Mumbai-based Vickaash Agarwal is chairman of Kids Campus Education Pvt. Ltd (KCEPL, estb.2008) which operates 120 owned and franchised Kids Campus preschools in 57 cities and towns including Bangalore, Mumbai, Jammu, Patna, Bhubaneswar, and Kolkata with an aggregate enrolment of 4,000 children. These preschools offer ISO 9001-2008 certified curriculums, cheerful classrooms, well-equipped libraries and sensorial outdoor play areas. 

Newspeg. KCEPL recently announced promotion of a full-fledged CBSE-affiliated Oceano High School in Bangalore. Construction of the 87,120 sq. ft school campus will commence in September this year, and admissions into primary school (class I-V) will start in the academic year 2019-20. “We have been planning expansion of our operations for a while so the progression from preschools to offering children an expansive educational experience in primary-secondary schooling is a natural process. Our objective is to build on our experience of enriching young minds and instill in them a lifetime of love for knowledge and learning,” says Agarwal.

History. An alum of Ravenshaw University, Cuttack, Agarwal exited the family’s steel business in 2006 to pursue his passion for education. After extensive research and consultations with international early childhood care and education (ECCE) experts worldwide, Agarwal prepared a model preschool curriculum designed to “cultivate children’s natural inquisitiveness and creative intelligences” from earliest years. In 2008, KCEPL launched its first preschool in Bangalore and by the end of the year, signed up eight franchisees in Ahmedabad, Jammu and Hyderabad. 

“When we started a decade ago, high quality preschool education was available only to a niche segment of parents in the metros. The large majority of middle class parents couldn’t afford these hi-end preschools. The objective of Kids Campus was to bridge this gap by offering internationally benchmarked ECCE curriculums at affordable price and promote preschools in tier-II cities and towns,” he recalls. 

Direct talk. “Early childhood education is critical to development of children’s cognitive, social and motor skills. The distinguishing feature of Kids Campus institutions is that we blend advanced child psychology with thematic daily activities to stimulate the creative and explorative intelligences of children. We specially focus on vocabulary and word recognition pedagogies to enable our children to develop enhanced linguistic skills at youngest age. I believe our unique selling point is our experiential teaching-learning pedagogy delivered by well-qualified teachers, and the continuous support and training we provide our franchisee preschools to ensure that high teaching-learning standards are maintained,” says Agarwal.

Future plans. Next on this can-do edupreneur’s list is promoting Kids Campus preschools in rural India. “We have already established model preschools in three villages in Maharashtra and Bihar to expand our franchisee network. But right now, my priority is on getting our new high school up and running by next year,” says Agarwal, who has set a target of signing up 300 Kids Campus franchised preschools by 2020.
Wind beneath your wings!

Dipta Joshi (Mumbai)