Ensuring enriched childhood

Esperanza, an upcoming name in the pre-schooling and child care domain that offers state-of-the-art child care facilities and has a mission to deliver consistent and high quality teaching. In an interview, Chandra Sekhar Vasi Reddi, Chairman, Esperanza shares the future plans of the company.

Ramanjit Kaur (RK): Share the inception of Esperanza?

Chandra Sekhar Vasi Reddi (CSV): We started in June 2007 with our first centre in Hyderabad. Esperanza basically has two verticals, pre-schooling and child care centres. Our child care centres work round the clock and offer quality facilities to our corporate clients. We are a unique and prominent player in pre-schooling in terms of our advanced child-friendly curriculum, and infrastructure. We also have automated pre-schools and child care centres that ensure high quality and standard services in a cost-effective way. We provide exciting facilities and latest equipment to support children in a safe and nurturing environment.

RK: What inspired the company to take the franchise route to expand its presence?

CSV: Esperanza is a brand, when compared to the other pre-school is highly standardised, technologically advanced and a beautiful concept which is rare in India so far. So, a concept like this should not be restricted to a particular city. With a dream to take it to every nook and corner of the nation, we have decided to take the franchise route. Franchising is the best way to expand aggressively as it is technically impossible to set-up multiple company owned centres across the country.

RK: How would your franchise model be different from other pre-school brands in India?

CSV: As far as our franchise model is concerned, it covers different aspects of franchising which includes launching of the franchise, products and service portfolio and support. Though our business model is very advanced and offers technological accesses to our franchisees, still launching of the franchise can be very competitive as it involves penetration into the various markets of the nation. However, our franchisees will have a competitive advantage in terms of pricing, products and service portfolio, and support system. Besides this, we have an active franchise management system, and developed software in order to offer efficient support to our franchisees.

RK: What would be the eligibility criteria to select your franchisees?

CSV: We are looking for franchisees that are passionate about this particular concept related to children, and want to open a franchise centre. To take up our franchise, an aspirant is required to have a minimum investment that may range from Rs 35 -40 lakh for the master franchise model while for unit franchises; the investment varies from Rs six lakh to Rs 10 lakh onwards. The area required to open the franchised centre ranges from 15, 00 sq. ft to 3, 000 sq. ft.

RK: What are your future plans in terms of expansion through franchising?

CSV: We are presently operating through three company owned centres in Hyderabad and now we are aiming at opening around 500 franchised centres across the nation in the next four years.