Q1. How did your career journey start? Or Who/What inspired you to start this business/ entrepreneurship? This wonderful idea was put up by ...
This wonderful idea was put up by my husband and was rejected by me around 12 years back. Yes it's true. He was the one who suggested me to pursue kids yoga as I would do yoga myself. Back then I didn't think of it as a career as I thought, "Is yoga really necessary for kids? Will they do yoga?" But soon realised that yoga is very essential for today's generation of kids to cope up with the fast paced society. Hence, I wanted to explore the art of yoga in young kids. My husband has been very supportive and his ideas have helped a lot.
Q2. Kindly share some information about your Business, products and services here.
Childyogis caters to kids from 3 to 8 years old for now. I, Meha Ranka, founder of childyogis and a certified child yoga instructor, am currently teaching yoga in Rejoice International School, Malad and Ramniwas Bajaj High School, Malad for the pre-primary section. Also I have been invited to be the guest lecturer for yoga for kids of Jr.Kg at Singapore International School, Dahisar and Oberoi International School, JVLR. We have our centres across suburbs in Mumbai and opening soon in town as well. We follow a fun method of teaching yoga, a theme based program which includes music, games, exercises, rhymes, dance, stories along with yoga poses and a lot of props used.
Q3. What kind of challenges did you face while starting/doing business?
I got my first school just few months after my yoga course. It felt like an achievement, but working in schools, I saw first-hand how busy and stressful our little ones can be with social struggles, busy schedules, test-taking anxieties. Thus, at Childyogis we had to introduce children to the benefits and joys of yoga, creative movement, and mindfulness. It wasn't easy to get into other schools. I got my second school the next year through a lot of hard process. The journey of handling kids to correcting their postures, challenging them to push themselves and of course our act of sports day had many ups and downs in the course. Later when I started with personal classes at home, the response wasn't much due to problems like fee structure, distance, days or timings for that matter.
Q4. Do share with our readers about your discovery period when you were facing difficulties in your business?
What I noticed was many parents in general were not aware of the idea of kids doing yoga. We had alot of queries as in what was our curriculum in the sessions. Alot of parents had hyper kids who never sat in one place. Parents also didn't want to pay much for their kids health and well being. Also parents couldn't travel long for a class. As a kid has many classes not one it's difficult to manage the days and times of each class. I being the only one teaching wasn't able to travel and cater to all locations.
Q5. Share with our readers about your experiment period after the discovery period?
So after a lot of research as to how we can cater to the many parents, I came up with the idea of having a team of certified yoga instructors, who I can train for kids yoga. After discussing with my husband of how to go about it, we hired teachers, I trained them and we offered them to teach kids in our centres. At first, we isssued problems of teachers leaving us and we had to find and train many teachers in process of getting a good one. Today my team consists of 5 teachers as of now who cater to my centres from Andheri to Borivali.
Q6. What are your future plans? Or now what is your vision for next five years?
We have our centres across suburbs in Mumbai and opening soon in town as well. We have our website www.childyogis.com and we are soon coming up with our very own App called us Childyogis for our trainers as well as our parent customers. We are offering packages to parents where we are giving them unlimited sessions monthly or quarterly. We aim at having many kids enrolled with us for kids yoga. We also had free online sessions in the lockdown period which had parents from all over India and other countries as well. They went very well with parents and and they have requested for the same in future too. We may plan for online sessions as well for states in India and other countries too. In the long run though, we are planning our franchises for different states or cities or even a centre. We look forward to have Childyogis in many states and cities in India do that all kids can benefit from it.
Q7. How would you advice/suggest new entrepreneurs who want to start & sustain in business?
I believe if you are good at something try it. If you start something stick to it and give it your best shot. If you continue doing one thing and focus on that, you will achieve your goals. The biggest mistake is doing a lot of things at once but getting success in none. Focus on what you like, what is your talent, pursue it with hard work and you shall achieve success. If you strive hard on one thing and stick to it, you will reach success.
Q8. Instagram Profile URL link
http://www.instagram.com/childyogis
Q9. Facebook Profile URL link
http://www.facebook.com/childyogis
Q10. Instagram Profile URL link
https://www.instagram.com/childyogis/
Q11. Twitter profile URL link
NA
Q11. Personal blog URL link
NA
Q12. Company Website & Company Blog URL link
www.childyogis.com
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Interviewed by: Khushboo Chotaliya - Lifestyles Influencer from Mumbai, India.
Khushboo is a student of Yogesh MA's Digital Influencer's Academy
Kindly follow Khushboo here instagram.com/khushboo.chotaliya
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