About Us
Most debate education stops at structure — how to open a speech, how to rebut, how to sound polished. UFD Education starts there and goes further. We're not interested in producing debaters who sound like everyone else. We're interested in producing thinkers who don't.
Our Philosophy
The problem isn't really about debate — it's about how children are taught to think at all. Most conventional education optimizes for arriving at the right answer, not for the ability to generate one, and that habit sets in long before anyone sets foot in a debate round. Anshuman built UFD's curriculum specifically to reverse it: not just to produce stronger debaters, but to reinstate the instinct for independent thought that the system tends to flatten out. What comes out the other side is someone who can actually function and contribute as a global citizen — which is why we think of UFD as something bigger than a debating program. It's training ground for the next generation of entrepreneurs, administrators, and policymakers, not just the next generation of debaters.
That's the whole philosophy, in one line: stop debating like Siri, start debating like Picasso.
How we got here
Every academy before UFD taught debate the same way: formats, arguments, feedback, repeat. It's a curriculum you can find for free, taught by different people in different rooms. We know, because our lead coach spent years inside that system before deciding to leave it behind.
Somewhere along the way, he noticed the same arguments circling back — the same clashes, the same structures, dressed up differently each time. So he stopped teaching them. Instead, over the last six years, he's built an entirely original curriculum from scratch — one that doesn't repeat what's already sitting on YouTube, because none of it comes from YouTube in the first place.
That's the real difference at UFD. We're not trying to teach you what to argue faster than the next academy. We're trying to change how your brain generates arguments in the first place.
We're upfront about who this is for: if you're new to debating, start elsewhere and learn the fundamentals — they're freely available, and we'll happily point you to them. Come to UFD once you've learned everything else out there and want to go further. Our beginner batch is built to be more demanding than most academies' advanced classes. And if you think you've already got it figured out, sit in on one of our intermediate sessions and try answering the questions we ask. We think you'll find it's a different level of challenge entirely.
Meet Saloni
Saloni Jaiman is UFD's founder — and, unlike the rest of us, her background isn't in debating at all. She was, however, the first person to actually imagine what UFD could become: an academy built to revolutionize how debate is taught, rather than another one teaching it the usual way.
She graduated in law from one of India's top law schools and went on to work as a legal manager at one of the country's leading institutions — a stable, well-regarded path she left behind entirely to build something in education instead. Like the coaches she'd go on to work with, Saloni saw the same gaps in the education system that we talk about elsewhere on this page: rigid, repetitive, more concerned with structure than with actually developing how a student thinks.
What she brought that made UFD possible wasn't a debating pedigree — it was the belief that this was worth building, and the discipline to build it. Through UFD's hardest early years, she held the academy together and built a business model sound enough that coaches like Anshuman could commit to teaching full-time, rather than treating it as something to do on the side. UFD exists, in its current form, because Saloni decided better education was worth dedicating her career to. We're fortunate she did.
Saloni Jaiman
Founder, UFD Education
Anshuman
Founding Coach, UFD Education
Meet Anshuman
Anshuman, our founding coach, didn't start with any advantage. He studied at a government school in Odisha and went on to earn a law degree from the National Law Institute University, Bhopal — a background far from the elite, English-medium debating circuits most top speakers come from.
What he built from there speaks for itself. He led the first-ever Indian and South Asian team to reach an Australasian Open Final — before that, the best any Indian team had managed was an Open Quarterfinal. He's competed in over 600 tournaments and remains one of the top-ranked speakers in Asia.
But the most unusual thing about Anshuman isn't the results. It's how he gets them. He doesn't prep in the conventional sense — no daily reading, no matter filing, none of the hour-a-day grind most serious debaters treat as non-negotiable. His view is that debating should be a creative process, not a labor-intensive one, and that success shouldn't require more time than a student can actually give it. If there's a case for low-effort, high-creativity debating, Anshuman is close to the best proof of it in the world — which is exactly why he's the right person to teach students who, realistically, don't have hours a day to spend on debate either.
He's also spent his career giving rather than keeping. Even at his most competitive, Anshuman's ambition was never to find the strongest teammate and win — it was to team up with a student, or a less experienced speaker, and help them get there instead. That instinct is the entire premise of our Pro-AM program. He's not a coach who wants to stay the best in the room. He wants his students to eventually beat him — a few already have — and he considers that the actual measure of whether he's done his job.
That same instinct extends beyond students. Each year, Anshuman personally trains 3 to 4 new trainers alongside him — passing on the same thinking, not just the same content — so that UFD's teaching doesn't depend on one person in one room. It's how a single coach's approach turns into an entire team capable of teaching it.
What makes UFD different
Debate is usually taught as a formula. We treat it as a discipline of thought.
Every one of our programs is built around personalized mentorship — because no two students think the same way, and no two students should be coached the same way. Before we teach a student how to argue, we spend time understanding how they already think, so the arguments we help them build are actually theirs.
This holds even in our group classes. Every week, our trainers set aside time to speak with each student individually, listen to their speeches, and work through their specific thinking one-on-one — nearly half an hour of personalized attention per student, every week, on top of the group sessions. It's not a program feature we reserve for our smallest batches. It's how we teach, full stop.
We don't compete for our age group. We compete for the strongest.
Most young debaters aim for a break at WSDC, competing against peers their own age. UFD teams aim higher — we actively seek out the toughest opposition available, regardless of who it is.
Our students have beaten top national teams from around the world, taken down major-breaking debaters from university circuits, and held their own at international open tournaments where age is no consideration at all. A UFD team of 14-year-olds walking into a room still puts opposing schools, universities, and even coaches on notice — because they know what's coming.
We're not building an academy for students who want to be good for their age. We're building one for students who want to be good, period.
Who we teach
We work with students from age 11 through 18, at every stage — from complete beginners to students ready to compete against university and Ivy League teams. Wherever you're starting from, there's a program built for exactly that stage, not a generic curriculum stretched to fit everyone.
Get in touch
Have questions about which program is right for you? We'd rather talk it through than have you guess.
📞 Phone: 7077608800
✉️ Email: upfordebateofficial@gmail.com
