Next Toppers Founder, Owner & CEO: Who Really Runs the Brand?

Search “Next Toppers founder” on Google and you will get a mix of answers: one name here, three names there, sometimes a “CEO” title attached to someone who never claimed it. This article clears up the confusion with verified facts about the people behind one of India’s fastest-growing edtech brands. If you are new to the brand itself, start with our overview of what is Next Toppers first.

Short version first: Next Toppers was co-founded in November 2023 by three educators — Prashant Kirad, Shobhit Nirwan, and Digraj Singh Rajput. All three are listed as directors of the company that owns the platform, SPD Eduventures Private Limited. There is no publicly disclosed separate CEO; the company is founder-led.

Now, the details.

Every credible source — from Tracxn’s company profile to Indian edtech publications like LeapRoll and Sigmastory — agrees on the same three names when identifying the Next Toppers founder team. Let us look at each one.

Prashant Kirad is the most widely recognized of the three founders, and the name most people mean when they ask “who is the founder of Next Toppers in India.” No other Next Toppers founder has the same level of public recognition.

Before Next Toppers, Kirad built ExpHub, an educational YouTube channel launched in September 2020 that became one of India’s biggest Class 10 study channels. Depending on the source and reporting date, the channel is reported to have between 9.7 million and over 12 million subscribers, with total views in the hundreds of millions. His most-watched videos cover complete NCERT chapters for Class 10 Science.

Kirad’s public profile includes several notable details, drawn from multiple biography publications:

• Education: He holds a B.Tech in Computer Science from Netaji Subhas University of Technology (NSUT), Delhi, and is reported to have cleared the IIT-JEE examination on his first attempt. (His exact JEE rank is not publicly available.)
• The “Paper Leaker” nickname: Students call him “The Paper Leaker” because of his widely discussed technique of predicting likely board-exam questions by analyzing previous years’ papers. He is associated with the claim that roughly 80% of questions come from 20% of the syllabus — a framing that has made him both popular and, among some educators, controversial.
• Author: He co-authored the “One Shot Question Bank” for Class 10 Science with Educart Publications.
• Entrepreneur beyond edtech: In January 2026, he announced a food brand called Swaadly (a peanut butter company), which trade publication Indian Retailer reported reached 100,000 orders within six months.

A note on conflicting information: Kirad’s date of birth is reported inconsistently across biography sites — TechtoFacts lists 9 December 2001 (age 23 as of 2026), while TheCityCeleb lists 1996. Since no primary source confirms either, treat both with caution.

Within Next Toppers, Kirad is reported as a co-founder and director — that is the accurate description of his Next Toppers founder role. He is not publicly described as the CEO or “head” in any singular sense — he is one of three equal co-founders.

Shobhit Nirwan is a well-known Indian educator and YouTuber whose channel focuses on Class 9 and 10 board preparation. He is consistently named as a Next Toppers founder alongside Kirad and Digraj in every major publication covering the brand.

According to LeapRoll’s reporting, Nirwan received recognition in the first edition of the Times Power Icons awards — a credibility marker that the publication cites when discussing the trustworthiness of the Next Toppers brand.

Nirwan’s teaching style and large student following were a key part of the platform’s launch strategy: like the other founders, he brought an existing audience to the new company rather than building one from scratch.

Digraj Singh Rajput — affectionately called “Digraj Sir” by students — is the third co-founder. He is a popular educator known for engaging, concept-first teaching, particularly for Class 10 subjects.

Public information about Digraj is thinner than for Kirad, but his status as a Next Toppers founder and director of SPD Eduventures is consistently reported across sources including Tracxn, LeapRoll, and Sigmastory.

Anyone asking about the Next Toppers founder is usually also asking about the owner — and this question has a clean answer: the founders own it.

The legal entity behind Next Toppers is SPD Eduventures Private Limited, incorporated in Delhi on 3 November 2023. According to company-record data published by Tracxn and cited by JustWebWorld, all three founders — Prashant Kirad, Shobhit Nirwan, and Digraj Singh Rajput — are listed as directors of the company.

Critically, Tracxn lists Next Toppers as an unfunded company — it has not raised any venture capital or outside funding rounds. That means no investors hold equity stakes, and ownership sits with the founders themselves. In an Indian edtech landscape dominated by VC-backed giants, this founder-owned, bootstrapped structure is genuinely unusual and worth noting.

Confusion about the Next Toppers founder often spills into the CEO question — and this is where the internet gets messy, and where this article will not invent an answer.

There is no publicly disclosed CEO of Next Toppers. No credible source — not Tracxn, not the Indian edtech press, not the company’s own public profiles — names a chief executive officer. The company is run by its three co-founder-directors.

If you see a blog or video claiming a specific person is the “CEO of Next Toppers,” treat it with skepticism unless it cites a primary source. Founder-led companies of this size often do not have a separate CEO at all, and assigning the title to one of the founders without evidence would be speculation.

