IAS officer quits job to pursue passion of teaching

Jabalpur, January 10

He could have made his millions as a doctor and wielded the state's enormous powers as a civil servant, but a 24-year-old IAS officer has decided to quit his job in pursuit of his "passion"— teaching.

Roman Saini, who cracked the medical entrance test at 16 and coveted civil services exam at 22, resolved to shed all trappings of power and sent in his resignation from the IAS to Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) in September last year, according to his boss and Collector of Jabalpur SN Rupala.

The resignation of Saini, who was posted as Assistant Collector, is yet to be accepted by DoPT, Rupala said.

The young IAS officer has started an online initiative -- "Unacademy"--with his friend Gaurav which offers free tutorials to civil services aspirants. Through Unacademy, Roman interacts with UPSC aspirants from all over the country.

In a Facebook post today, Saini wrote, “In 2011, Gaurav Munjal, whom I have known since school as the closest friend called and spoke about his new idea 'Unacademy' which he had started on YouTube and posted a bunch of videos.

"He had a vision of free education — and he asked me to join him. Four years later, 'Unacademy' is now India's one of the largest YouTube channels with 1.1 crore lessons delivered and over 5 Lakh students benefited. Recently, Gaurav and I took a life changing decision, we decided to quit whatever we were doing to pursue this full time," he said.

Saini, a graduate from the prestigious All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, said the decision to quit IAS was "difficult" but he will now pursue his passion to take forward 'Unacademy' full time.

"Personally, it was a difficult decision to quit the civil services, as I have utmost respect for it. But I believe in Unacademy's vision of free education, and hence, will be pursuing it full time from now," he said in the post.

Unacademy's YouTube profile says, "Unacademy is India's largest free education initiative. We believe in making high quality educational videos available for free for everyone. Having the world's entire education on our platform in all languages is our goal."

It says http://youtube.com/unacademy has over 10 million video views and 150,000 subscribers. — PTI