of ‘How much of it should we use?’ ‘How much screen timeare we going to give inside the classroom?’ It is fine to the extent that it can explain concepts. We are keen on developing the overall personality of the child as well, and thus lay emphasis on areas like sports, personality development, extra curriculars etc.
Q. Parents play an important part. How often does Meru meet parents?
A. Parents are truly one of our critical stakeholders.
While we formally meet with parents four times a year, during the PTM’s, we have multiple communication channels for parents to reach out to us. Beyond the performance of students, we also engage with parents on areas like good parenting, communicating with teenagers, screen times, etc. With easy access to screens and the internet, we always urge our parents to keep a tab on the viewing habits of their children and try to delay giving phones as much as possible. It is my sincere request to parents to also monitor their wards on what they are watching and for how long they are using gadgets.
We proactively call up parents who are unable to turn up, to meet us in person.
Q. Assessment is one of the most important aspects. How is it done at Meru?
A. At Meru, continual assessments are integral to identifying learning progress and learning gaps. The cycle typically is – teach, assess, analyze, interpret and improve. A 5 step reflection process ensures that we identify improvement areas.
We have focused on a 360 degree approach to this – assessment of learning, for learning and as learning. We have spent a lot of time in all of these areas with pedagogy experts to create a reliable assessment process.
Interestingly, we are now leveraging AIto help in our assessments and the initial pilots have been quite encouraging in providing deeper insights into students’ performance.
Q. Tell us about the initiatives unique to Meru.
A. There are so many, that it is difficult to do justice to this question in a few paragraphs. As a philosophy, we encourage a culture of innovation in our entire school system.
M-CLAP, that I mentioned before, is a program that was conceptualized and implemented by me to give our students a clear edge. M-CLAP has been a resounding success, as evidenced by feedback received from the parents and students.
The program focuses on various areas like life skills, financial literacy, sustainability, entrepreneurship, leadership, and the like.
The Meru Teacher Training Institute, which recently received accreditation from Cambridge as a PDQ center, ensures that teachers are abreast with the latest developments in matters of pedagogy, technological advancement and align with the Meru philosophy. We design customized lesson plans for individual teachers keeping in mind their unique strengths. Soon we intend to release it into the market as well.
We give a lot of importance to entrepreneurship, our recent ideation event, Meru Avinya, received nearly 200 ideas from the middle school segment. We are planning to pick up the best five ideas and will provide support to turn them into reality. Our aim is to nurture youth by instilling discipline and identifying a passion and purpose.
We make sure students inculcate good and healthy habits early on. For example, we do not share sweets or sugar & cream loaded cakes at school. We started this practice a few years ago and now parents too are aligned with our philosophy. Our menu at the school canteen is carefully prepared by nutrition experts keeping in mind the needs of young children.
Q. What are the future plans?
A. In terms of physical locations, we will be opening the third school at Gopanpally for the 2026-27
academic year.
We want to build on our immensely successful MCLAP Program with further emphasis on financial literacy, robotics, and emotional development. We also want to build an ecosystem to help children pick up individual ‘passion projects’, where we can support them with coaching & guidance. Sports is an area where we have won several accolades and want to build further on it.
There are several ideas on the anvil, and I am very excited about the future of Meru.
