Ms.Madhurie Singh is the founder and CEO of SuperIndianKid. She has worked with Aptech, Eicher Consultancy Services, Sol Pharmaceuticals, IIS Infotech and CMG Admiral, Australia.She started blogging in 2001 about solutions to the problems she faced after returning from Sydney. She started her blog www.MadhurieSingh.com, which is a boon to all parents hunting schools in Pune. Information about her entrepreneurship work can be obtained from www.SuperIndianKid.com.

1. What inspired you to be an entrepreneur?

Being an entrepreneur is evolving from being served to serving others.Instead of waiting for others to provide me any service that is non-existent, I have always tried to get a solution. But when there is none available, I have always tried to first find the solution and then make it easily available to other people too.

As a child, I have had the opportunity to play all indoor games and outdoor sports like badminton, table tennis, kabaddi, kho-kho, chess, carrom, dance, singing and dramatics. These were available free of cost everyday to all kids in the huge club of ITI, Allahabad and Bangalore. As TV was just introduced, we were not addicted to it. The club was the place where the entire colony kids would gather from 4:00pm till 11:00pm!
No one trained us any game or any sports, it was all self learnt through observations. The amount of intrapersonal and interpersonal development we went through was immense and invaluable.
As my kids are growing up, I realized what they are missing. Also it is practically unaffordable for parents to provide coaching for so many activities. Even if one can afford it, the lack of time to take their kids to various activities becomes a difficult thing for parents who are working or have a younger kid.
Then during my parenting workshops, I realized, there were many parents who needed something that would allow their kids to experience as many activities before choosing the one or two activities that the kids had passion for.
This is when I realized that someone had to start this facility for the kids, where they can come and play, dance, paint, sing every day before deciding on one thing that they wanted to pick up as their hobby. My aim is to provide stress free life to kids and enjoy childhood like my generation did. Also my own kids have been the main source of this idea.
That’s when I decided to start the SuperIndianKid .

2. Tell us about superindiankid.com. How is it different from its other, more generalized counterparts who claim to provide more-or-less similar services as you?

Frankly, this is a program that still has no real counterparts.There are many coaches, trainers and artists who are providing coaching to several kids either in their own homes or providing home coaching. I think they will continue to serve as there will be kids who will prefer the coaching being conducted at home. But there are others who prefer kids learning in groups and teams. The long term effect and benefit of group training manifests in making these kids street smart players and artists, as they have gone through the grind of daily competitions, daily success or failures.

Being brilliant alone is not enough to be a star. The brightness is assessed and appreciated truly, only in the presence of millions of other stars!

SuperIndianKid is not just a coaching program. Here, we assess the interest, intelligence, attitude, happiness of each kid during every activity.
We video record activities to assess interpersonal, intrapersonal and other psychological traits which are part of one’s personality.
We have tied up with the best coaches in Pune. We also have plans to provide funds to National and International talents to be able to compete without bothering about the financial burden, with the help of corporate.
We also provide pick up and drop service which is a boon to many parents. We expose the kids to around 50 activities in a very nominal fee which is unimaginable by many parents and also coaches.
We are following Gurukul ways of imparting knowledge where kids learn yoga, the importance of respecting elders, adopting Indian ways of greeting, cleaning and cooking.
We provide daily exposure to one of the many activities like storytelling, word building, number games etc. We use role plays where kids learn basic disaster management like handling fire, choking, lifts, malls, bullying etc.

I believe the value based coaching at SuperIndianKid is incomparable to any existing counterparts, if any. We want competition to come up as that will keep the quality intact and also spread this concept to many more areas where we cannot reach yet. Though, we do plan to have many more centers all over the country.

3. Your team includes Linguistics, Sports, Music, Communication Skills and many other experts. How do you understand it to be more beneficial than a natural socialization of the child through other social agencies?

I think any place which offers a natural atmosphere for kids to play, learn and handle their situations themselves is good.If other social agencies are also providing exposure to close to 50 activities to cater to 8 different Intelligence everyday to the kids in a team, they will also prove to be beneficial.

We do not pressurize kids into anything against their will during assessment period. We let them have fun while experiencing any activity planned for the day. A few kids do sit back and watch, but more often they quietly join the team when no one is forcing them. Also we are very candid to write down the observations about any kid who has no interest, no ability or no intelligence for an activity. We would rather have a kid who has the passion for an activity than enroll just to increase the headcount.

