Preschool Business Guarantees Maximum Revenues

With several education brands preferring women entrepreneurs as their franchisees, the category of preschool and daycare centres have emerged as a suitable option than K-12 model for the fairer sex.  Lina Ashar, Founder, Kangaroo Kids Education Limited (KKEL), shares more on how preschool has attracted womenpreneurs.

How are preschools and daycare centres more profitable than a K-12 or supplementary sector for women entrepreneurs?

 KKEL offers entrepreneurship opportunities to young women in the country in the form of preschool franchise. We offer special discounts to our existing women franchisees who want to open multiple centres within a region. Our preschool business enables women entrepreneurs to maximise the revenue and minimise the risk via multiple KKEL products (KITDR, Day care and Toddler programmes). This allows for a smooth transition from a house wife to business women through exposure across domains (finance, operations, legal, manpower, marketing and curriculum) in a relatively stress-free manner as compared to a K-12 or supplementary sector.

What is your strategy to decide where to set up preschools/daycare centres? Which is your preferential location for operation – residential areas or commercial and why?

 At KKEL, we adhere to the belief that all children have a right to a safe, developmentally appropriate environment, which promotes each child's social, emotional, physical and cognitive development. Any location that conforms to this is something that we evaluate using our internal scoping criteria, prior to entering into a franchise partnership.

You have experienced very rapid growth since you opened. Is the company profitable? What have been your biggest growing pains?

KKEL owned, Kangaroo Kids and Billabong High International Schools, the pioneers in new format schooling and learning methodology, have initiated a movement that has changed the face of pre-school and high school education in India. Given the education landscape in India, real estate and its cost and the right teachers have been the biggest challenges we face during our expansion.

Do you allow utilisation of same location for multiple revenue generation (e.g.: running Montessori or play school in the morning, daycare centre or crèche in the day time and exta activities or play area in the evening at same location) activity?

KKEL's business model ensures that the centre is optimally utilised for the franchisee to derive maximum benefit. This translates into a 12-14 hours operative model, which encompasses school, daycare as well as afterschool activities, all derived and rolled out with the same adherence to innovation and quality that's the hallmark of KKEL.

Do you provide trained staff to the franchisees?

Since our franchisees are our core business partners, we ensure that we support them across the whole business spectrum, including:

*  Startup orientation

*  Coordinator training

* Staff recruitment

*  Intensive teacher training which includes both theoretical and practical

*  Marketing and communication

*  Ongoing refresher training for all teachers

How is teachers training and auditing important for a play school and what do you do to cope up with it?

The backbone of KKEL is a commitment to continuous innovation and quality assurance. Our QAG (Quality Assurance and Guidance) is robust and all encompassing from thought to taught to feedback, the whole journey of design to implementation is embedded with strategies that allow for the same zenith of quality standards to be adopted, imbibed and delivered across our schools. We have continuous monitoring and course corrections plus enhancements of each and every aspect of a preschool, be it infrastructure or teacher assessments or curriculum delivery or even parent interactions.

We were the first preschool brand to introduce an ECCE programme - the KITDR (Kangaroo Kids Institute for Teacher Development and Research) in the country, imbibing the principles of Andragogy - learning strategies focused on adults, to ensure that we had the right kind of delivery of our world class curriculum to our children.

Five must haves for women franchisees of your brand to become a successful entrepreneur.

Location,  startup investment, desire to be a part of a growing plus organised industry, willingness to make a difference to children and loads of passion are the five must haves for a women franchisee of KKEL. Our biggest measures of success are mothers of children who attend our schools, and who return to us as franchisees, notable examples being in Hyderabad, Kolkata and Mumbai.

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