Flinto Learning Solutions, a Chennai-based edtech start-up and a market leader in the early childhood education space, is planning to start its own brand of pre-schools once the Covid-19 pandemic eases a bit.

“We intend to start our own pre-schools once the pandemic eases. The groundbreaking will start as soon as the pandemic waves come down and the curves start to flatten. But before that we would like to thoroughly understand the format in which the kids and parents will consume a pre-school or day-care programme of the future,” Arunprasad Durairaj, CEO & Co-founder of Flinto Learning Solutions, told BusinessLine .

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“We see an opportunity to create what I would call as ‘pre-schools of the future’ with a flexible programme for children because people are going to work remotely and on flexi days. We believe that there is a lot of flexibility that is required and it’s not going to be a purely physical but an omnichannel delivery,” he said.

Key drivers

Durairaj also explained that parameters such as organisation, work structure, dual-income household, nuclear families, etc., are some of the key drivers of the pre-school industry. “All these trends have been reversed (post pandemic), so we are waiting for early signs of reversal to happen again and when it happens, we will start our own pre-schools,” he said.

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In 2013, the early childhood education start-up began its journey with just one product ‘Flintobox’ — an educational subscription box focussed on activity-based learning for children in the range of 2-12 years of age. The company, in 2017, introduced Flintoclass as a ‘pre-school in a box’ product with comprehensive learning solutions for nursery, Pre-KG, LKG and UKG.

However, with the pandemic bringing the shutters down on schools across the globe, the company re-imagined and re-designed its Flintoclass product to launch Flintoclass@HOME, a preschool-at-home model designed to deliver high-quality pre-school education to the homes of children in June 2020.

Flintoclass@HOME became a runaway hit since its launch and is nearing ₹200-crore run rate in less than a year of its launch. The company expects to hit ₹500 crore run rate by December 2021.

One step at a time

“The speed at which we have been able to grow is primarily because of the deep understanding about this space, and kids. We have proven that we are pandemic-proof and we have been able to help kids continue their learning with or without pandemic,” Durairaj said.

Durairaj feels that despite being the largest player in the pre-school learning space, the company has just tapped 1 per cent of the potential market.

“There are 4 million kids who used to go to pre-school and today vast majority of them are not doing anything or getting sub-optimal learning,” Durairaj said, adding, “So when we look at opportunities for home-based learning, there are numerous hobbies/enrichment programmes that we can create. However, we are taking only one step at a time and perfecting this product (Flintoclass@HOME) before we jump into any other offerings.”

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