Chennai: Sridevi Raghavan, a Harvard alumnus, was in her twenties when the ambitious idea of beginning a chain of child day care centres struck her.
Her chain, Amelio Child Day Care centres, has been growing in Chennai and Bengaluru since she started off in 2008 with her husband, Raghavan, who left his job in Hong Kong to support her venture.
Amelio, through a carefully crafted curriculum and well-trained staff teaching and looking after the kids, engages the kids over six months of age to after-schoolers.
Sridevi is today not only a successful entrepreneur behind Amelio but also a mother who benefits from her own centre. “My 18-month old son, Siddhanth, goes to Amelio and daughter Sukriti, a school going 5-year-old is enrolled at Amelio for an after school programme,” said Sridevi.
One of the things that makes Amelio stand out from other child care centres besides being an onsite centre for working parents is the training provided to the staff and an ideal staff to child ratio.
“The staff to child ratio is 1:3 for infants, 1:6 for preschoolers and 1:8 for after-schoolers. We have a stringent hiring mechanism with interviews and tests, and those who clear interviews have a training period before being hired,” said the young entrepreneur.
Speaking about the challenges she faced during the setting up of Amelio, she said at the time they started off, layoffs were common in corporate sector due to recession and so no one was really interested in an onsite day care centre that would help retain their female workforce.
“That was a tough time, but after that, we started off as centres that are onsite, standalone and residential, though now we have very few of the residential ones.”
Her idea to begin Amelio stemmed from seeing women juggling work and home, and struggling to leave their offices early to take care of their kids. “Now times have changed, as globally women want to make huge strides in their careers and also manage homes. Also, men are coming ahead by taking responsibility of dropping kids and picking them up from care centres, which also is a tectonic shift in India.”
Amelio hopes to open 10 centres in next 18 months and is likely to expand to cities such as Gurgaon and Pune. “I hope Amelio expands to become a pan-Asia leader in high-quality childcare,” she said.
