The Ultimate Guide: How to Start a Playschool

 

If you are passionate about teaching and have prior experience in early childhood education, this is the perfect opportunity for you to become an education entrepreneur.

Playschool is a very popular business idea in the education sector. So if you have a passion for teaching and have prior experience in early childhood education, this is the perfect opportunity for you to become an education entrepreneur.

What is playschool

A pre-school or better known as a playschool primarily teaches children between the ages of 2 to 4 years. As the name suggests, playschools provide a blend of learning and play to very young children and help them develop social skills and learning abilities.

How to get started

You can either start your own playschool or take a franchise of any popular playschool brand like Grow Inn Steps, Eurokids or Bachpan etc. Opening a franchise does not require much planning as the parent company will set the guidelines for setting up and running the school. However, it comes with a higher cost. Whereas if you want to start your own pre-school, you will have to manage everything yourself, from marketing to branding to designing your own curriculum. But, don't worry because setting up Playskool is not as cumbersome as it may seem.

So to start, first identify a location for your pre-school. You will need approximately 1,000 square feet of area for a school that can accommodate a maximum of 60 children. We suggest you locate your school in a residential area as parents prefer to send their children to nearby playschools.

Let us now understand the permissions and guidelines for starting a pre-school business. Once you decide on the location, you will need to obtain a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from the society to run the playschool. As for staffing, early childhood guidelines mandate one teacher or a trained professional for every 20 students. An important thing to note here is that if you want to teach in your own school, you will need a B.Ed degree or a diploma in pre-school teaching program or an equivalent degree.

Now we move to the investment required for setting up the school.

Investment required

You will need an initial investment to set up your business, while other costs will be ongoing operating expenses. Setting, furnishing and decoration will cost you Rs 60,000-70,000. Setting up a play area with toys and other play equipment may cost you up to Rs 1 lakh, while educational materials and learning equipment in classrooms will cost you Rs 25-30,000.

As for operating costs, your play school rent will range between Rs 30,000-35,000. Electricity and water bills can be around Rs 20,000 per month. The bulk of your operating costs will be on staffing, which will be around Rs 80,000 for 3 teachers and 2 assistants. Of course, if you teach yourself, you can save a lot of this cost. Also, unless your student population exceeds 20, you may not have to hire more than one teacher initially.

After this, you will spend Rs 12,000-15,000 on marketing every month until you get enough students, which can easily take 6-8 months.

As we said earlier, starting a play school on your own is cheaper than starting a franchise. Most of the popular playschool brands ask for a lump sum investment of Rs 12 to 13 lakh, which is much more than what we cost.

Revenue

Your source of revenue will be the fees charged from students, which will depend on the type of services you provide. For a regular playschool that offers learning activities and a play area, the monthly fees per student can range from Rs 2,000-2,200. If you want to provide day care services and meals, you can charge more than Rs 3,500 per student. Along with the monthly tuition fee, students also have to pay a one-time admission fee which can range between Rs 15,000-20,000 per student.

So when you have 60 regular students attending your school, you can easily get a profit of 30-35% on the total revenue.

Like any other business, the first year may be slow in terms of profit generation. That said, pre-school business is also one of the few recession-proof business ideas because no parent will ever compromise with their child's education. So once your business takes off, no matter what happens, your business will always flourish.

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