Ex-Corporate Worker Teaches 1,500 Kids for Free in Water Tank

Pothukuchi Srinivas was teaching part-time at a government school in Miyapur when a student told him why his homework wasn't done. The boy spent his evenings cleaning three tea carts and had no electricity at home to study.

That conversation in the mid-1990s changed everything. Srinivas began visiting students' homes and found the same story repeated: children of watchmen, domestic workers, and auto drivers falling through the cracks of an education system that wasn't built for them.

In 2003, Srinivas quit his job at a German company and founded the Pothukuchi Somasundara Social Welfare and Charitable Trust. He started teaching from his own home in Miyapur, a northwestern suburb of Hyderabad now surrounded by IT campuses and gated communities.

As word spread, his home couldn't hold everyone. In 2008, a local builder offered something unusual: an unused overhead water tank.

The trust converted that squat, cylindrical structure into a classroom. Today, it stands as an unlikely symbol of transformation, a space that once held water now holding something more valuable: the futures of children whose parents guard the gates of the buildings towering above.

The support doesn't stop at tutoring. The trust covers everything: college fees, textbooks, notebooks, uniforms, transport, and exam prep coaching. For girls attending evening classes, the trust arranges safe rides home.

Akula Kalyani is one of the 1,531 students the trust has supported since 2003. Her father worked as a security guard while she studied inside that converted water tank. Today, she earns 20 lakh rupees a year as a software engineer.

The trust has produced nearly 900 diploma holders and continues mentoring around 100 students at a time. The journey starts in Class IX and doesn't end until students land jobs.

Why This Inspires

Many graduates return to teach the next generation. Soumya, now in her second year of BTech with a 9.1 CGPA, comes back to teach physics to younger students in the same classroom where she once sat.

Tanuj, a current student, already knows his path. He wants to study mechanical engineering and join the Indian Space Research Organisation, following in the footsteps of A. P. J. Abdul Kalam.

Srinivas named the trust after his father, a national award-winning teacher. What he built became both an institution and an inheritance, proving that when one person refuses to look away, patterns shift and futures multiply.