The same applies to the question “who is the head of Next Toppers.” There is no single publicly identified head; leadership is shared among the three co-founders, and no Next Toppers founder has ever claimed the title for themselves.

Since this phrasing is searched so often, here is the plain answer in one place:

• Co-founder 1: Prashant Kirad (ExpHub founder, educator, YouTuber)
• Co-founder 2: Shobhit Nirwan (educator, YouTuber, Times Power Icons honoree)
• Co-founder 3: Digraj Singh Rajput (educator, known as “Digraj Sir”)

All three co-founded the platform together in November 2023 and serve as directors of SPD Eduventures Private Limited, the company that owns and operates Next Toppers. That shared ownership is what makes the Next Toppers founder structure unusual: equal partners, no outside investors, no single boss.

Understanding the Next Toppers founder trio’s strategy helps explain the brand’s rapid rise:

1. Audience-first. Each Next Toppers founder had already spent years building a YouTube audience of students who trusted their teaching. Launching Next Toppers meant converting viewers into app users — a far cheaper path than paid advertising.

2. Affordability as philosophy. RegistrationKraft reports that Kirad, in particular, believes quality education should be affordable. Full-year batches priced at Rs. 2,500–3,000 reflect that belief — and stand in sharp contrast to traditional coaching institutes charging over Rs. 1 lakh per year.

3. Concept over memorization. Across interviews and channel content, the founders consistently describe their mission as helping students become “extraordinary, not mediocre” by learning concepts rather than memorizing — language that appears in LeapRoll’s coverage of the brand’s founding objectives.

4. Bootstrapped growth. By not raising venture capital, the founders avoided the growth-at-all-costs pressure that damaged many Indian edtech startups. Revenue reportedly grew quickly — Tracxn places the company’s revenue band at Rs. 50–100 crore for the year ending March 2025, though this is a data-provider estimate rather than an audited figure published by the company. For the full financial picture, see our detailed breakdown of Next Toppers net worth and revenue.

One mix-up deserves its own section, because it causes a lot of search confusion: ExpHub and Next Toppers are not the same thing.

ExpHub is Prashant Kirad’s personal education brand and YouTube channel, which he started in 2020 — three years before Next Toppers existed. It remains his own platform, with its own courses, content style, and audience. Next Toppers, by contrast, is a separate company (SPD Eduventures Private Limited) co-founded by Kirad together with Shobhit Nirwan and Digraj Singh Rajput.

Think of it this way: ExpHub is Kirad’s solo venture; Next Toppers is the joint venture he built with two fellow educators. The brands collaborate — Kirad teaches on both — but they have different ownership structures, different apps, and different course catalogs. When you search for “who is Prashant Kirad in Next Toppers,” the accurate answer describes his Next Toppers founder role: co-founder and director — not sole owner, and not an employee of his own ExpHub wearing a different hat.

Who is the founder of Next Toppers in India?
Next Toppers was co-founded by three Indian educators: Prashant Kirad, Shobhit Nirwan, and Digraj Singh Rajput, in November 2023.

Who is the owner of Next Toppers?
The platform is owned by its founders through SPD Eduventures Private Limited, incorporated in Delhi on 3 November 2023. The company is unfunded, meaning no outside investors own a stake.

Who is the CEO of Next Toppers?
There is no publicly disclosed CEO. The company is led by its three co-founder-directors.

Who is the head of Next Toppers?
No single head has been publicly identified. Leadership is shared among the three co-founders.

Who is the co-founder of Next Toppers?
There are three co-founders: Prashant Kirad, Shobhit Nirwan, and Digraj Singh Rajput.

Who is Prashant Kirad in Next Toppers?
Prashant Kirad is one of the three co-founders and a director of SPD Eduventures. He is also the founder of the ExpHub YouTube channel and one of India’s most-followed Class 10 educators.

When was Next Toppers founded?
November 2023. Its operating company, SPD Eduventures Private Limited, was incorporated on 3 November 2023.

Is there a single Next Toppers founder?
No. There is no single Next Toppers founder — the company was started by three co-founders together: Prashant Kirad, Shobhit Nirwan, and Digraj Singh Rajput. Any source naming only one person is incomplete.

What does each Next Toppers founder do?
All three remain active educators on the platform. Kirad leads content and strategy, Nirwan drives student engagement and brand-building, and Digraj leads Social Science teaching — alongside the wider Next Toppers teachers team that runs day-to-day batches.

Next Toppers is a founder-owned, founder-led company — three educators who turned their YouTube audiences into an edtech business without outside funding. Every Next Toppers founder remains an active teacher on the platform today. Prashant Kirad may be the most famous name attached to the brand, but the company belongs equally to all three co-founders. And if anyone tells you they know the “CEO of Next Toppers,” ask them for a source — because as of now, no credible one exists.