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Prajodh Rajan is the Mumbai-based director of EuroKids International Pvt. Ltd (estb. 1998) which has franchised 780 pre-schools under the brand EuroKids countrywide, apart from owning and directly administering 28 EuroKids pre-schools in eight cities across the country.
Newspeg. On January 12, EuroKids celebrated the 10th anniversary of its first pre-school established in Andheri, Mumbai. Significantly, last month (February) the company also inaugurated its first pre-school overseas in Dubai.
Genesis. EuroKids International was founded in 1998 as a joint venture between the Indian Express Newspapers Group and Egmont International Holdings, a Denmark-based children’s book publishing company. However in 2001 it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Egmont and the first EuroKids pre-school was inaugurated in Andheri, Mumbai.
In 2004, Rajan together with three colleagues — Uday Mathur, Ganesh Vishwanathan and Vikas Phadnis — put their savings together and bought out the Indian operations of Egmont International. Since then the Eurokids chain has rolled out 780 pre-schools countrywide averaging 100 new pre-schools every year.
Direct talk. “When we promoted our first pre-school ten years ago, the early childhood education sector was fragmented and unorganised compri-sing numerous ‘aunty next door’ playschools. Today EuroKids is India’s No.1 pre-school chain with 780 franchised pre-schools operating in 280 towns and cities countrywide. Moreover under EuroKids Saplings we provide pre-primary education services to 150 K-12 schools. Our contribution to the growth and development of Indian education is that we have introduced well-researched international pre-school pedagogies, standards and processes apart from professionalised administration into the vitally important early childhood education sector,” says Rajan, a management graduate of Madras University who signed up with EuroKids as marketing manager in 1999. Subsequently in 2001 he was promoted as head of the EuroKids pre-schools franchise initiative and over the past decade has been the driving force of the spectacular growth of EuroKids franchised pre-schools countrywide.
Future plans. The target is to increase the number of franchised pre-schools to 1,000 centres by end 2012 and expand the EuroKids footprint in the Middle East. “We also want to move up the value chain by promoting primary and secondary schools under the Euro-School brand. We already have 17 schools operational and plan to inaugurate 15 EuroSchools across the country in the next three years,” says Rajan.
Benazir Badsha (Mumbai)