School of thought
The business idea is to develop teamwork, adaptability, leadership skills and problem solving capabilities of students in the most engaging way.
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new, said Albert Einstein. But our education system always wants the student to be right at any cost. Committing a mistake for a question in the exam results in zero marks. Classroom has become a platform for only the students who knew the right answers and not for the students who are putting their point across.
Hari Krishna Verma Nadimpalli, Praveen Vudogiri and Datla V Reddy have started Creya Learning to make the system of education better and to enrich the lives of students by developing real life problem solving skills and to make their learning more engaging than one-way communication. The City-based company started in June 2011 with Rs.75-80 lakh.
Talking about the business idea, Harish questions, “To what extent, does the child use the learning that he did in school in a real life situation? Are the schools developing the creativity of the child in anyway? For many, learning is not about developing creativity but to get in to most prestigious schools and draw the highest possible salary. The business idea is to develop teamwork, adaptability, leadership skills and problem solving capabilities in students in the most engaging way possible and make them really embrace the world when they get out of school.”
Creya is experiential learning system, which brings 900 hours of curriculum for the students from Class I to XII. It counts to 75-80 hours per class. “As of now, we are offering only 30 hours of curriculum to the four schools in the state because of their constraints in allocating time for experiential learning without compromising on the time table of regular class,” said Hari.
Talking about curriculum, he said, “For instance, we ask children to build mousetrap in Class IV. We will also encourage children to ask as many as questions and answer them during the process. The discussion would lead to different subjects from history to science and also develops creativity and problem solving capabilities in the child. In real life, nothing is isolated as a subject area but most the subjects blended to get the right invention and innovation, “
The company is aiming for 30 schools on board in next academic year. “Educators are appreciating the concept. 98 schools out of 100 have showed interest. But, we want to only with the schools that have strong belief and commitment to implement the concept. We also want to learn and enhance the concept during the process and then scale up,” Hari said.
The price for the curriculum does vary with the offering and size of the school. “We charge Rs.3,000 per student for a full package, which turn out to be Rs.250 per month.” he added.
The company is looking for an operational breakeven by 2014 March. It raised `20 crore from HNIs and is self-sufficient for another two years. It wants to bring down the course costs over time. It is not only targeting 80,000 private schools but also 2 lakh government schools.
Category: Business, Business News
About the Author (Author Profile)
Subscribe
If you enjoyed this article, subscribe to receive more just like it.
Loading ...
Exchange Rate
What Creya Learning is doing is indeed very important, given the context of school education in India. There is tremendous focus on scoring high marks based on rote learning. The fact that there are only a handful of good colleges and universities in India is a big factor fuelling this.In the modern 21st century knowledge economy, a proper schooling where creativity and analytical thinking are encouraged is the foundation for leveraging the nation’s rich demographic dividend.