Chapter 2,

I was actively a part of Creative Cultural Centre while I was finishing my Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from NMIMS. That meant that by the time I graduated, I had spent around 5 years on the brand and I felt that everything had become super easy! Business was more or less automated and the challenge was next to nothing. So I decided, let’s grow this geographically. I started figuring out other schools and venue options, gained some success there and started operating CCC there. However, in the course of time I realised that because the nature of the business was extremely real estate heavy, we would take a lot of time to grow. So we fragmented the activities based on the venue size we got and started running the same, but this only spread us very thin but challenges kept on piling up. Besides, not every school wanted to run the activities as they had too many red tape issues and most of them were controlled by trusts, making the need for extra money a second priority for them.

Learning - B to B interactions. Until I started expanding, I had never negotiated deals or proposed my idea to other businesses(schools in this case). I learnt the art of negotiating and the science of creating a win-win deal for all parties involved.

Myth busted - Definition of win, in a win-win deal is the same for everyone! I always thought that no school would be opposed to the idea of a managed activity centre, where they make extra revenue by utilising their existing space in the dead hours. However, most schools were averse to the idea for multiple reasons.