BrightCHAMPS Awards Stock Options worth $1 Million to 400 Teacher Partners, in an Industry-First Move
Bangalore : Amid concerns about the viability of edtechs in the country, global live-learning platform BrightCHAMPS has awarded Stock Options worth $1 Million to 400 of its most high-performing teacher partners across 25 countries – a majority of them from key geographies such as India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, South Africa, Egypt, Lebanon and UAE. The company also plans to award an increasing number of Teacher Stock Options or TSOPs every year, for the next five years.
Speaking on the happy occasion, BrightCHAMPS Founder and CEO, Ravi Bhushan said, “One of the founding principles of BrightCHAMPS is to win together and celebrate together, and our teachers are no exception. Our faculty – one of the most culturally diverse in the world – is one of our strongest pillars and we’re thrilled to be able to give back to them through this TSOPs initiative. Creating wold-class learning experiences has always been a part of our DNA, at BrightCHAMPS. Helping students achieve excellence in learning will always be the most important criterion for earning TSOPs at BrightCHAMPS.”
The announcement is a welcome declaration within the startup ecosystem and the country’s controversial edtech industry in particular, both of which have been riddled with daily announcements of mass layoffs and shutdowns in recent times, as well as growing concerns about the quality of education being imparted.
Elaborating on the ambitious initiative’s rollout, BrightCHAMPS’ Chief Financial Officer, Amit Kumar, said, “Creating avenues for greater financial value for our teachers has always been part of our long-term financial strategy. We were able to evaluate and reward teaching faculty across all four business verticals in this round and look forward to increasing coverage in the coming months. We hope this will inspire our dedicated academy to deliver even better class experiences to our kids, while enjoying professionally and financially rewarding journeys with us.”
The BrightCHAMPS teaching academy currently boasts of close to 2,500 teachers from 25 countries, made up of a diverse pool of highly qualified professionals. Close to 40% of the financial literacy faculty is made up of CAs, CFAs, or other professional-degrees holders in finance. The communications faculty has TEFL or TESOL teaching certificates with native-level or equivalent English speaking proficiency, the coding faculty stipulates a degree in computer science as a minimum criterion, whereas the robotics teachers have at least one, but more likely a combination of degrees in robotics, automation, telecommunications, electronics engineering, mechatronics engineering, computer sciences, and mechanical engineering. BrightCHAMPS also largely maintains a two-language fluency criterion for teachers, keeping in mind the needs of kids who are first-generation English speakers.