To kickstart this change of mindset towards teaching in India, Akanksha’s students decided to take matters in their own hands. At the peak of placement season, the children went to India’s No.1 B-School – Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) and made its students a job offer like no other. It was for the role of their teacher. Being used to getting offers from renowned multinational companies and top global banks, a job offer from Akanksha’s students took students of IIM by surprise.

We then uploaded a video of this campus Placement Surprise on social media. It not just became a popular video among IIM Alumni network but also other graduating students across India. More importantly, it started a positive conversation about the relevance of teaching in India, and also spread the message of the shortage of teachers at Akanksha.

Typically, when we look for teachers, we rely on free posters at campus notice-boards. Some years, we are lucky enough to afford a recruitment ad. But this year, we decided to use top minds as a bait.

We chose India’s No.1 B-School - IIMA - and planned our first Placement Surprise during placement season. We ran a teaser poster campaign on campus few days before the presentation. This hyped up our recruitment as one of the world’s most challenging and satisfying jobs.

On the presentation day, IIMA students were taken by surprise as instead of suited-booted guys, Akanksha’s kids showed up to make a job offer. In their child-like style, the children drew lots of smiles, applause and interest as they discussed the job profile and perks being their teacher. A video of this placement meeting was then uploaded on social media, which surprised and interested many more viewers online.

Our key objectives were

REACH as many people as possible

Build BRAND AFFINITY AND CONVERSATION by building positive word of mouth.

Even though we held the IIM-A activation in only one college, the association with an institute of this calibre and the charming pitch helped the message go viral. We were able to reach out to 30 million people within 2 weeks of the video's release. Twitter was the main platform for conversations which gave us reach of 29.2M, followed by Linkedin, which got us a 13K reach and Facebook which was 5K.

Celebrities like Bollywood actors Sonam Kapoor and Hrithik Roshan tweeted about us.

Industry leaders and influencers like Sudhanshu Vats, Shereen Bhan and Raj Nayak posted our video and spread the message.

Not just this, Akanksha Foundation saw an unprecedented rise in Twitter followers and interactions. It gained almost 3,000 new followers on Twitter in under 2 weeks.