A pre-school is a one step before the start of formal schooling and set the base for child's future growth by giving him right amount of learning, fun, love and imagination in partnership with parent. This school brings lots of joy for child, parents and staff associated with the school and at the same time equally rewarding for the owner of the school, both in terms of personal satisfaction of contributing to the growth of young generation and also monetary since this is a high ROI business. Not much hassles of registration and compliance but just take care to provide a safe, learning and caring environment.

Gone are the days when class rooms were boring and teachers used to read through books; preschool is a concept that allow younger once to explore things on their own. Sometimes this happen through the environment created in the class room by teachers and sometimes this happen through the curiosity of the child. It is a big shift from the old way of learning and therefore gained lots of popularity world-wide. In India this concept started few decades back but gain popularity with the entry of organized Pre-School chains in last decade. These schools gain further strength due to young India generation looking for best of everything for their child and started exploring this new concept of learning. Introduction of integrated model of school cum day care further helped in this together with other socio economic changes. All of these changes have put the preschool industry on a rapid growth, which also saw entry of big corporate names and investment from private individual as well.

Low Investment

With increase in demand, small school setup is now a lucrative business model specifically for women community who always wanted to do something on their own but cost of starting a formal school or any other business was prohibited. A preschool can be started with very low investment (can range from 2 lac to 50 lac) and has a high social image. Initial investment in the school can be recovered in 1-3 years' timeframe depending on nearby competition, how school is promoted, what is the uniqueness that school has to offer etc. Catchment area of school is generally note more than 3-4 Kilometers, therefore it is good to have school in populated area with competition rather than at an isolated location to recover the investment fast and also have good ROI from the start. Sometime it is also preferable to have school in newly developing area to craft the school brand name slowly and reap the benefit in long run.

Selection of model-Own Brand vs Franchise

It takes time and effort to decide, which model to choose for preschool. Should this be through a franchise model, which ensure immediate recognition of school and avoid hassles of designing curriculum, online presence, marketing and others, or should this be own brand, which will gain some time to get recognized in local area and will entail lots of effort right from start to setup everything from scratch. However it all depends on one's own strength and weakness, perception of parents, income level of parents, availability of trained staff and other factors. If one have less knowledge and just want to manage the center, than it is good to have a franchise model which will take care of the curriculum, marketing, teacher training etc. If one already have some experience and want to invest less amount than own brand could be a good idea. Both the model has pros and cons and a thorough analysis is required before selecting a model. A right selection at this stage will lead to the overall success of school.

How is it rewarding?

A preschool business is rewarding in many ways. First benefit is off course of educating small hands and takes pride and satisfaction in that. Second social image been the owner of a school and a having own business is rather large than one would otherwise get in a 9 to 5 job. Holidays as per school routine will also ensure that one would be able to maintain work life balance.
In monetary terms also it is equally rewarding and can provide much better income level than regular job. If one are decant qualified and want to take up this as a profession, this will provide equal earning opportunity and has chance of growing in other areas such as a day care, activity classes etc.

Unlike most of the business, which are prone to business cycle and get impacted by recession? This is one of the industries which have no impact from business cycle; in-fact parents always want to provide best education and it start from a good pre-school. Also with growing awareness of preschool, growing population in metro cities and no substitute like online classes. Chance of industry wide failure is less.

Challenges

For individual branch owners, franchisee and franchisor there are new challenges on daily basis it can come from operational or strategic perspective and there are some challenges, which are unique to preschool. Since it is a small setup and therefore comes the challenge of managing things at micro level. Having right staff, providing safe transport, managing accounting & tax compliance and managing parents expectation are only few things that can take lots of time/efforts and can really make or break the success of pre-school. Options available at hands are less due to lower scale of business; however keeping staff and parents engage is a must. Sometime success don't come easily and require patience having enough working capital in those testing time can be difficult to arrange.

If you are on leased premises and you might have to keep on moving after a regular interval pose another challenge. Due to low entry barriers, there is always a threat of new entrant in same locality, which would require re-thinking of entire business model. Changes in government regulation, which don't exist now, pose another threat.

Preschool is a growing industry and it is yet to reach at its peak. There are lots of new initiative and innovation waiting to happen to increase value provided to parents as well as increase return for investors. There are oceans to be explored and next step of growth waiting to happen. It is good to look at this from business perspective after carefully evaluating once own interest, strength and weakness.

Shweta Arora, Director Little Little Einsteins

Completed her degree with Gold Medal in M.SC Biotechnology (Professional with DMS-Life Sciences) from PGI Chandigarh and PHD in Biotechnology from Punjab University, Shweta Arora worked with Reliance Life Science P Ltd as Sr. Research Scientist for a year. Presently she is Director of Little Einsteins