About Us

About Us

The Shikshana Prasaraka Mandali, founded in 1888, is one of the pioneer Educational Societies in the State of Maharashtra. It has almost 133 years of contribution to the development of quality education by establishing Institutions in various places like Pune, Mumbai, Solapur, Chiplun, Nagothane, Lodhivali, Bangalore etc. and imparting education from Kindergarten to Post-graduate level and through Management Institutes and Research Centres.

Founded in 1888, Shikshna Prasaraka Mandali is one of the pioneers of educational societies in our state. The institution since its inception is determined to building an environment that encourages the spirit of free thinking, thus imparting quality education to more than 45,000 students. It has almost 133 years of contribution to the development of quality education by establishing educational institutions including pre-primary, primary, secondary and higher secondary schools, colleges for Arts, Science and Commerce, a school for hearing impaired children, a therapeutic drug monitoring laboratory, an institute carrying out research in Ayurvedic and Herbal Medicine and management institutes.

SP Mandali was founded by four teachers— Krishnaji Ballal Dongre, Damodar Sadashiv Karambelkar, Ramchandra Bhikaji Kulkarni, and Ramchandra Gopal Deo. The eminent educationist of Maharashtra, Vishnushastri Chiplunkar, was a strong guiding spirit in this initiative.

The first educational institution, the Nutan Marathi Vidyalaya came up in 1883 in Pune, and subsequently the parent body was institutionalized in 1888. However the catalyst ingredient for starting their first college, in 1913, was the eminent freedom fighter, Lokmanya Tilak. He managed to help the Mandali get a 99-year lease on a 25-30 acre plot of land in Pune for a token sum of Re 1 where the college was set up. Subsequently, the Sir Parashurambhau College was built, largely through a donation of around Rs 3 lakh from the Patwardhan family.

The trust then expanded its activities to Mumbai, where it founded the Ruia College in 1937, through a donation of Rs 3 lakh from the Ruia family. The Poddar College of commerce was then set up, likewise through financial support from the Ramnath Poddar family. Today, the trust runs 45 institutions including one in the electronic city campus of Bangalore. The Haribhai Deokaran High School at Solapur is more than hundred years old. The vision of the four founding teachers was to give quality education in Marathi— at both school and college levels, which was in tune with the spirit of the freedom struggle.

Our institutions have always delivered the best of international level education in their local language. To that end, we have generated a lot of high quality educational material in Marathi language. As far as quality of our education is concerned, all our colleges are A+ in the accreditation given by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council. In the past years, we estimate that 12 lakh students have passed through our institutions.