August 25. Sanjeev Bolia, the promoter-managing director of Afairs Exhibitions & Media Pvt. Ltd (AFAIRS, estb.1994), India’s premier education expositions company, passed away in Kolkata this morning at the age of 56 years.

His sudden death from a heart attack has shocked the education fraternity countrywide.
During the past 30 years, Bolia had built a formidable reputation for his extraordinary innovation of education expositions to showcase India’s best education institutions in India and abroad, and for impacting India’s islands of education excellence upon discerning domestic and international publics. He had curated hundreds of education expositions in India and abroad, to showcase India’s top-ranked schools, colleges and universities in South Korea, UAE, Oman, Qatar, East & West Africa, Mongolia, Malaysia, Thailand, Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

One of three sons of Tej Singh Bolia, a Kolkata-based self-employed supplier of hardware and
engineering equipment to education institutions, after graduating from Calcutta University in 1994, Sanjeev resisted family pressure to join an accountancy firm and organised the City of Joy’s first computer exhibition-cum-seminar.

After this innovative education expo received excellent public response, Bolia orchestrated a series of expositions to showcase private professional and higher education institutions to enable school-leavers to make informed admission choices. In 2004, Afairs staged its first Premier Schools Exhibition in New Delhi and Mumbai, innovating a new forum for K-12
schools to showcase their institutions to enable SEC (socio-economic category) ‘A’ households to select aptitudinally suitable, internationally benchmarked primary-secondary schools for their children. Taking this sellers-meet-buyers initiative a step further, in 2008 Afairs organised its first India International Premier Schools Exhibition showcasing 25 top-ranked boarding and international schools of India in Bangkok. The expo was a resounding success and since then, Afairs has staged Premier Schools Exhibitions in several countries abroad.

During his 31-year distinguished career in the education expositions industry, Bolia received many awards and encomiums including the International Star Award at the Exhibitions Excellence Award, New Delhi (2019), the Entrepreneur Award 2017 of the India-Thai Business Association, Bangkok and the EducationWorld Extraordinary Achievement in Education Leadership Award 2019.

Also Read: Lifteime Achievement in Education Leadership Award 2019: Sanjeev Bolia
Schools salesman: Sanjeev Bolia