‘Schools Should Focus On Carving Its Niche Rather Than Offering Discounts’

With schools mushrooming at each and every corner of every city, parents are often confused where to actually get their students enrolled. While many schools promote themselves to be having state-of-the-art-infrastructure and best-in-class faculty, parents look for the best value for money among them. Amidst all this, only a few such schools are able to position themselves differently amongst others. This was deliberated at a session on ‘Maintaining and Establishing USP in a competitive, Saturated Market’ at the School Leaders Conclave organized by BW Education on February 19th, 2020. This session was chaired by chaired by Raghav Poddar, Chairman Poddar World School.

Priya Krishnan, Founder& CEO, KLAY Prep Schools and Daycare, “As we are having conversations with parents, we say here is what we are looking for and here is what we provide. We have focussed on working parents’ and their need for childcare. We communicate succinctly to the consumer what we provide rather than confusing and that is our USPs.”

Meghana Musunuri, Founder & Chairperson, Fountainhead Global School, “There is no USP that will last for longer. It has to be more innovative time on time where you need to understand the requirements of the children and their parents and be innovative about the USPs and trying to be more relevant. Also, what I would suggest is when we are trying to make them future-ready, we need to create a platform for them to experience it. We somehow feel that every school is competing with each other but it should be the other way. We should be collaborating with each other because we want the majority of our students to be benefitted out of whatever we are doing individually. 

Amol Arora, Managing Director, Shemrock and Shemford Group of School, “For school principals or owners, the first thing you should look at is what your strengths are and if they match parents pain areas today. And then focus on that. Don’t try to give everything to everybody. We started our preschool in 1989 when it was very dull and boring.  We focussed on activity-based learning and that became a template for other pre-schools.”

Lt. General Surender Kulkarni, Director, Mayo College, Ajmer, “Our USP is that we are a unique brand, well known in India and across the globe, which is a combination of our great heritage and our capacity to reinvent ourselves with the changing times.  In our school, every child spends more than two hours on sports if we feel it is essential to the growth of the child in attaining skills like problem-solving, teamwork, Collaboration, etc and all the things which people are looking for in modern times. We also have the concept of foster parents for our children which enables our children to feel like it is a second home. Even 6th generation students are coming in our schools. It is not how much you charge; what you charge you must give value for money. And you are not seeking to make profits then your attitude and approach towards running the school changes. So neither I am interested in introducing new students nor am I introducing anything which has become the latest fad.” He also maintained, “Because we have the brand, we have the ability to induct high-level resource person who does not merely come on commercial grounds. If you are a businessman investing, you must decide how much return on investment you want and plough back the profit everything into education rather than diverting it for other verticals. Keep improving the quality on a running basis. Thus, remaining contemporary and relevant and expanding the services that you provide to your students.”

Avishek Banerjee

BW Reporters The author is a Principal Correspondent at BW Businessworld.