Parents of preschoolers are like the Amazon jingle when it comes to photographs and updates about their children “Aur dikhao aur dikhao”.
For preschools this represents an opportunity to showcase the activities in their institution and an opportunity to engage with their parent community. This mutual need is what Flinnt, a communication and sharing app designed for educational institutions is fulfilling.
The communication needs of preschools are diverse:
- For Navrachana Vidyani Preprimary school, Vadodara, the most important thing is to try and replace the daily diary writing, for the teachers it is a daily chore to write important instructions in the diary and also check whether the parents have acknowledged. It takes a precious 20 minutes of class time everyday.
- For 9Kids, Ahmedabad, the real challenge is to update the parent everyday about what happened in the class, the school follows an activity centered curriculum and it is important to explain to the parent what activity was conducted and what is the rational behind it.
- For Blossoms preschool, Pune, it is about sharing the teaching learning methodology being adopted in the class with the parents. They feel the biggest problem in preschools is the difference in the methods adopted by the teachers in the class and by the parents at home.
Most of the Preschools have been trying to fulfil the above needs using a mix of Whatsapp, Facebook, sms and the ubiquitous diary or almanac. For sharing photographs, Facebook has been the preferred platform but it was not enabling a targeted approach, each album had innumerable photographs, whereas it is important to send photographs of each grade and division to parents of that division. Whatsapp has a lot of privacy concerns, all phone numbers are shared and it doesn’t provide any control to the teacher or the preschool. SMS is unidirectional and not collaborative, the diary or almanac is time consuming and has limitation on the kind of content.
These are some of the reasons why Flinnt has seen fast adoption, it already boasts of centers of national chains like EuroKids and TreeHouse, it also has centres from regional chains like Shanti Juniors, Blossoms Preschools and innumerable independent preschools. Tarak Yagnik heads Marketing and Sales at Flinnt, he says it is the privacy, ease and convenience of the platform combined with the pricing of INR 5000 per preschool per annum that is driving fast sales and implementation.
In the age of instant gratification Preschools are feeling the need to shift to an app based communication and sharing platform as Parents are happier getting instant updates on their smartphones rather than waiting for the circular to come from the Preschool. The appification of preschools is finally underway and preschools are discovering the joy of instant communication and constant engagement.
