Building an education business from zero

The problem

A household wanted a child to keep up at school and could pay a monthly fee if the class felt real. Existing options were either too expensive, too far, or too casual to trust with a working parent’s evening. The value proposition was unromantic: a timetable, a teacher who knew the syllabus, a room that existed every week.

Customer and curriculum

The customer was the parent who paid and the child who had to sit through the hour. Curriculum followed the school board the children were already in. I wrote lesson plans around the gaps that showed up in homework and tests. Ownership of student outcomes meant knowing which child was slipping before the next report card made it official.

Pricing

Pricing was the first serious decision. A fee that was too low could not pay for the room or for other teachers as the batch grew. A fee that was too high lost the household that actually needed the class. I adjusted against retention: if families left after a term, the price was wrong for that room, whatever a competitor charged. There was no market-research document. There were conversations at the door.

Acquisition and operations

Acquisition was local: parents, word of mouth through schools, the slow reputation of a child whose marks moved. I ran a neighbourhood. Batches, substitutions, homework that someone would actually check, a parent who wanted a conversation at 8 p.m.: that was the operating system. Capacity was physical. One more batch meant one more evening I could still teach well. When I added teachers, the decision was whether quality would survive the hand-off.

Constraints and decisions that mattered

Cashflow, space, my own time, and the academic calendar set the limits. The decisions that compounded were unglamorous: when to raise fees, when to split a batch, when to hire, when to refuse a subject I could not staff honestly. Closing in 2023 was a decision about the next degree of work, not a story of collapse. Revenue of about ₹1 lakh a month is the verified figure. What remained after rent and salaries changed by year.

What this taught me to look for

An organisation that cannot price, staff and retain will not deliver, however elegant its theory of change. I learned that in a classroom before I learned the vocabulary of programme design. When I now sit in a panchayat interview or cost a help desk, I still ask the Tuesday question: will this still exist next month for the person who has to use it?