IT Kids to offer more than mere training

Techno-Savvy housewives who can wield the mouse with the same confidence that they do a rolling pin, computer whiz-kids at 14 and junior scientists who indulge their curiosity by simulating Pokhran blasts and volatile chemical combinations on the computer screen, are some of the Indian middle class aspirations that a young company which opens shop here on Sunday offers to satisfy. Also coming soon, naturally at a computer monitor near you, are virtual dissections of roaches, guinea pigs and cadavers, visual dissolution of gold, combustible chemical combinations, corporation-run school laboratories with the best of equipment and eventually a world without schools, banks and department stores.

Incidentally, when V Suresh Kumar and V Narayan, Chennai-based technocrat entrepreneurs managed to convince the Mumbai-based Rs 700-million Indchem Group to invest in launching IT Kids, a progressive computer-based programme for children aged between 4 and 14, that would teach not just technology but also a mix of academics and ethics, they had their sights set on the country's Rs 18,000-crore upper middle class market. A year down the line, the duo have tapped the vein of the huge Indian middle class.

From getting housewives to Netsurf to dangling before schools the enticing prospect of virtual dissections and titrations on the computer, the company has its customer base hooked. "Since no one else in the country was offering a progressive course for children in this age segment, we targeted the age group of four to 14," he says. And then came the idea that mothers who came to pick up their kids would also like to be in tune with whatwas happening in IT.

In the city to inaugurate their first centre here, for which they have Maniklal Thakkar. MD, Muktijivan Vidyalaya and BVD High School as franchisee, Kumar was quick to point out they were targetting six more centres in Ahmedabad and 40 in the State in the next year.

In Abmedabad, the tie-up is presently with two schools and a learning centre is being opened at Maninagar this Sunday where if Kids will launch its one- year foundation course. "The mothers package will come complimentary," says Kumar.

Compiled from local news media