Changing The Public Education System and Importance of Ages 0-6 | Raghav Himatsingka DSH #237

First five years, the first five years of one's life has everything to do with how the next 80 years turn out to be.

So that's what we do.

That's our mission at Raising Superstars.

We help parents realize the full potential of their kids.

That's so powerful.

When I get home, I'm gonna text my mom and ask her what she did with me.

That came out alright, but like you said, I was never an A student.

Welcome back to the show, guys.

Got a very special episode.

He flew in all the way from India.

Raghav Himatsinka.

How's it going, man?

Very well.

Thanks for having me, Sean.

Absolutely.

I gotta say, dude, not a lot of people come here from India.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

And I'm really glad that I could make it.

Yeah, so I did some research on you.

I saw you were on Shark Tank India.

And I was like, whoa, this guy's up to something interesting.

So I'd love to hear about your company.

So...

I just give you a brief introduction for your viewers.

My name is Raghav.

I'm a husband.

I'm a father.

and I started a company called Raising Superstars three years ago in the middle of

logged inside our houses.

And what we do in our company is

we are a mobile app-based company where we are on a mission to raise an entire new generation of kids

who have the power to be whoever they want to be as they grow up and truly realize their own potential.

Now,

the reason I started the company was through my own personal experiences.

So essentially

I grew up in literally the poorest state of India in a remote town and

coming to the US or like you know so I went to Stanford

and we used to hear about these universities, Harvard, Stanford and it used to just sound like a distant dream like

going to the moon or something, right?

But I was fortunate enough to have made it.

But

throughout my growing up years,

what I realized is that I was much, very much a struggler, right?

I would put in so much hard work to just to get a little bit of results.

Whereas being at institutes like Stanford and even in India,

some of the schools that I attended, I was surrounded by really smart kids who would not put in that much effort and still get the best grades and have all the time for hobbies, etc., sports.

And I would always wonder, what is it that these guys have that I don't have, right?

They come from the same backgrounds, they have the same families, it's not like they have any special genes.

And while I was at Stanford, I actually

discovered, in fact, I read or I heard Bill Gates say that the first five years, the first five years of one's life has everything to do with how the next 80 years turn out to be.

And that just literally blew my mind, right?

Like, how is that possible that the first five years could be so important?

And that's when I started digging deeper into this whole concept.

And what I realized is that 90%

of a person's brain gets wired in the first six years of our lives.

Wow.

And that

should scare people.

That should scare people.

The reason it should scare people is because

imagine what happens at the age of six.

At the age of six is when the child has just started going to school, right?

And what science says is that even before a child has started going to school, 90% of the child's brain is already wired up, right?

Which means that if you think about it if you are suppose constructing the Eiffel Tower or the pyramid and instead of starting with the base foundations you're already at 90% before you get to start

right yeah it's crazy so so

so what that told me is that the first few years are essential for parents to give their children the opportunities, their babies, their toddlers, the opportunities so that the child can realize the full potential

in their life, right?

So that's what we do.

That's our mission at Raising Superstars.

We help parents realize the full potential of their kids.

That's so powerful.

When I get home, I'm going to text my mom and ask her what she did with me.

I came out all right.

But like you said, I was never an A student.

Yeah.

I had to work hard to even get Bs.

So

maybe there were some things the first six years she could have done differently.

And now that I'm learning this, I'm going to implement that with my kids.

So that's really powerful.

So how exactly does your app or program train kids the first six years?

What are the activities they're doing?

So it's actually surprisingly simple, right?

It's very, very simple.

The things that we do, the way that our model works is that you download the app, you sign up for one of our programs.

The app is for the parent, right?

So it's absolutely screen-free for the child.

We tell the parent, we give them weekly plans, we tell them, give them video instructions.

So, there are videos on a daily basis.

We tell the parent, okay, this is what you're going to do, and they just have to go and do that activity with that little baby, or toddler, or even an older child.

And it takes less than five minutes a day.

We have a proprietary framework which we call the prodigy framework, which literally encompasses every human skill and ability

known to humans,

known to us.

And we bring it down to the baby level and we try and build the foundations of the child.

Without any pressure, there's no testing, there's no benchmarking,

there's no pressure on the parent or the child in terms of, okay, this is the milestone that you have to achieve.

It's all about giving opportunities.

So what we say is that we give you a platform, we give you a way to give opportunities to your child and it's It's great if your child picks up 70 out of the 100 opportunities rather than not getting those opportunities opportunities at all, right?

So there's no benchmarking, there's no pressure, there's no testing, absolutely.

But that's how it works.

I love that, man.

Those testing, I still have nightmares about some of those tests.

Absolutely.

I hated tests.

I hated those, you know, all night working hard.

And

the reason I'm doing this, in fact, the reason that I got into it was because when I became a father, I didn't want my son to struggle like I struggled in life, right?

And

when you do these, when you put in that five minutes a day your child will have it so much easier when they grow up because they can get their assignments done faster they can just pick up things learn things faster and it's so much less stress as they grow you you know like how life is right today in schools high schools college admission etc etc we don't want we don't want that stress right so it's uh so yeah it's all about um

getting rid of all of those nightmares that you were talking about.

Yeah, it's definitely stressful.

Did you you have to take the SATs in India?

Not in India, but I actually studied here in the US.

So I went to undergrad at Georgia Tech, and then I got my master's at Stanford.

So I did take the SATs, but to come here,

not for that.

I, in fact,

took the IIT JEE, that's the exam that we have in India for engineering.

And I failed that.

So I literally failed

to get into any college in the entire world, right?

Like when I was applying to colleges, I didn't get into any college in India.

I didn't get into any other college anywhere in the world except for Georgia Tech.

And I'm really like grateful that Georgia Tech accepted me.

And it was, yeah, I was going through some bad times back in the day, but yeah.

So that's like some the genesis of where all of this began because I didn't want anybody to go to go through all that.

Yeah, it's a big change.

Now, is it true you can raise a baby's IQ?

Because it's been previously thought that IQ was a set number and you couldn't raise it.

Well,

so

that's a difficult question to answer because

IQ by itself can, I don't think it can be tested when

at a level of a baby or a toddler, right?

So it's difficult to answer whether you can raise the IQ of a child.

But what you can do is

you can look at anecdotal data to see if it makes sense to you.

So

if you'll allow me, I can explain.

So let me ask you a different question.

So

if you, if,

can you speak Russian or Japanese?

No, right.

If you had to learn Russian or Japanese at today's age, in today's, at your age, right?

Do you think you could be fluent, like native level fluent?

It would take years.

And you would probably still not get there, right?

In fact, it's said that there are some words in Japanese, which if you were not born in Japan or lived in Japan before the age of nine months, you would never be able to say those words with the correct native fluency.

Wow.

Right?

So what this means is that, but babies, babies and toddlers, they can learn multiple languages and they can learn it so fast within a few months at that age and nobody's even teaching them.

They're just like picking up things, right?

Yeah.

So what this means is that whether you can raise IQ or not, we don't know, but there are things that babies and toddlers can learn, which adults cannot, right?

And there's a whole scientific process to it.

So if you'll allow me, I can quickly explain how this works.

So the scientific process is essentially that when a baby is born, every baby at birth, right?

We say that

every baby is born a genius, but not just that.

Every baby, every healthy baby at birth has more potential than any other person who has ever lived on planet Earth.

Whether it's Leonardo da Vinci, whether it's einstein whether it's lebron james any other person who has ever lived on planet earth right so the way it works is that a baby has 100 billion neurons in inside their brain right and these neurons are basically like brain cells but they are not connected with each other there it's like a blank slate right it's not connected As the baby comes into the world, everything is new to them.

So they are listening to new sounds, they are seeing new sights, they're new smells, and the brain cells start firing, right?

And they start forming connections, which are called synapses.

And it quickly becomes very, very dense inside their brain.

And this happens for the first two years.

But after a while, as the baby starts growing older, the brain becomes very convoluted.

It becomes really messy and it doesn't like that.

So it wants to become efficient.

So what the brain starts doing is it starts cutting off these synapses,

which is called

synaptic pruning.

So that's the process.

It starts cutting off these synapses, which is essentially like your brain is now getting wired into what it would be as you grow older, right?

So it's almost like you are losing abilities that did not get developed at that age, right?

So if you can provide your child the right opportunities,

and build that foundation so that the right kind of synapses are retained or are created then as they grow older they'll find that natural ability to to sort of achieve to sort of learn anything that they want right wow that's fascinating so your kids are going to be geniuses absolutely not right

no pressure no testing and uh what we always say is that we provide opportunities it's up to the child how much they they pick up what they want to be right so there are yeah no pressure on any baby anywhere in the world to be a genius.

Wow.

That's interesting that you have this point of view because I know Asians and Indians take education testing very seriously, but it seems like you have sort of a different approach to testing.

Yeah,

yeah, I think so.

Like, and a lot of it has to come from my own personal experiences, right?

Like, I hated testing.

I hated that pressure.

I, I,

few years of my life was like really, really terrible, really dreadful, right?

I didn't get anywhere.

I didn't get into admissions into college, and it didn't really help me, right?

So yeah, so it does come from those personal experiences.

But talking about Indians and Asian parents,

I mean, so I was looking through some data, right?

Indians in America, for example, are doing really well.

If you see their income levels, it's twice of the national, the Indian community has twice the national average in income.

80% of Indians in America have at least a four-year degree.

I mean they

they're they're punching above their weight in lot of things and I think it does come down to the the family structure the parenting styles etc but I don't think it is to do with with necessarily testing or or achieving something I think

what Indian parents what they've realized i don't i don't know if they consciously know it but what they've realized is that with babies with kids what is important is to to respect

every feeling of the child but not every behavior

right so important it's important that every feeling of the child is recognized there's empathy towards it but it does not mean that we will we will allow for every behavior

right

so After all, they're still a child.

There's a reason they cannot vote.

So it is the job of the parent to guide them there is of course in in Indian and Asian cultures there's a lot of family bonding those relationship building those selflessnesslessness that sacrifice all of those things go into

into raising the child I think yeah I think in America I saw this chart that you were talking about income by race wasn't Indian number one Yeah, so yeah,

I think so.

So

from what I saw, it's $120,000 per year for Indians, and then the next one was at $95,000.

Yeah, huge gap, man.

Yeah, I mean, I don't, yeah,

I don't think it, I don't see it as an Indian versus non-Indian or any other race.

Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's that big a deal.

But there must be some type of correlation between the education component because they take it very seriously, and now they're also making the most money.

Yeah, well,

historically, we've not been a very rich country as well.

And

one of the ways for people to get out of their current situation is through education.

A lot of parents,

and this is just like from personal experience, I can tell you, a lot of parents see their child as also

being

a way to

achieve dreams that they themselves couldn't achieve, right?

Because they feel that they're stuck in

a life where they have a a ceiling to how much more they can achieve.

And there's no way to go beyond that.

But I think that's also changing in India now because the last 15 to 20 years there's been a lot of growth, there's been a lot of development.

But yeah, traditionally,

India has had that disadvantage in the past.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Why did you decide to go back to India?

You studied at Stanford.

Did you not want to stay in America after?

Well, for me, it was so I'm very, very close to my family.

Yeah.

And I think I had equal opportunities in India as well,

professionally speaking, but mainly to be, I have a very large family as well, but mainly to be close to family and then be able to do something back in my home country,

taking the education that I have,

trying to see.

So Stanford, I mean, one thing if Stanford teaches you is that it's possible for ordinary people to do extraordinary things.

And

I'm trying to contribute in my own way.

That's cool.

Where was the food better at?

U.S.

or India?

Oh,

India has great food.

I've heard, I've heard.

I've only had American

food.

So I don't know.

Yeah, I've had like American Indian food and it's good.

I can't even imagine how good it is there.

Yeah, well, India has great food everywhere.

And

it's also different in different parts of India.

Surprise, yeah.

So if you,

yeah, even like, yeah, I mean, even different cities have different food, right?

Because I moved cities within India as well, and I didn't know this, but it's different.

And I move cities, and I'm like, whoa,

it's different.

Yeah, it doesn't taste the same.

So you mentioned you grew up in a poor city, but now you're in a better city.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So

yeah.

When I was growing up, we were in

the poorest state in India.

I wouldn't say that my family was poor, poor, but we were in the poorest state of India.

But then I ended up going to schools, high schools in the bigger cities.

Got it.

And that was able to help get your family out of poverty?

No, so as I said, my family was not necessarily like poor, poor.

But yeah,

my dad also had a challenging life in the initial years, but he did well later on.

Nice.

What was it like going on Shark Tank?

Because that's one of my favorite shows, man.

That's awesome that you went on there.

So Shark Tank was unbelievably amazing.

It was fun.

But I think most importantly for Shark Tank, See, the thing that we're trying to do, right, it's something which sounds too good to be true.

When I say that, oh, you can unlock your child's hidden potential, you can awaken your child's unconscious genius,

these kind of things, right?

It just sounds like, okay, is it a scam?

Is it a gimmick?

What is it, right?

But the reason that we use these words is to literally shake the parent up to pay attention because it's important.

There's a small window of opportunity before the child grows up and then they lose that window.

And it's scientifically proven that it's real, right?

But people

have these doubts.

When you go on a platform like Shark Tank, A, it gives you immediate visibility.

So Shark Tank in India, by the way, is hugely popular.

It's very mainstream.

It's commercial.

So it's not like a niche sort of a show, right?

So it gives you that platform, that publicity, and that credibility as well.

So we got a couple of our toddlers who've done our programs come on the show and they showed the entire country what

a few months of our program could unlock for them, right?

Wow, that's cool.

Yeah, so they showed it live on the show and

it gave us that sort of credibility.

And we also ended up getting one of the largest deals on the show in that season.

Wow.

So, what was the deal?

So, I mean, I would have to convert.

Oh, it's different currency.

Yeah, different currency.

But

overall, it was just an unbelievable experience.

It's a huge, big, big, grand production.

And yeah, how nervous were you?

Were you fing up?

I was.

So it's completely like unrehearsed.

and it's uh it's yeah, so you don't you've not met the sharks before and you don't know what's going to happen, right?

