Hailing from Tiruchy, STEM educator Aashik Rahman has always been curious about how things work. As a child, he trained pigeons to follow commands, built bicycle gadgets, and made boat models, early expressions of engineering thinking.
Despite facing financial hardships, Aashik became the first graduate in his family and went on to build projects that bridged the gap between theory and real-world problems.
One such project, Drone Soldier for Defence, shifted his focus from simply creating technology to using it with purpose, leading him to co-found Propeller Technologies in 2015 with a focus on robotics and STEM education.
The founder of Zen Store, a career concept store for children, speaks to DT Next about the impact of STEM education, its role in bridging gaps in India’s education system, and more.
What defining moment convinced you that hands-on technology education could change lives at scale?
The defining moment for me was seeing how hands-on learning transformed students who otherwise struggled in traditional classrooms. A robot we developed, ZAFI, was repurposed to deliver food and medicines in hospital isolation wards.
When I saw 65 ZAFI robots deployed across hospitals in Tamil Nadu and recognised by the State government, I realised that practical STEM education could move beyond classrooms.
What gaps in India’s traditional education system did you first notice, and how did those insights shape the design of your Creator & STEM Labs?
The biggest gap I noticed was the dominance of rote learning, with a lack of focus on application or problem-solving. Students were learning concepts, but rarely understood how they connected to real life.
Our Creator & STEM Labs were designed to address this gap. We focused on experiential learning, where students build, experiment, fail, and improve.
Today, this approach has reached nearly 496 schools and impacted close to four lakh students.
Working across both urban and rural schools, what differences in access, mindset, and outcomes have surprised you the most?
What surprised me most is that curiosity exists everywhere. Rural students may lack access to resources, but they often show stronger contextual thinking.
They naturally connect learning to real-life problems in their communities, such as agriculture or water management.
Once given access to hands-on tools, rural students consistently exceed expectations.
How did the Covid 19 period reshape your approach to problem-solving, curriculum design, and student-led innovation?
The pandemic changed everything. It made relevance non-negotiable. We redesigned our curriculum to focus more on real-world problem-solving, empathy, and rapid innovation.
Seeing students apply what they learned to immediate challenges, from healthcare to safety, reinforced my belief that education must prepare learners not just for exams, but for crises and responsibility.
Designing STEM modules for visually impaired children is rare. What were the key challenges, and how did you reimagine learning without visual dependency?
Designing robotics education for visually impaired students required us to completely rethink our assumptions. Traditional STEM learning is heavily visual, but learning itself doesn’t have to be.
With support from Amazon, we developed India’s first robotics curriculum for visually impaired students, focusing on tactile, auditory, and sensory-based learning. We trained over 150 visually challenged students.
Looking ahead five to ten years, how do you envision the next phase of India’s STEM education movement, and where does your work fit into that larger ecosystem?
I believe the next phase of India’s STEM education movement will be inclusive, experiential, and purpose-driven. Learning will move beyond elite institutions and become a mass movement.
Through Propeller Technologies, initiatives like the Tamil Nadu Robotics League, and the launch of Zen Store, my focus
remains on empowering one million young minds and positioning India as a global STEM capital.