Dr. Bindu Subramaniam
Bindu Subramaniam is a singer, songwriter, and Co-Founder and CEO of SaPa, she co- founded the SaPa in Schools program with her brother Ambi Subramaniam in 2014.
Bindu strongly believes that music is more than a feel-good element; it is a transformational tool that should be made available to every child.
At SaPa in Schools, music education is the primary channel of bringing about large-scale transformation and has impacted over 100,000 children across India. . Bindu is building an ecosystem for music education from the ground up, a first-of-its-kind innovation for the Indian market. This involves designing the curriculum, setting the syllabus, authoring all learning material, training and empowering educators, and also convincing stakeholders of the need.
She also works with 16 plus government Schools and has provided music education to over 16,000 children free of cost. The impact has been profound; school principals reported a noticeable spike in school attendance on days when the children had SaPa classes.
In 2020, SaPa took its entire curriculum online hosting self-paced courses by some of the worldโs best musicians โ like Dr. L Subramaniam, Kavita Krishnamurti Subramaniam, Anup Jhalota, Russ Miller, and more. SaPa in Schools has partnered with The Norwegian Academy of Music, UNICEF, the Akshaya Patra Foundation, the International Society for Music Education (ISME), Fondation Royaumont, BookASmile, The Infosys Foundation, and Kulturtanke.
Bindu was one of Indiaโs first educators to develop a toddler-focused musical training module and has co-authored 15 SaPa textbooks. She was listed on GQ’s 2021 list of 25 most influential young Indians, and was named among BusinessWorldโs 40 under 40. She is a part of the Stanford Seed Transformation Program (cohort of 2020), has a master’s degree in law from London University, a master’s certificate in songwriting and music business from Berklee College of Music, a Montessori diploma, an MPhil, a PhD in Music Education.
Bindu and Ambi are now building an app for young learners between three and six years old, with a vision to teach music and build a practice habit via games, virtual stickers, and more. The app is a virtual space dedicated to SaPaโs objective: help children fall in love with music by making it fun.
Dr. Ambi Subramaniam
Hailed as “the new king of Indian classical violin” and โIndiaโs Itzhak Pearlmann,” Ambi Subramaniam has been trained by his father and guru Dr. L. Subramaniam since he was three years old. He first played the violin on-stage when he was seven years old, and in 1999, played to an audience of 200,000. He also played as part of the 2008 Commonwealth Youth Gamesโ opening, in Pune.
Ambi has performed both as a soloist and along with his father at some of the most prestigious venues across the world. Some of his performances include the Royal Festival Hall, London, the Madison Square Garden, Chicago’s Millennium Park for the Chicago World Music Festival, the Theatre de la Ville in 2017 (where he was the youngest Indian soloist to perform), and more. He has performed with the Leipzig Philharmonic Orchestra, Orchestra Nationale du Lille, Sinfonia Baltica, the Kwazulu Natal Symphony, the Seattle Symphony, and the Fairfax Symphony Orchestra. In 2016, he recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios.
Along with his sister Bindu, Ambi runs SaPa, which teaches music to over 30,000 children. He has co-authored over 20 textbooks in total, including Indiaโs first series of textbooks dedicated to teaching the Carnatic violin. He has also conducted masterclasses in Norway, Sri Lanka, Spain, The Netherlands, Germany, and others.
Ambi has learnt the Western classical piano & violin and received an LTCL in the violin from Trinity College. He was recently a featured soloist in the background score of the Bollywood film Sardar Udham, composed by Shantanu Moitra. He also co-hosts the SaPa Show, which teaches global music to young children across the world. He is a youth delegate at the United Nations for the Sri Chinmoy Peace Meditation Group.
Ambi has a bachelorโs degree in business management, an MBA, and a Ph.D. on developing a global violin technique. He has received recognitions including the Ritz Icon of the Year, the Rotary Youth Award, two Global Indian Music Awards and was named among GQ’s 25 Most Influential Young Indians in 2021.
