Pre-School B2B Product

Problem Statement

Build a software to digitize ‘playschool’ operations [A B2B SaaS software ]. Understand the playschool market in India through primary and secondary research. Based on your understanding of the customers and market landscape, create a plan on how you can digitize playschools’ operation in India.

Table of Index

1. Pre-school

2. Education Market In India

3. Transformation in the Indian Education Space — NEP 2020

4. Pre School In Top Cities of India(Estimated)

a) Summary of Calculations

b) Detailed Calculations

— Pre-school Market

— Population in top 10 most populated cities of India

— Pre-school fees

— Individuals who can afford pre-school fees or kids for pre-school

— Count of pre-school

5. Growth of Pre-school in India

6. Pre-School Operation

7. Operational Pain Points

8. Tech Stack for a pre-school

9. Users

10. Features/Use Case

11. WireFrame

12. Other Enhancements

1. Pre-school

A pre-school is where the children first venture, outside of their home environment. It is a huge responsibility for a school to provide them with a safe space where they can learn and flourish. Developing a preschool involves a lot of hard work and planning. Several tasks need to be listed out and followed meticulously. This may start from searching for the perfect space and developing the infrastructure to finally recruiting the staff and marketing your business. You can develop a preschool to provide the best of the facilities to the toddlers and for this, you can extend your budget to your will. Also, the operations differ based on cities. For example, starting a preschool in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Pune, and Bangalore differs slightly from small cities. However, certain basic requirements are minimal and need to get you going.

Despite the first six years of a child’s life being most important for their development, the early education sector has usually been ignored in India’s education framework.

2. Education Market In India

India is a rapidly changing country in which inclusive, high-quality education is of utmost importance for its future prosperity. The country is currently in a youth bulge phase. It has the largest youth population in the world — a veritable army of 600 million young people under the age of 25, The data on the official website of the Department of School Education and Literacy India, shows that with over 1.5 million schools, more than 9.4 million teachers and 260 million students, India is home to the largest and most complex education system in the world.

3. Transformation in the Indian Education Space — NEP 2020

A pandemic and the world economy hitting the lowest this year makes us comprehend that our future generation will have to battle out a lot of challenges. In such desperate conditions, the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 shows another way forward. For India to saddle its ever-developing segment profit, extremist changes were required in the formational stages and it tends to be seen that the National Education Policy 2020 does equity to it.

In the National Education policy 2020 Ministry of Human Resource Development divided the whole school curriculum into 4 parts. Foundation, Preparatory, Middle and Secondary.

The Foundation curriculum has pre-school/Anganwadi/balvatika and 2 more years of education.

Pre-school is for kids in the age range of 3–6 years.

4. Pre School In Top Cities of India(Estimated)

a) Summary of Calculations

Population of India = 140Cr and Total Schools in India = 15 Lakhs

-> Considering top 10 most populated cities of India as first market

-> Total population in these cities = ₹6.5 Cr

-> Pre-school average fees = ₹25k/Year

-> Individuals in these cities who can afford ₹25k/year fees for kids = 1Cr

-> Considering pre-school size = 500 kids

-> Total pre-school in these cities = 20,000

• I have took some assumptions and gave the reason why I did so.
• I have mentioned a reference link that helped me take that assumption for the detailed calculation.

No. of Schools -> https://www.education.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/statistics-new/UDISE%2B2020_21_Booklet.pdf

b) Detailed Calculations

— Pre-school Market

• There are two primary elements in the whole pre-school market, Education institutions and Parents.
• Institution offer services and price a fee for that.
• Parents should be interested in those services and should be able to able to afford those services for their kids.
• Pre-school(not Anganwadi/balvatika) can be of three types, stand-alone local players, pre-school in big schools and brands like euro kids, kidzee, littleville and more.
• Every school operates differently. First, it can be a purely manual process, done in notebooks/registers.
• Second, it can be mix with excel and other general applications.
• Third, it can be a custom application for school operations or you can call them organized players.
• For our B2B solution, we can target the 2nd and 3rd category of schools, who need a solution and have the capital to subscribe to it.

