Delivering ‘preschool in a box’
Flintobox offers learning tools for preschools that promise high-quality learning experience, writes Ranju Sarkar
Mousumi Malik, a Montessori teacher, had been working at a playschool in suburban Kolkata. In July, she started a playschool at her home with five students and some help from FlintoClass, which offers all learning tools needed for a preschool.
It offers curricula, lesson plans for three sessions every day, material to engage the child and teacher-training modules, says Arunprasad Durairaj, chief executive & co-founder, Flintobox, a Chennai-based start-up that raised $7 million from early-stage venture capital firm Lightbox.
Lightbox has been encouraged by the positive feedback from parents. Flintobox offers an early-child skill development module (for two- to eight-year-olds), which uses experiential learning models to help parents engage with the child at home. ‘’It is a great product,” says Prashant Mehta, partner, Lightbox.
Adding: “We have been impressed with what it has been able to achieve with $1.5 million in funding. The firm is profitable at scale. While it continues to invest in its subscription model, Flintobox, its new business line, FlintoClass, which offers preschool in a box, will target independent preschools.”
The company, started in 2013, was initially backed by GSF Accelerator and, in subsequent years, by GSF Angels, Globevestor, Indian angel investor Ashvin Chadha and Globevestor. Some like Globevestor are partially exiting the company through secondary sales to new investor Lightbox. “We turned positive last quarter, are cash efficient and have low cash burn,” says Durairaj.
Lessons in a box Flintobox is an early-child development product, through which parents can engage 1:1 with a child. It offers three-month or 12month subscriptions and sends new ideas in a box every month. These are focused learning modules, aimed to promote cognitive, physical and emotional development. Starting with 310 subscriptions in 2013, Flintobox claims 40,000 subscriptions across 700 cities, at ~650 per child per month.
Preschool in a box
In FlintoClass, the start-up thinks it has a product that can redefine the preschool system. “We provide everything you need to run a preschool,” says Durairaj. It charges ~500 per child per month; a school can start with five students, and pay more as it grows.
The problem with preschools in India is the lack of high-quality educators. ‘’There are not many earlychild educators. So, independent preschools (not part of a chain) struggle to grow and deliver high-quality education and experience,” says Durairaj. It’s early days yet. Launched in January 2017, FlintoClass has signed up 350 schools, where the number of students range from six to 130.
The company is targeting 1,000 preschools in a year, which will make it the largest preschool system in India that doesn’t own a school. In five years, it hopes to penetrate 10,000 preschools. This will fetch the start-up annual revenues of ~6 billion, which includes Flintobox that is likely to contribute 40 per cent of the revenue by then.
It’s not that the company thought of FlintoClass as an afterthought. It always wanted to get into preschools and shared it with investors. “We can touch a kid’s life at home, where they spend maximum time in early years, and at preschools, like a second home for many. Both cater to the development needs of a child,’’ says Durairaj.
The company is trying to fix a gap in the preschool system. Lack of educators cannot be fixed overnight. Becoming a franchisee for a top brand is expensive — it calls for an investment of ~1.5-2 million. FlintoClass trains teachers and provides them the required tools to deliver a highquality learning experience.