Founded in 2013, Kidspreneur is Asia’s first entrepreneurial education provider for children aged 7 to 18 years, which is helping create the next generation of innovators and change makers.
"We believe that all kids should develop an entrepreneurial mindset, so we’ve been working hard and investing to develop entrepreneurship curriculum that is fun, innovative and can easily be implemented by schools. Our curriculum helps students and particularly girls, grow into passionate innovators while they gain the confidence and skills to transform their ideas into realities," says Mohanalakshmi K, founder of the organisation.
Mohana completed her MBA from Singapore and worked as an entrepreneur for a decade. After speaking to a number of young entrepreneurs, Mohana realised that the one thing that they felt could have made entrepreneurship easier for them would have been to be educated about it from a young age. That's when it struck Mohana to start 'Kidspreneur'. The company's co-founder Kalasalingam. S has 12 years of experience as an IT Infra Head with Singapore Telecommunication and his expertise helped create a platform to integrate and deliver the Kidspreneur curriculum to schools across Asia, especially in India.
"It was when I started our entrepreneurial journey a decade ago that it came to me- schools teaches students to be competitive, among friends and peers. But, there can only be one top position, one winner, one person who succeeds. What about number two you may ask, well, he or she's not number one would be the reply. That was the drill and the impression made upon us. The real world is obviously different. You have to collaborate to compete, definitely an oxymoron. Then we started our curriculum development in 2012 in Singapore along with Singapore MOE Guidance, an exclusive entrepreneurship curriculum for kids under 18 with the 10 years futuristic development in mind, we realised that this was crucial to making academic education relevant for the students," says Mohana.
At Kidspreneur, they give their students more than just book knowledge. They give them the opportunity, encouragement and a safe environment to actualise their ideas.
To support the children, the company has mentors from around the globe to guide them and they have access to an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem.
One example is KIDx Asia(http://kidxasia.com/), a platform where students can pitch their business ideas for investment to parents, staff, and associates all come together in the spirit of entrepreneurship to connect, collaborate, and create opportunities.
"Have you seen a business collaboration happen between a student and another parent? Perhaps between different parents and unlikely acquaintances? It is all happening right here," adds Mohana.
The curriculum to make your kids a successful entrepreneur
Kidspreneur currently offers two programs: Kidspreneur MBA and KidspreneurEdu. By adding relevancy to academics and providing students with a real-world context both the programs are designed to be flexible and applicable in a variety of classroom settings. The curriculum materials are updated regularly for the same.
Kidspreneur EDU curriculum has been specifically developed for elementary, middle and high school children across Asia. The curriculum helps students to learn how to run a business through the company's entrepreneurship programs.
"It's an effort to teach students the important business skills that many of them were not being taught at school. Today, Kidspreneur curriculum has signed with 75 schools across Tamilnadu and is a teacher-led entrepreneurial program," explains Mohana.
"The curriculum is prepared in such a way that every kid will understand their strength and weaknesses, work alongside and also find their passion or idea and convert it into a business. Once every kid completes his or her 10 weeks programme they will be ready with their business plans and start creating a prototype for their product and start manufacturing them to sell it to their customers at Kidspreneur Business Fair," says Mohana.
Everyone can become an entrepreneur
The company's tagline says: "Everyone can be entrepreneurial" and that's what probably has garnered them a positive response throughout.
"We are getting a tremendous response from parents and schools on the results we bring in every child at our Kidspreneur Business Fair. We educate them with real-world connection and experiences and we just don’t encourage kids to start a business and make money, we also raise social entrepreneurs," says Mohana, beaming with pride.
“I don't have to say much, you can tell as soon as my child gets here. My kid is loving it – she looks forward to Kidspreneur. She gets enthusiastic about it. When she has her Kidspreneur class, I really feel like I gave the best to my kid," says a child's parent, Dipti Sharma, hailing from Jaipur.
Why Entrepreneurship?
When asked why did the founders feel this would be a great avenue to do something in the field of educational development for children, Mohana said "Because we believe in developing a generation of pioneers who are the creators of opportunity and are of value to society - people who leave the world in a better state than when they first came into it."
"Wouldn’t it be a great reassurance to also know that your children have means to be financially self-reliant before they graduate? What if your children could be financially free by the time they hit university and cover the tuition costs themselves? You don’t have to wait until after your child graduates to find out," adds Mohana.
