EducationWorld Interview | Gaurav Goel, Founder of Toprankers - EducationWorld

EducationWorld Interview | Gaurav Goel, Founder of Toprankers

September 24, 2026 /Posted byPrajwal EW / 0

In this exclusive conversation, Gaurav Goel, Founder of Toprankers, discusses how his platform is transforming career discovery and test prep for non-engineering and non-medical careers across India—from law (CLAT) and management (IPMAT) to design and CUET. He shares insights on moving beyond the traditional doctor/engineer mindset, the importance of building guardrails for AI in education, the critical need for vocational skilling, and how Toprankers scaled to a ₹150-crore sustainable edtech enterprise driven by a student-first philosophy.

The discussion explores:
– From Government Exams to Non-Engineering Careers: The pivot to law, IPM, and design education.
– Integrated Career Guidance: Combining early career counseling with college test prep and post-college skilling.
– Foundational Education & NEP: Why critical thinking and reading comprehension matter more than rote memorization.
– Vocational Skilling in India: Addressing the skills gap and the road to a $30-trillion economy.
– AI in Education: Using tools with built-in guardrails and human mentorship to prevent student burnout.
– Sustainable EdTech Growth: Scaling without compromising learning outcomes and student trust.

Also Read: EducationWorld Interview: Global leadership & India’s future – A conversation with Jayant Sinha

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“The student in India today lives between the violence of the cracking earth and flooding homes. The Cockroach Janta Party protests, led by Gen-Z, may have stunned the ageing political establishment, but clearly we have light-years to go before the sanctity of either life or learning can be assured for our students — particularly for those from vulnerable sections of society.”

- Saikat Majumdar, The Indian Express, (8/9)

“Students are treated as adults when fees, performance, and responsibility are demanded from them, but as children when autonomy, voice, or due process become inconvenient. Harshness is then defended as character-building, and obedience is conflated with ‘respect’. We have built educational experiences around discipline and dizzying hierarchies, where dissent is likely to be labelled as indiscipline, political activism, or disrespect. Distress is then located inside the student, while the university itself appears as a neutral background, but is not. Counselling may help a student respond to these pressures, but it cannot remove them. Time management cannot solve an impossible workload; mindfulness cannot make an opaque grading system transparent; positive thinking cannot make a compromised grievance process trustworthy. Students should be treated as rights-bearing adults and should be made active participants in institutional governance. The harder question is whether universities are willing to examine the conditions they create.”

- Jaison Manjaly, The Indian Express, (22/9)