Coming from an agriculture family, it was never easy for Gunasundari to convince her husband to invest ₹7 lakh of his VRS money to set up a pre-school in a small town like Gobichettipalayam.

The task was even tougher for Anita Shivamurthy to muster support for a similar proposal from her husband who took early retirement from his bank job to take up farming as a profession in Shimoga, Karnataka.

The common thread between Gunasundari, Shivamurthy and 762 thriving women entrepreneurs across sleepy towns is EuroKids, which has taken a conscious decision to appoint more women as franchise partners.

It was quiet difficult for Gunasundari from Gobichettipalayam to garner the initial investment and manage the working capital. Today, she finds it hard to find certified teachers and quality support staff to match the expectations of parents.

Initially, there was some resistance from the family, but eventually they agreed to support me to start the pre-school and gave both moral and financial support, said Gunasundari.

“Being a homemaker for 20 years and then venturing into a new field like this was difficult in the initial days. My husband invested all his money from PF, gratuity and VRS benefits from his banking service. Now, we feel it is really worth the risk taken,” says Shivamurthy with a sense of pride.

In 2006, despite having just four students to start with, Shivamurthy said being a small town, it took some time for people to understand the concept but today there are 158 students.

Prajodh Rajan, co-founder and CEO, EuroKids International, said it is not part of any CSR activity to promote women entrepreneurship but it was a unanimous business decision taken by the board.

When started in 2001, it was quiet a task to get that many women from small towns to become a franchise of EuroKids, but now more women are showing interest and there are 912 pre-schools currently, he said.

“With their soft nature and care for tiny-tots, we believe only women can take EuroKids to places,” said Rajan.

A franchise needs a capital of about ₹25 lakh, besides the cost on real estate. They are allowed to charge a fee of ₹28,000 in small town to ₹40,000 a year in cities and big towns. In fact, a EuroKids centre in Bengaluru charges a fee of ₹50,000 as it provide air-condition facility to kids.

“Depending on infrastructure, a school can run two batches of 60 students each. We insist that every 10 students have one teacher,” he said. While the franchise is allowed to retain 80 per cent of the profit, EuroKids gets the rest for providing teaching material and training to teachers.

With an ever-growing population of 170 million kids in the age group of 0-2, the scope for pre-school education is bright in India. There are about 300 pre-schools at Andheri alone in Mumbai and over 3,000 in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority region, said Rajan.

Aarthi Senthil Kumar, a EuroKids franchisee from Dindigul, said people in small town or a big city prefer branded pre-school education because the quality and standards are the same across all centres, besides the systematic curriculum with latest updates.

Obviously, this faith has given Mita Shah, a owner first branded school at Yadavgiri (Mysuru) to invest ₹2 crore in a new property and allied infrastructure to house EuroKids from this academic year.

“We had to shift our school three times in the same area and that is when we decided to have our own property,” said Shah, who is running the school for the last 12 years.

EuroKids franchise from Tiruchengode, Sindhuja believes that quality education should be made affordable and reach the masses at convenient locations. But the challenge is, she said, most of the staff in rural regions lack good communication skills and need training leading to higher cost.

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