For phase 1, we can start with the top 10 most populated cities of our country.

— Population in top 10 most populated cities of India

• India has a population of 140Cr (Estimated for 2021).
• Now, this population is spread across the whole country but initially, we are targeting the top 10 most populated cities that are Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Surat, Pune and Jaipur.

The total population of these cities is 6,40,64,595(almost 6.5Cr) which is almost 5% of India’s population.

Reference -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_in_India_by_population

— Pre-school fees

• Now let’s try to figure out how many individuals can afford a pre-school for their kids.
• Let’s assume that every Indian couple follows the ‘Ham do Hamare do’ population control formula with no exceptions, which means each child has an individual parent.
• A small pre-school in tier 2–3 city can have fees of ₹200/month and some big franchise can have fees up to ₹5000/month(including books and other expenses).
• We can take an average of ₹2000/Month.

Kidzee nursery fees in ₹2200/Month.

So, pre-school expense will be 12*₹2000 = ₹24,000/Year. Let’s take it ₹25,000/Year.

Reference -> https://ddmgroup.in/kidzee-fee-2017-18/

— Individual who can afford pre-school fees or kids for pre-school

• Let’s assume that an individual spends 5% of their income for their preschooler’s education.
• This means the individual should have an annual income of at least 25000/0.05 = 5LPA.
• Now let’s figure how many individuals have 5LPA income.
• According to the income tax department, there were 5,52,60,219 (3% of the total population), individual taxpayers, out of which there were 2,03,06,060 (almost 2Cr) individuals with more than 5LPA in our country.
• This can not be a real count as a lot of people don’t file ITR or file a false ITR.
• But if we take this count as 20Cr or 15% of Indian(every 7th Indian) earns more than 5LPA, then this seems a more realistic number.
• For our product, we have selected the top 10 cities as our market which contain 5% of the total population.
• So, if we normalize this for earning individuals as well, then 5% of 20Cr = 1Cr.

Now we have a 1Cr individual in the top 10 most populated cities of our country who can afford a pre-school for their kids.

This means there can be 1Cr pre-school kids as well.

Reference -> https://www.incometaxindia.gov.in/Documents/Direct%20Tax%20Data/IT-Return-Statistics-Assessment-Year-2018-19.pdf

— Count of pre-school

• A pre-school for kids between the age range of 3–6 and the average size of the school can be 500 students.
• Pre-school with 500 kids seems like a school that might need a solution beyond registers/notebooks.
• So, there can be total 1,00,00,000 kids/ 500 kids per school = 20,000 pre-schools in top 10 most populated cities of India.
• Now this number of all pre-school in top 10 cities.

So, our target customers will be 20,000 pre-school.

5. Growth of Pre-school in India

The NEP is seen as a positive step towards the transformation of the Indian education sector. It stresses the criticality of the early years to guarantee quality Early Childhood Care and Education(ECCE) for all kids between 3–6 years by 2025. Presently, quality ECCE is not available to most young children, particularly children from economically disadvantaged families. Investment in ECCE has the potential to give all young children such access, enabling all children to participate and flourish in the educational system throughout their lives. The new policy aims for universalization of education from pre-school to secondary level with 100% Gross Enrolment Ratio in school education by 2030 and aims to raise Gross Enrolment Ratio in higher education to 50% by 2025.

