Chapter 1, 2008
Creative Cultural Centre
CHAPTER 2 - FIRST FAILURE
I was actively a part of Creative Cultural Centre while I was finishing my Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from NMIMS.
CHAPTER 3 - GOODLIFE EDUCATION (NOW IIDE)
While I was expanding CCC, Karan and Akash, two of my friends from NMIMS were just forming the base of Goodlife Education.
CHAPTER 4 - TICKLE RIGHT
With my interest in Human psychology growing, I started reading more about how the brain functions and how thoughts and intellect are created in humans.
It started in 2008 - Chandni(my sister) was a 7th grader and a budding gymnast. But the nearest Gymnastics class was 1.5 hours away. I would go with my sister to drop her there and wait there for an hour. While waiting there I realised that there were a lot of parents who were coming from our area and waiting there as it wasnt practical to go and come back to just pick the child up. This made me ask the coach if it would be okay to do the same classes in our area, but he said that he doesn’t have any venue in our area.
"Going ahead, we thought if the parents manage to get permission in one of the societies it would make sense, but no societies were ready to compromise parking spaces in the already crowded South Mumbai area or they would not want the society facilities to be used for kids other than the society. "
This led to the first micro failure and the plan went kaput. A month went by and I ended up speaking to my mom about what we tried and a guiding light that she has always been, she said let me speak to a school principal she knew. If things work out, all kids from the area can come and we can begin the classes there. But there was a catch, why would a school agree? The answer was pretty simple, but we didn't have the working capital to take the risk and so we had to come up with an innovative structure to keep the idea floating. A unique business model was created and presented to the school. School Agreed!! Definitely they were not going to trust a 15 year old boy and hence my mom became the face of the brand and I was the backend.
Today CCC has 14 activities like Skating, Chess, Gymnastics, etc. and has approximately 800 kids currently enrolled for these activities. As of now, the entire organisation is handled by mom and I just playing an advisory role for backend processes.
Learning - Find a gap and you have a potential business.
Myth busted - Find a gap and you have a potential business.
No - It's not a mistake! The learning in itself was a Myth!
Here’s why?
Every single parent who came from our area to the Gymnastics class where Chandni was going was aware of the gap and had requested the coach to start something on that side. So everyone was aware of the gap and EVERYONE FOUND THE GAP!
So what was the real learning?
INITIATIVE - Taking initiative to fill the gap was the real learning. One thing everyone is good at is finding gaps and talking about it, if you listen well you don't need to find the gap, people will themselves tell you. What you need to have is determination and willingness to take the initiative.