The Team
Educators, engineers, and operators who built the system — and still run it every day.
Dr. Arpita Karkare
Director & Chief Mentor, Walnut School
Credentials
This isn't a franchise company that bought an education brand.
Dr. Arpita Karkare holds a PhD from the University of Pune. She founded Walnut School with a very specific idea of what school should feel like for children — and then built the system to make that idea consistent, scalable, and repeatable.
Over 15 years, that idea became a system. Every period planned. Every assessment pre-built. Every process documented. Three campuses, 5,000 students, and a staff that doesn't burn out — because the system carries the load.
The Walnut Learning System is how that system reaches schools beyond Pune. Not as a licensing deal, but as a genuine partnership — because a system this specific only works when the people running it actually believe in it.
“Academic output increases without increasing parent or teacher burden. That's the bar. That's what the system is designed to clear.”
— Dr. Arpita Karkare, Director & Chief Mentor, Walnut School
Co-founders
Built together from day one.
Nikhil leads technology strategy across Walnut School and the Unity ERP platform. He has been instrumental in building the digital infrastructure that makes the Walnut system scalable — from the Unity platform to the tools that keep 5,000 students and their parents connected to school life.
Ravi Potnis
Co-founder & Director, Operations
Walnut School
Ravi oversees operations across all three Walnut School campuses. His focus is on the systems and processes that keep a school running predictably — admissions, facilities, staff coordination, and the day-to-day execution that turns a strong academic system into a well-run institution.
Walnut School
The team that runs the system.
Avantee Joshi
Head of Academics & Research
Avantee leads Walnut's R&D function — the team that designs every lesson plan, worksheet, assessment, and academic accelerator that partner schools receive. She ensures the curriculum stays current, coherent, and age-appropriate across every grade.
Snehal Joshi
Head, Technical
Snehal manages the technical delivery and implementation of the Walnut system across campuses. She bridges the academic and operational sides — ensuring that digital content, Unity ERP rollouts, and teacher training happen on schedule and without friction.
Naresh Tak
Head, Accounts & Finance
Naresh oversees financial operations across Walnut School's campuses, including fee management, payroll, and compliance. His work with Unity ERP's finance modules directly informs how partner schools set up their own financial workflows.
Unity ERP
The engineers behind the platform.
Sankara architects the Unity ERP platform — the operational backbone used by 10+ institutions and 100,000+ students. With deep EdTech domain expertise, he builds systems that scale with growing institutions while prioritising data security and a user experience that works for teachers, not just admins.
Chinmay brings enterprise engineering depth to educational technology. As co-founder of Unity ERP, he has built the platform's core into a system capable of sub-second response times under thousands of concurrent users — and AI-powered analytics across 10,000+ assessments per year.
Walnut School — The Original
Three campuses in Pune. Every system feature proven here first.
Walnut School Shivane
Pune, Maharashtra · CBSE
Walnut School Fursungi
Pune, Maharashtra · CBSE
Walnut School Wakad
Pune, Maharashtra · CBSE
A Shared Legacy
- ✓Pioneers of the Bagless School concept in India (Nursery to Grade 10)
- ✓Three campuses — Shivane, Fursungi, Wakad
- ✓System-driven approach: every period, every day, every week planned by a dedicated R&D team
- ✓Technology-first: Unity ERP manages everything from admissions to learning outcomes
- →This isn't a franchise company that bought an education brand
- →The founder built the system from scratch and still runs schools on it
- →You are partnering with the source, not a licensee
- →Every feature in the system exists because it was needed at Walnut first