Who you work with#
InspireMinds works on behaviour change in young people, using games, stories, yoga, reflection and design thinking rather than lectures. Its method runs Learn, Experience, Reflect, Apply, Grow.
It has a real product suite: four illustrated books — CricketYogi teaches the eight limbs of yoga through cricket, Happy Yogi covers nervous-system regulation, Yogic Science links anatomy to sustainability, Wealthy Yogi builds money habits — plus a nutrition game and Swadhyaya, a 21-day self-inquiry journal. It reports reaching more than 2,500 children across 7 or more states.
The situation#
All of that is built for children. InspireMinds now wants to work with colleges, and young adults are a different problem.
The need is real. InspireMinds cites Deloitte’s 2025 Gen Z and Millennial Survey, which found that 94% of Gen Z respondents in India rate on-the-job learning as the most impactful thing for career progression, and reports that a third of Indian Gen Z respondents experience frequent stress or anxiety during their studies.
What is going wrong#
Two things, and the second is the more interesting one.
First, a nineteen-year-old will not engage with a picture book written for a ten-year-old. The method may transfer to college students. The material does not.
Second, and this is the real opening: InspireMinds cannot yet show that behaviour changed. Its strongest reported figures are that 91% gained the intended nutritional and wellness knowledge and 87% learned more than two food or nutrient concepts. Read those carefully. Both measure what someone knows after a session.
InspireMinds’ own first principle is that children can know what is right and still not do it. So its evidence measures the thing it says is not the problem. Closing that gap — showing a real, observed change in what people actually do — is the most valuable thing a student team could build for this organisation.
Why it is not fixed yet#
Because measuring behaviour is much harder than measuring knowledge, and much harder than it looks.
- people over-report good habits and under-report bad ones, so asking them is not enough
- almost any intervention works for three weeks. Novelty alone produces a result, and the interesting question is week seven
- campus life fights you: irregular timetables, exam cycles, peer norms and hostel routines all overwhelm an individual’s intentions
- observing behaviour without surveilling people is a genuine design constraint, not a formality
Skills and Expertise#
- Branch — CS and IT for the intervention and data, Electronics for sensing and wearables. Open to any branch with an interest in behavioural science or statistics.
- Technical skills — Experiment design, measurement instrumentation, mobile and wearable data capture, time-series and statistical analysis, privacy-preserving data handling, interface design for daily use.
- Other skills — Research ethics and consent, running a study with human participants, recruiting and retaining them, reporting a result that disappoints the sponsor.