Reinventing Education With EuroKids EuroKids insists on an owner operator model and has attracted homemakers, teachers, bankers and many professionals to become successful entrepreneurs.

A pre-school is after all, the child's first experience away from the home. To translate this belief into a successful model that could rapidly be scaled across the country, Eurokids chose the franchise way.

The first EuroKids pre-school through the franchise model was set up in 2002. Today, its presence extends across three countries, 900+ pre-schools, 350+ cities contributing to the growth and development of over 3,00,000 children. EuroKids takes special emphasis to work very closely with all its partners to ensure they collectively achieve the desired results and seize opportunities.

According to Prajodh Rajan, Co-Founder and CEO, Eurokids, "Our Edge360-franchise support system gives every partner all the support they need to establish, run and grow their business." Its large team, which specializes in early childhood education, operations and marketing, supports the franchise partners from its 14 offices across India. In addition, it has tied-up with large financial institutions with its reach across India, to support its new franchise partners through customized collateral-free loans.

Operationally, it faced challenges to find adequately trained teaching resources and to combat it, the company launched EuroVarsity, an online teacher training and certification program for women who would like to pursue a pre-school teaching career. This ensures that they have a steady mechanism to fulfil its teaching requirements at its pre-schools. "To ensure that our existing teachers periodically update their skillssets, we have developed ETAT (EuroKids Teacher Assessment Tool), an online teacher assessment and training tool, that ensures that teachers at our pre-schools comply with specific uniform standards and that their skill sets are continuously upgraded so that they remain the best in the business," shares Rajan.

EuroKids insists on an owner operator model and has attracted homemakers, teachers, bankers and many professionals to become successful entrepreneurs. In fact, 90 per cent of its franchise partners are women entrepreneurs, who enjoy being around children and care deeply about education. Talking about future expansion of the brand, Rajan says, "We are looking to expand solely via the franchising route. We do sense a maturing of the major metro cities and believe that there is great untapped potential in the tier-II and III cities and have focused our energies on these territories. Our plan is to expand our network and double it in the next 48 months." Internationally, it is present in Bangladesh and Nepal and is now looking to expand to Sri Lanka as well.

Success Stories

• Sejal Kothari from Bangalore had joined the EuroKids in 2002. With passion and dedication, she has made her pre-school at Indiranagar, Bangalore one of the most successful EuroKids pre-schools in the city.
• Preeti Dua from Mumbai started with a single EuroKids Pre-School in 2004 and had great determination to reach great heights. She strived hard in a competitive environment and today is the proud owner of three EuroKids Pre-Schools.

(This article was first published in the January issue of Entrepreneur Magazine. To subscribe, click here)