Story of KC
A teacher who taught lakhs of children for free, from his bed.
Rajeev Poddar has been paralysed from the chest down since childhood, following a paralytic attack, and his formal schooling ended at Class 2. From a bed in Kolkata, for over thirty years, he has taught lakhs of India's children accountancy, economics, current affairs and public speaking, entirely free of cost. He still teaches every week, on Zoom, from that same bed.
In 2023, his nephew Aditya Poddar formalised this lifelong mission into Knowledge Capsules. Today KC reaches over 30,000 children every week across nearly 150 schools, including 78 government schools taught free, and has trained more than 5,000 teachers.
From a Heritage classroom to the seat beside Amitabh Bachchan.
Purav Bhattacharyya was ten years old, a child at The Heritage School, when he sat through a Knowledge Capsules session. He went on to clear round after round of KBC Juniors, take the Hot Seat next to Mr Amitabh Bachchan, and win ₹5 Lakh. Four more KC children reached national television for the Jio Hotstar HP Smart Champs quiz. Two of them, again from The Heritage School, came second and won another ₹5 Lakh. This is what we call KC to KBC.
It is the clearest proof we have that a story told well does more than make a class enjoyable. It makes knowledge stay, long enough to carry a child from a Friday quiz at their own desk to a national stage.
A capsule that began at a school desk ended on the deck of a Navy ship.
We ran a Knowledge Capsule on the INSV Kaundinya, the Indian Navy’s recreation of a fifth-century stitched ship, built plank by plank without a single nail. The children painted what they had learnt. We carried those paintings to the naval base at Karwar and handed them to the ship’s architect on the deck itself, the warship hangar rising behind us.
This is the reach of a story told well. It does not stay inside the four walls of a classroom.
We took one classroom back to the morning of 15 August 1947.
For Har Ghar Tiranga, we photographed a government classroom and used AI to carry it back to the first Independence Day. The same children, the same room, the Tiranga in their hands, the light of 1947 on their faces.
More than 35,000 children marked the week with Knowledge Capsules, in government and private classrooms alike.
A movement built from a bed in Kolkata, seen on a national stage.
In 2026, Knowledge Capsules was honoured at the Economic Times Education Excellence Awards, and Aditya took the stage to receive it. The trophy is not the story. The tens of thousands of children who earned it are.
But it tells a young movement that the work is being seen, and that free, story-led learning has a place at the front of the room.
Not staged. One ordinary government classroom, every bench full.
This is not a set piece. It is a government classroom on an ordinary morning, one KC educator mid-session, every bench full and every face turned. Every class we run is photographed, dated and logged.
This is what 577 logged classes actually look like, one packed room at a time.
Some capsules are the people a child should meet before a textbook names them.
Not every capsule is this week’s news. Our capsule on Dr Syama Prasad Mukherjee is one a child should meet early, the man behind the date, told as a story so it stays.
It is the kind of capsule that turns a name in a chapter into someone a ten-year-old can talk about at dinner.
