Sure – i have been writing about the tough times being faced by pre schools like Olivia Montessori (you can find the older articles below).

My second article of June 2025.

I am now joined in this expose’ by Finshots TV (https://www.youtube.com/@finshotstv), part of the now well known daily financial newsletter, Finshots.

Here is the link to the most recent (14 September) Finshots TV video exposing the greed in what is supposed to be a fundamental right – the right to education.

Okay, so i have written about the grim situation and Finshots TV has validated the situation with some good reporting and insights. All good till here.

Now for some cringeworthy confessions before we get to the meat of the current article – DISRUPTION.

As many of you know, Olivia Montessori is now in its 4th year of operations but has yet to break even financially. Obviously this is worrying and a lot of time and brainpower has been put into finding a solution to making profits. Sure, schools in India are supposed to be not for profit and profits, when made, are supposed to remain with the school to be used for charitable purposes. Which is cool but definitely worrying when the trustees have to keep pumping in funds to pay for rents, salaries etc., because of a shortfall in fees to meet these recurring expenses. Not all schools have trustees who are HNIs or backed by Private Equity players or other such folks with wads of money.

So coming back to the need to quickly break even, become profitable and thus have the funds to give back to the community, our initial thought process was “the energy and work required for a 10x growth is the same as that required to crawl from losses to break even.” This led to the initial strategy of acquisition as the route to 10x growth and we came to the Wile E Coyote moment – where are the funds for acquisitions coming from when we are struggling to break even in our first centre? The honest truth is that we considered PE (Private Equity) as a possible answer for a war chest.

A few facts quickly returned us to ground – let’s keep this for a later article, shall we? However, mention must be made that we met with a few schools that were on sale (for various reasons) and understood

the numbers involved in acquiring them
was it worth the spend?

Around the time that this legwork was being put in, a brainstorming session with Saurabh Singh took the story on a different tangent altogether.

A few facts were exposed during this session and it was easy to join the dots after that. What began to take shape in the brainstorming session with Saurabh Singh were the following:-

The property we currently rent needs to be utilised from morning to evening (which it currently is not since we finish the morning batch and shut school at 230 pm). Achieving 100% utilization could be the way to breaking even if not profitability.
This utilisation can be achieved via extra curricular activities like dance/drama/music/day care/tuitions etc., these being the top of the head ideas for utilising school space during down time. These avenues have been explored in the past and nothing concrete materialised.
Okay – space utilization discussed. However, why are we not able to break even in year 4 of operations with the regular batch of children who come in the morning? Why are we stuck in the 24 to 25 children range and what is stopping OM from reaching a strength of 34 – the break even number needed at current fees?
This is where we can double back to the 2 earlier articles of June.

The single biggest reason we could point to was the proliferation of franchise operations of big pre school brands that had in house developed curriculums borrowing from multiple ideologies, at times just a knockoff of an existing brand’s curriculum. These franchisees were charging fees in the approximate range of 50000/- per year including tuition, uniform, books & a school bag.

The second reason was the fact that many of the “big boys” of grade schooling have started their own pre schools to give them an uninterrupted supply of children for their grade school and save on marketing and acquisition costs to fill up seats starting Grade 1

There’s not much we can do at this stage to counter or face the second reason other than to ensure we continue graduating our children after 3 years of preschool at the high standards we have already set and to keep hoping that not all the “big boys” of grade school will venture into the preschool area.

“Montessori for the Masses” is the term Saurabh Singh came up with as we soon realized that the road to DISRUPTION was obvious when facing reason 1 – the multiple franchisee operations within a small radius of Olivia Montessori.

Here is our road to DISRUPTION –

Offer genuine Montessori curriculum/education plus books to children at fees that undercuts most of the players in the field (Genuine Montessori schools and the masala pack). This means less than 50000 per year.
These rock bottom fees will only be offered to children doing an afternoon batch – 1230 pm to 430 pm
Additionally, day care will be made available (at minimal rates) till 630 pm for children of the afternoon batch
The regular morning batch will continue to operate at the usual fees of 75000 per year (averaged over 3 years). This circles back to the videos of Finshots TV that expose the ridiculous fees hikes each year, the minimum being 10% each year.

So there – this is the DISRUPTIVE move that we hope will not only bring us to small profits so that we stop worrying about how to pay rents and salaries but also take us to the next stage – returning to the community as a non profit should.

The social media advertising has already started and boosted during weekends for max views. Our afternoon batch teacher is in place and we are on the lookout for a maid to assist the teacher.

We hope to follow up on this article with some good news in the months to come. Our goal is clear – become profitable to give back to society and to stop worrying about bills. The path is also clear. All we need are your blessings and positive energy.