A beautiful disaster: My journey from being an Entrepreneur to Early Year Practitioner

Team Udayavani, Jun 2, 2022, 10:09 AM IST

I had a dream of being my own boss. I was already running a successful business, a pre-school from the comfort of my house till 2018. With the urge to live up to my potential, I ventured into a bigger project and this is where my adventure as an educator-entrepreneur began.

In August 2018 I took a risky plunge in my professional life and went ahead to establish a pre-school in a professional setup. From running a pre-school out of my own house I went on to become the director of the pre-school that I newly set up.

Running a business was a steep learning curve. I roped in partners and business investors from Delhi and started interactions with the corporate segment. ‘A humbling experience’ is what I call it.  All these exercises helped me to understand the nuances of business, dealing in a corporate environment, handling, setting goals and delegating to my partners, teamwork, and compromising where necessary.

By March 2019, it was all set to begin. By then, I had begun marketing initiatives with many ideas which I felt would work in my favor. The admission began on the 8th of March. The Beginning was encouraging. But conversion wasn’t. The first year began with decent numbers and looked encouraging.

It was a bliss short-lived

It was a great beginning. I was just basking on my success of having been able to pull it off very well. All I had to do was to focus on my effort to take it to the next level. But one morning, the news of the pandemic cast a gloom over the entire project. It was not even a year since the project had begun.

India sounded a red alert due to Covid in March 2020 & the one-year-old pre-school had to be shut down temporarily. They say that obstacles to success are overcome by relentless dedication & hard work. So, we began online classes & somehow this was not taking us any further. The pandemic situation created so much of uncertainty that it had a very bad effect on my project. The investors pulled out of the project at the first instance & then paying the rent to hold the premises became a challenge. That’s when

I saw my dream crumbling like a house of cards. I could do very little to hold on to it. I had to let go of my dream project & location, & continue the classes online as the parents wished to continue with my classes. Even this period was short-lived as by May 2021 parents no longer wanted to continue with the school that had no recognition & no physical classes. It was literally a full stop to my entrepreneurial journey. Because there was no scope for improvement & the uncertainty of the Pandemic gave no hope of holding on to it.

I did not allow the pandemic to affect my Dreams & aspirations. Focusing on my dreams is what got me where I am today

I did not allow the zeal in me of being an educator to die down. I kept exploring opportunities. Pandemic left the little scope for working towards the education sector and there were very less choices to hang on to. I tried my hand in all possible areas to be connected to the world of Education. It opened up when I landed a job at a private school as Early Year Practitioner (EYP) Coordinator. (Child Care).

As I began working there, I realized that it was my new journey and here I got an opportunity of making my ideas come to life, something that was on the list for my pre-school. Here I experienced my job as a person who could give suggestions, plan and execute the idea I had and take the onus of getting it done. What I couldn’t fulfill as the director of my pre-school, I could very well put it across as the EYP Coordinator.