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The founder of Skillzo, an education platform that has connected more than 25,000 students in India with mentorship and career opportunities, launched the initiative at 16
Adarsh Kumar (GU-Q ’30) has received The Diana Award, an international honor recognizing young people who make a positive difference in the lives of others.
Established in 1999 in memory of Diana, Princess of Wales, the award recognizes young people for their social action and humanitarian work. Its founding board was chaired by Gordon Brown, former prime minister of the United Kingdom. Patrons include former UK Prime Minister David Cameron, Dame Julia Samuel, former Scottish First Minister Jack McConnell and Esther Rantzen.
Kumar’s award recognizes work that grew out of his own experience growing up in Bihar, India, the birthplace of George Orwell. He describes it as “a land of resilience,” but recalls being a curious child with the internet as the only medium to guide him toward opportunities beyond his textbooks. He wanted to make that guidance more accessible to other students.
At 16, he founded Skillzo, a platform that has since connected more than 25,000 students across India with entrepreneurship education, mentorship and opportunities to explore different careers.
Convincing others to take his idea seriously was an early challenge. As a teenager trying to build an organization, Kumar often found himself having to prove that he was capable of leading it.
“How can I convince, being 16 years old or 17 years old, someone to believe in me?” he said.
He learned to keep working through the uncertainty. “Those are the challenges. But you do work, you keep failing, you fail fast.”
That outlook has informed his own path to Georgetown. After three failed attempts at building organizations, followed by another setback when financial constraints prevented him from enrolling at the IIT-JEE coaching institute he had left home to attend, Kumar reconsidered what success might look like. What initially felt like rejection, he said, eventually became redirection.
At GU-Q, he is taking advantage of the university’s five majors to explore different academic interests before settling on a particular direction. He hopes to use what he learns to contribute to the development of Bihar and India.
He is also finding that the university experience is changing how he approaches questions and problems. Interactions with classmates have introduced him to perspectives he might not otherwise have encountered, while his coursework has opened up new ways of thinking.
Kumar wants to leave GU-Q with a different outlook from the one he brought with him. “I don’t want to leave as the same person as I came,” he said. “I want to change myself in so many ways, the way I think, the way I see problems, the way I see solutions.”
For someone who started building a platform at 17, he has a straightforward message for other young people with ambitions of their own: “Be comfortable with being uncomfortable.”
