Researchers assumed naturally occurring mentoring (also called informal mentoring) to be non-existent among Indian school teachers. Therefore, in order to promote mentoring among them development of a program by organisations, which is called formal mentoring, has been suggested. However, the success of formal mentoring is related to collegiality and equality which is common in the West than in Asia. The hierarchical Asian culture was found to affect its outcome in previous research. Also, it is important to understand the concept of informal mentoring first, which is vague and highly contextual, if one wishes to promote formal mentoring. Therefore, this research scrutinises the context among Indian teachers for the (1) existence and concept of ‘informal mentoring’, (2) familiarisation with the term ‘mentoring’, (3) demographic factors which may affect the extent of informal mentoring received, (4) level of satisfaction with the present continuous professional development (CPD) practices, and (5) perceived preferences for informal mentoring, formal mentoring and supervision (i.e., the traditional analogous practice). A mixed-methods approach using questionnaires (N=171), semi-structured interviews (N=16) and documents (N=2) has been applied with six schools and an educational expert. The results confirm the existence of ‘informal mentoring’ among teachers and reveal its concept. The findings also illustrate that only few teachers are familiar with the term ‘mentoring’. However, the situation varies between government and private schools. The demographic variables impact negligibly on the extent of informal mentoring received. Teachers are satisfied with the present CPD practices but there is a statistical significant difference between the participating schools. 98% of the participating teachers preferred mentoring to supervision. Interestingly, private and government schools differ in their preference to informal or formal mentoring. The adoption of ‘formal mentoring’ has been argued where ‘informal mentoring’ is embraced and can be promoted without intensive modifications. However, careful planning is suggested where teachers prefer formal mentoring.