Ashvini Ranjan

Founder

Ashvini Ranjan is the founding trustee of Pratham Mysore (2002)[1], an Indian non-profit working on education from Mysuru.

Ashvini Ranjan is an Indian educationist and businessman who, with his wife Shashi Ranjan, founded Pratham Mysore in 2002. The organisation works to improve the reading and learning levels of children in rural areas and urban settlements of southern Karnataka, and Ranjan served as its managing trustee until 2019.

Early life and education

Ranjan is a postgraduate of the University of Mysore, where he studied political science and law.

Career

He began his career as a lecturer in political science at the University of Mysore before moving into business, where he manufactured stationery and office products.

In 2002 he and Shashi Ranjan established Pratham Mysore, an affiliate of the Pratham education movement. He was managing trustee until 2019, with responsibility for administration, strategic planning and the expansion of programmes, and has continued as founder trustee, working on new initiatives. By the mid-2020s the organisation reported working across around 1,200 villages and some 200,000 children, with programmes running in government schools across ten districts of Karnataka.

Ranjan also writes short stories and newspaper columns, and is a photographer; he took part in the release of the coffee-table book In True Colours in Mysuru in 2024 and appears at the Mysuru Literature Festival.

Recognition

In October 2024 Ranjan received a Karnataka state award for his contribution to education, presented by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah at the World Senior Citizens Day celebrations at Ravindra Kalakshetra in Bengaluru.[2][3][4][5]

Pratham Mysore

Established in 2002 as an independently registered society in the Pratham network, Pratham Mysore works with Karnataka's government schools to ensure every child is in school and learning well. Its foundational literacy and numeracy programs, model village initiative, balwadis and vocational training reach children across ten districts; its 'twinning of schools' concept found its way into the National Education Policy 2020.

Pratham Mysore reports the following, on its own site: