Page 7 - Dr Bijaya Kumar Sahoo

BIJAYA K. SAHOO

Founder-Mentor, SAI International Education Group

A chartered accountant for whom provision of high-quality K-12 education is his life's
purpose, Dr. Bijaya Kumar Sahoo is widely credited for placing the educationally under-
served eastern state of Odisha (pop. 46 million) on the K-12 education map of India. In 2008 he
forsook a successful accountancy practice, to follow his dream of establishing an internationally
benchmarked K-12 school in Bhubaneswar, the admin capital of Odisha. Since then the CBSE-af-
filiated SAI International School (SIS) has established and consolidated its position as Odisha’s #1
day-cum-boarding school and is ranked among the Top 3 nationwide in the EducationWorld India
School Rankings 2019-20.

SIS’ rapid rise in public esteem encouraged Dr. Sahoo to promote SAI Angan (estb.2015), billed as
India’s largest preschool; the undergrad SAI International College of Commerce (SICC, 2015) and
the CBSE-affiliated SAI International Residential School (SIRS, 2018). Currently the SAI International
Group’s four institutions have an aggregate 5,260 students mentored by 756 teachers on their mus-
ter rolls.

In July 2019, Sahoo was appointed Advisor of the Odisha Adarsha Vidyalaya Sangathan with the
rank of Minister of State to establish 314 CBSE English-medium government schools in every block
across the state of Odisha.

“I was born into a family of modest circumstances with my parents experiencing great difficulty in
financing my college and accountancy education. But they believed that education has the power
to change people’s lives. I owe all my professional success to education. Therefore it was only right
that after I did well in life, I resolved to spread the light of education in society,” says Sahoo.