New Delhi: Shabadjit Bawa and his wife Divya Bawa are products of the Passion economy. Having been in the education field for almost two decades, they divested their profitably running chain of preschools and daycare centres founded by them and let their passion and talent give birth to the brand – THE STORRY BAND.
Born in 2020 amid Covid-19 pandemic out of a necessity to ‘make learning joyful’ THE STORRY BAND is a learning space that brings people with passion and varied skills to work with children to deliver curated learning experiences.
How did it actually happen? Shabadjit narrates excitedly that having spent almost 2 years with their then 5-year-old daughter Nanaki Caur during the pandemic and seeing how creativity and curiosity was driving her imagination led them to create an engaging learning space supported by play and stories.
“We decided to run online programs for 4-5 year old children. The biggest challenge was how do we engage with the so small in age on the screen? We defined our objective. If a Disney movie can engage a child for 90 minutes, can we do the same in 60 minute? Having ideated on this thought, we narrowed down the puzzle to 3 pieces – passionate educators, engaging resources and training educators – to make learning joyful and engaging. All the 3 pieces had to be in place before we could move forward. And we successfully did it,” explains the edupreneur couple.
To evolve a remunerative model for all the stakeholders was the next challenge to profitably sustain this venture. How did Bawas overcome this challenge?
And the model emerged: “The educators had to be one with us – feel ownership and be excited every time they came online to teach. We did something that nobody had done before – we made them our ‘partners’ and not employees. They had to be treated as co-owners; needed to have the flexibility to decide. And importantly, how much they wanted to earn, which days and the time of work suited them. They are now working on a revenue-sharing basis. Their growth and ability to earn depends on quality of their contribution to retain the child.”
Having resolved this, another piece of the entrepreneurial challenge was designing exciting resources for children. The resources were developed with the team of educators. These are being regularly updated as this online learning journey continues. Training traditional classroom teachers was the next piece in the puzzle. Here Divya Bawa, a trained Montessorian and a published book author who has two decades of teaching experience, chipped in.
“Having all the 3 pieces of the puzzle in place, we tested and kept iterating our model for 6 months before we finally launched our offerings online,” recalls Shabadjit with a visible sense of accomplishment. Post pandemic, the need to engage with their audience drove Bawas to open a physical space for learning that emerged from children’s interest and wonder. THE STORRY BAND Atelier at Friends Colony in New Delhi was thus born. This space was created to hold cultural events and story-telling sessions by Divya Bawa, who is now lovingly called Aunty D.
Their repertoire includes a wide range of stories based on the Indian culture, family system, true-life incidents, cross-culture and contemporary modern settings.
Little Nanki is now the established Kid tester of the brand’s products…! Why did the couple prefer own kid in this role?
“Our products are launched once they undergo validation from customers. We design products for children from birth to 10 years age group. What better way to iterate and get feedback than from your own child who like all children is creative and curious.” responds Shabadjit.
Currently, Bawas offer engaging online programs to fulfill the innate need of continuously supporting learning with play and stories, be it phonics – reading program, story-telling in Hindi and soon-to-be launched in Punjabi. At THE STORRY BAND learning is all about experiencing and enjoying the process.
“Our retail initiative got a further boost with corporates starting to believe in what we are doing resulting in institutional orders to conduct our programmes. We believe stories have the power to entertain, educate and influence change. Driven by this belief, we not only tell stories to entertain, but also to enable conversations and raise awareness on subjects like bullying, autism/alopecia/celebrating differences, environment & pollution, animal welfare, sharing to name a few,” says the couple. The story has just begun…!
