Alva says career counseling in Hyderabad has become almost obsolete, as it “simply directs students towards a stream of engineering, based on job opportunities, or to a technical university in the United States.” This is especially true for young men. “Seldom are tenth graders encouraged to study arts or commerce,” adds Alva, who is an engineering graduate himself.

The idea for the program came during one of the company’s initial brainstorming sessions, after team members broke into a discussion about their own lives.

“As kids, we were fascinated by the littlest of things and had no limits to our dreams, but growing up, we only heard about engineering,” says Arjun Nair, the head of partnerships at LearnEd. “The education system bound us to just books and exams, so much so that we eventually let our parents decide our career paths for us.”

Nair himself started college by studying metallurgical and material engineering at the suggestion of his parents. A year and a half later, frustrated and uninterested in pursuing a career in the field, he dropped out to study business administration instead.

Alva and Nair approached more than 100 schools about a partnership last year. Most of them dismissed the program as an extracurricular activity or an unnecessary expenditure that wouldn’t lead to an increase in admissions.

Five schools, however, agreed to pilot sessions, held from last November through March. Of the five, three schools signed up as active partners for the academic session that began in June.

For a metropolitan area of 8 million, this is a small start. But Manju Gupta, an education consultant at St. Michael’s, believes it is significant.

“Most students take up engineering owing to parental pressure,” she says. “While seeking admission in the school, parents ask us if we provide coaching for engineering entrance exams. During meetings, they insist we give more importance to science and maths over other subjects.

“Their mindsets are rigid, and most school managements have failed to bring about a change. So every student, parent, or school that thinks otherwise matters,” Gupta says.

The engineering boom in Hyderabad began after India opened up its economy in 1991. From the late 1990s, under the policies of the state chief minister, N. Chandrababu Naidu, the local IT sector flourished as multinational companies like Microsoft and Oracle set up operations in the city and created jobs.

“A large number of middle- and high-income families in Hyderabad come from the agricultural belt and are first-generation earners,” Gupta explains. “They witnessed the success of the city’s engineers in India and abroad, especially the U.S., and so they continue to push their children towards it.” Young people are steered toward both “core” engineering (civil, mechanical, and electrical) and computer engineering.