We are all learning. It is the intention behind any business or any startup that matters in the long run. My team and I believe that we will one day vent out pressure from the kids and our society through SuperIndianKid program, and I am proud of the intention behind our Startup.

When the end goal is to see a happy society, all activities done at SuperIndianKid are conceived with happiness in mind. We make sure to a large extent that all the gurus and coaches are also happy when coaching the kids. I started this startup with one promise to myself that I will not over stress myself and my team as I believe that if only I am happy and satisfied, only then I can keep everyone around me happy and satisfied.

4. Working with children is a difficult task and requires sensitivity. What kind of challenges do you come across with your clients/children?

Yes, they do keep us on our toes every moment. We have kids who are very quiet but have now started actively talking in their class rooms, thanks to our gurus and other kids! We have kids who have very short attention span. We quickly distract them, talk to them and crack jokes with them and bring them back to the track.
Frankly, even though we have psychologists in our team, we rely more on the motherly and naturalistic ways of handling any problems as most of the Gurus are mothers of similar age group kids. Infact we have mothers volunteering to offer help, as many have realized that they can learn a lot about handling their own kids.
We do have help from our psychologists whenever there is a difficult situation put forth by parents. Like how to handle sibling rivalry, stubbornness, fights over toys etc.
We have a parent counselor who is also an expert Bach therapist. We have many parents who complain about their kids not eating enough or fearing school, exams etc. These situations are handled through Bach therapy.
We have a speech correction specialist who recently managed to correct a 4th degree speech problem in a kid.
Hence we have a set of specialists to assist us in our daily endeavor along with our naturalistic mom factor to handle any challenge. We have a policy of always accepting our goof ups. We believe when we accept our failures we open the door to humility, understanding and correction which always has positive end result.

5. Would you agree that there are differences in the level and kind of challenges that you have to face as a woman entrepreneur in India?

Frankly, I have never faced any challenges as a women entrepreneur. All challenges are what any entrepreneur will and should face.
Also, challenges are the best way to learn business in the early stages of any startup when the stakes are low. We have a team of people who are encouraged to take risks and explore as much now and document their experiences as learnings.

6. What would be your message to fellow young entrepreneurs in India?

Frankly I think I am not in any position to advice any entrepreneur as I still have to prove myself.
But I will share a few learnings which will definitely help anyone starting up.
1. The intention behind any startup must be good, for it to succeed. One should love money but not run after it blindly.
2. Planning is important, over planning is killing.
3. Business Plans are good only when one is investing crores. The best way to start a startup is to invest least and test the market. Get as many feedbacks and surveys.
4. Get good people to work with you and always take advice from the team.
5. Try not to spend money on fancy stuff unless its benefit is justifiable.
6. Think what the customer wants and work backwards.
7. Try to cater to the existing and future needs and not create a need.
8. Be honest and humble to everyone. It really pays and builds trust.
9. Keep documenting everything, even if it’s a small diary for time being.
10. Read books by successful entrepreneurs, failed entrepreneurs and struggling ones for the best advices. I read 2-3 books always.
11. Make use of free resources like open source technology, internet, several groups of entrepreneurs around the world even over the web if time is a constraint.
12. Try to approach the main people handling any corporate, government department instead of getting into the habit of agents or middle men.
13. If you need something, ASK. I have always got positive response.
14. Enjoy every moment of the hard work put in setting up your Start Up. These moments will never come back. Keep taking photos and videos recordings and all writes up from all team mates. Someone might make it their bible for starting up their startup.
15. This last one has kept me going always was told to me by my brother; when someone or something has really pulled your moral down, think of it as the BIG Hammer which makes sure, the harder the hit, the higher the peg goes!

7. Does educational background matter in the success of entrepreneurs?

Mind you there is a difference between being literate and being educated.
Being literate ensures a structured way of learning things. You are fortunate if you have the chance to learn anything imparted through professional colleges. But my personal experience says that hands on experience before joining any of these professional courses makes humongous difference in understanding of any subject. My engineering has helped me logically and break any problem into smaller manageable parts.Being educated need not mean one has to be literate. Experience and common sense is what matters in the long run. All entrepreneurs have to keep reading and learning constantly to keep themselves competent. Today, the accounts, finance and business planning make more sense to me than when I was studying my MBA in International Business.