6. Pre-School Operation

1. Location and building cost (Lease / Rent)

Rooms

1. Class rooms
2. Nap room
3. Audio Visual room
4. Activity/Play Room
5. Dining room
6. Staff Office
7. Reception

Outdoor

1. Garden
2. Assembly
3. Play area
4. Pre-school set up cost (includes indoor, outdoor and other equipment)

School Furniture

1. Plastics molded or Wooden tables
2. chairs and desks, Reception table
3. Chair, furniture for staff
4. Dining table

Play equipment

1. Slide
2. Cycles
3. Playhouses
4. Sandpit

Equipment for the activity room

1. Spindle boxes
2. Puzzles, Blocks
3. Alphabets
4. Towers

Pre-school Interiors

1. Wall Paintings
2. Wall hangings
3. Bookrack and
4. books (usually placed at the reception)

Miscellaneous

1. Stationery items
2. Uniforms, bags
3. Projector
4. Interactive CDs
5. Curriculum
6. Paper Work for office purposes like receipts, fees, forms, report cards.
7. Inquiry form
8. Admission form / Enrollment form
9. TC form
10. Feedback form
11. Fees collection receipts
12. Diary
13. Report Cards/assessment cards
14. Teachers’ training and staff salaries
15. Receptionist cum counsellor
16. Admin
17. Teachers and assistant teachers, depending on the number of students
18. Security guard
19. Cleaning Staff
20. Driver, if you have transport
21. Marketing / Promotion costs
22. Transport facility, Web development costs, Franchise fees (If you take up a franchise) — Optional

http://www.littleville.co.in/education-franchise-roi-calculator.php

7. Operational Pain Points

1. Not knowing the perfect application for their tasks
2. Different application for different tasks
3. Moving data from one application is time-consuming, there are chances of data duplicity and human error
4. Different applications have different interfaces gives hard to learn them.

8. Tech Stack for a pre-school

1. People management — Google Sheet/MS Excel
2. Payment — PayU, Razorpay, Paytm, PhonePay, Cash
3. Documentation — MS Office, Google Workspace
4. Forms — Google Form
5. Video Recording/Online Class — Google meet, zoom, Microsoft team
6. Communication — Whatsapp, Gmail

9. Users

1. School Owner/principle/admin
2. Teachers
3. Parents(Optional)

10. Features/Use Case

1. Create school
2. Admin panel and configuration
3. Create teachers record and class teacher
4. Create classes — duration and strength
5. Sections within classes
6. Student profile
7. List subjects to each class, books and resources
8. Create time table
9. Assign classes to teachers (include conflict management)
10. Teachers and student attendance
11. Admin, teachers/staff and parent log in
12. Create tests/activities by teachers
13. Teachers can raise a request for equipment
14. Parents can raise a request to admin or teachers
15. Transportation(optional)
16. Homework portal
17. Admin, teacher and parent dashboard — attendance, exams, holidays, timetable, leaves, salary
18. Fee payment gateway
19. Admin Dashboard -> Operational cost, fees, salary, revenue, profit

11. WireFrame

School profile configuration

• School profile can be created by Admin only.
• Add documents such as registration papers, GST details, KYC details of authrorized pesonnel

School operation configuration

• School operation information given here will be considered as default in various places of the product like class/section profile, teachers profile, student profile and more.

Class — Dashboard

• Admin can see all classes and add more.
• Teachers can only view classes.

Class — Details View.

• Teachers can view if they are a class teacher or they have a subject to teach.
• Edit is for admin.
• Teachers can view timetable but the admin can edit them.
• A list of teachers/students taking have subjects in class should be listed.
• Upcoming activities — view to all.
• Admin can add more sections, subjects.
• Teachers can add activities
• Admin can change class teacher and teachers list.
• Conflict management should be working while editing the timetable.

Teachers Table

• Only the admin can view this table.
• Admin can add more teachers. (with Digilocker or Digio KYC)

Teacher details view

• Details like ID, Name and others can be edit by the admin or that teacher itself.
• Time table of that teacher is visible to all teachers and admin.
• Only the admin can edit timetable.
• List of classes in which teachers have subjects to teach in a list form.
• Upcoming events teacher has created or has to participate.
• Admin can add activities, classes for teachers.
• Conflict management should be working while editing timetable.

12. Other Enhancements

• Rest of the modules like students, feedback and others can be explained if requested
• Payment, Enquiry, requests and parental login can also be considered as good options.
• If we add parental login, it’ll be heavy on architecture but can be considered as an add-on and purchased separately.
• We can show kids timetable, upcoming activities/exams, fees reminder, apply for leave, upcoming holiday, give feedback and more.
• All of these activities can be done without bothering any school staff.