So they give you literally like a three-minute intro pitch that is that is scripted that you can rehearse and then you can just say it and then it's unscripted, right?

Got it.

It took me like forever to learn my script because I'm just so bad at memorizing.

But so yeah, I was super nervous.

And then there were some glitches in it during filming, so we had to like redo it.

I was really nervous but it was fun.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

What do you plan on using the money for?

And

so no, so this was two years ago and we've also raised more

rounds of money from other investors after that.

And our goal is to take our company global, right?

So we already have customers from 150 countries now.

Wow.

Yeah.

So we're a three-year-old company.

As I was saying, we started during,

but we have customers around the world.

And yeah, our mission is to continue to grow and to literally like

educate an entire generation of parents to sort of raise their kids with the knowledge that the first five to six years are so important.

And then if they're not doing anything about it, it's their own conscious choice.

At least we want that education to go out there so that parents know about it.

We want that message to go there.

That's such a powerful message, right?

Because most people don't even know about that.

The six years.

I didn't know about it until I knew about it.

After you had your kid or no,

so yeah, so

right at the time that I had my kid, right?

And it was just such a sort of

nervous sort of a phase where I was like, okay, I want to be able to do everything I can for my child.

And that's when I started learning about it,

started digging deeper.

And of course, now our company has a lot of experts.

We have like a whole team that plans the programs.

We partner with a lot of people as well.

But at that time, I've had to self-educate myself on what is going on inside the child's mind.

Right.

Yeah.

Now, how do you feel about homeschooling versus public education?

Do you have any opinion on which is better?

So

homeschooling can be better, but it's a huge commitment.

And it's of course not for everybody, right?

So

unless you are ready to do that,

it's almost like professional parenting.

So your profession becomes your parenting, right?

It's not for most people.

Let's put it like that, right?

And traditional schools also have their own advantages because they can, when you have more kids, you can provide more infrastructure, more opportunities.

You have that social angle, social aspects, sports,

extracurriculars, et cetera, et cetera, which homeschools can miss out on.

In our programs, our programs are only five minutes a day, right?

So it's not a school replacement.

It's not an alternative to schools.

It's just five minutes a day.

So we encourage parents to send their kids to school, but also put in that five to ten minutes in a day to

make sure that all bases are covered.

Yeah, that's nothing.

It's crazy how quick those babies can learn.

Just five minutes a day is all they need.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

So it has to also do with

how their brains are structured, right?

So do you know

how what's a left brain versus right brain?

Logical versus like a magical brain.

Absolutely, absolutely.

So we so any person who is little bit on the creative side, right?

So somebody who's like a good artist or a musician, we say, oh, this person is right brained.

But actually, biologically speaking, that's not true.

biologically speaking every adult human being is left brain really yeah there could be little there could be more right brain in comparison to other adults but they are all left brain wow but a child a baby a toddler is right brain when they're born right and if you think about it it makes absolute sense why that is so left brain as you rightly said it's a logical analytical brain where you reason through experience right right brain is abstract thinking right

without sort of any logical analysis it makes sense because if you think about it when a human baby is born

and if they have to think how would they think if they have to think through experience they don't have any experience right yeah they cannot make any logical conclusion or analysis So they have to be right brained.

If they weren't, we would not have survived as a species for so long.

So babies and toddlers are right-brained, adults are left-brained.

Now, think about who makes the curriculum for kids, adults, right?

Right.

But so, a left-brained person is making the curriculum for a right-brained person.

It never works, it doesn't work, which is why education starts at six years of age when the child has started to become left-brained.

So, that is when they start, the adult can connect with the child.

Okay, now you're making sense.

Before that, the only thing

there are only two things that works with a baby which parents do

music

and art right right nothing else because

music and art are both right brain activities right they're creative yeah and a parent is able to relate with the child and the child is able to relate back to the parent in music and art but everything else a parent doesn't know how to teach problem solving to a baby or toddler they don't know because they're thinking left brain and the child completely rejects that.

Yeah.

Right?

Wow.

That's so fascinating.

Yeah.

I never, I always thought I was right-brained because I was logical.

No, so you logical?

Logical would be left-brained.

Yeah.

Oh, got it.

Yeah.

I always thought I was that.

And then I always thought my girlfriend was the other one because she's more creative and stuff.

But we're both the same, apparently.

No, so she would be more right-brained, but biologically speaking, in the correct terminology, all adults would be left-brained.

Got it.

Wow.

Or gov.

It's been fun, man.

Learned a lot.

Can't can't wait to to use some of this when i have my kid man i'm excited i'll definitely be a customer anything you want to close off with or promote oh no thank you so much sean uh and yeah uh our uh program programs are listed on our website it's www.raising superstars.com so if you guys want to check it out uh please do so and it's been great uh coming on your show thank you so much so much safe flight back man thanks for coming on and thanks for watching guys see you next time