He Left the Air Force for India’s Most Underserved Students. Seven Thousand Schools Later, Here Is How.

The MGNREGA workers would queue at the gate every morning.

Praveen Kumar was posted as Chief Operations Officer at a forward operating base in Purnia, Bihar. He would sometimes hire workers for airfield tasks. What he kept noticing was not how desperate they were. It was how sincere they were. Hardworking. Going nowhere.

“I always used to think that it’s because they have not been exposed to opportunities. Probably that is why they and their families still remain in the state of poverty.”

It was not the first time he had seen this. It was the moment he decided to act.

The gap he kept seeing

Praveen studied at Bangalore Military School and grew up to become a national-level athlete in track and field. Through a sports quota, he joined the Air Force as an airman. For eight to ten years, he was primarily a sportsman, representing the Air Force and the combined services team. He was selected for the 1999 World Military Games. Surgery intervened. He completed his graduation through distance education and later commissioned as an Air Traffic Controller.

But it was two specific assignments that clarified the problem he would like to spend the next couple of decades solving after having decided to move out of the Indian Air Force

The first was the Sarang Helicopter Display Team, the IAF’s aerobatic unit. As Team Administrator and Commentator, Praveen traveled internationally and interacted with young people at every show. “A lot of youngsters used to come over, ask about Air Force, wanting to know about Air Force.” The curiosity was always there. The guidance never was especially the ones coming from the lesser privileged backgrounds

The second was the Air Force Sports Control Board, where as Joint Secretary he ran the Subroto Cup for five years, interacting with 13 to 17- year-olds from across India. Same students. Same gap. And then Purnia.

He took voluntary retirement in 2015 wanting to serve the nation with a different perspective and spirit

Into a startup that ALMOST didn’t make it

“A lot of people around me were not very happy. I’m moving into such an uncertain space. I’m an officer in the process of miniature retirement. People were like, what are you doing?”

He joined iDreamCareer, which Ayush Bansal had started in 2012 at 22 as a not-for-profit initiative. By 2015 the company had built  psychometric assessment tools, a tech platform and begun signing private school partnerships. An angel round had been raised.

Then the investors pushed a B2C pivot. B2B was abandoned.

“The entire amount we had raised went into customer acquisition, but the B2C business simply didn’t pick up at the pace we had expected. I strongly believe that education has to be approached differently. You cannot apply the same growth logic that works for e-commerce, food delivery, or logistics to education. Education is different. 

it is built on trust, requires consideration, involves parents and institutions, and often takes much longer for a customer to adopt and see value. You have to allow the business to grow at the pace at which trust and outcomes are built. 

Within months, iDreamCareer was making large losses. By February 2017, the founders were close to shutting down the operations entirely.

“When you are with the right intention for a space, there is a universe of people and opportunities coming your way to support your vision and purpose. 

Central Square Foundation and UNDP called. They needed career counseling across all 1,049 Delhi government schools. Nobody else had the technology to do it. iDreamCareer trained Delhi’s 250 existing counselors, deployed the platform, and ran the program. By late 2017, the company had its footing back.

What got built

Returning to B2B, the focus sharpened. “That relationship building exercise and collaboration for a common cause with another human is our forte, n, 

UNICEF followed. A partnership that brought iDreamCareer’s platform to 17 states simultaneously. Today the company runs two verticals. PathShila serves underserved students across government schools and underserved communities, active in Odisha, UP, Punjab, Maharashtra, and several other states. BlueSpring serves 160+ private schools, primarily in Tier 1 and 2 cities. IDC Council has trained 2,500-plus career counselors, with 500 to 700 actively engaged who gets engaged with iDreamCareer on freelance model The full time team size is approximately 130, spread across various geographies. .

The co-founder dynamic

Ayush is in his mid-thirties. Praveen is 16-plus years older. They have spoken almost every day for 12 years.

Ayush leads on product,technology and sales. Praveen with his team leads on people, operations and  and government partnerships. “Ayush always values and  respects my thoughts and inputs  because there are certain things that come with experience.”

Differences of opinion are frequent, and Praveen considers them not only natural but necessary for meaningful brainstorming. He believes that if everyone in a discussion immediately agrees with each other, the team may not be challenging its assumptions or exploring the idea deeply enough. For him, a good brainstorming session is one where people are willing to question ideas, disagree with one another, look at a problem from different perspectives, and push each other to think beyond the obvious. Whom they hire

The non-negotiables for student-facing roles are simple: “A mindset of commerce with morality and profit with purpose and not driven by  commercialization alone.” When a counselor once dismissed a student’s interest in pursuing yoga as a career, it became a training case – This is a typical case of human bias and we keep sensitizing our counsellors and team on these aspects. “Each and every career today has an opportunity if you’re good at it. Scope you create because you are the right fit for that particular space.”

The product team goes into schools during live sessions. No one builds from a desk.

The myth worth naming

For most students, career counselling has traditionally been a one-time experience: they take an assessment, meet a counsellor, receive a few career suggestions, and the process ends there. But choosing a career is far more complex than making a decision in a single sitting.

A meaningful career guidance process should evolve as the student evolves. It should begin with self-awareness – helping students understand their interests, strengths, abilities, personality, aspirations, and what motivates them. Once students have a clearer understanding of themselves, the next step is to help them explore and identify careers that are aligned with who they are and what they want to become.

Only after the career direction becomes clearer should students begin looking at the courses and academic pathways that can take them there. Colleges should come much later in the decision-making process.

This approach changes the fundamental question a student asks. Instead of starting with, “Which college should I get into?”, the student begins by asking, “What do I want to become, and why?” The college then becomes a means to achieve that career aspiration, rather than the aspiration itself.

He saw the gap across every posting for 20 years. He left the Air Force to close it. He is still working on it.