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Name: Divyaa Doraiswamy

Business: Gurukulam -The Shloka School

Location: Bangalore, India

Industry: Education & Training

Reason for starting? Bangalore is not short of music schools, dance schools, art schools or even yoga schools….But there is not a single Shloka school. The idea was to tap an area that had been left untapped, that being Shloka education. Shloka are the Vedic hymns from religious texts that keep our traditional roots in place. The very reason why Gurukulam was born. We are the Official shlokapreneurs at this point in time. Having said that we have nothing to do with religion or spiritualism.

Related: Read about an entreprenuer teaching kids yoga here. 

How do you define success? For me, success is purely being able to help children. Chanting improves concentration, reduces violence, anger and restlessness and creates good values among children. Being able to help them in the right way and channel their energy is a huge success for me. Within two years of opening, Gurukulam has been featured in leading newspapers – The Hindu, Deccan Chronicle, and Femina (a leading Indian magazine). These proved to be a huge milestones.

Biggest success: I teach a few specially challenged kids and within 6 months of their coming to shloka classes they had improved in ways their parents had not imagined. This is my biggest success to date. I am also Karamveer Chakra award winner which I am very proud of. 

Related: TSE Quick Take: Urban Entrepreneurship 

What is your top challenge and how you have addressed it? Gurukulam is a first-of-its-kind Shloka School in Bangalore. Reaching out to parents has been the biggest challenge since it’s a new concept and people need to believe in your work to get their children to come for such classes. I started putting up small advertisements in local shops, boutiques, pre-schools, fitness centers and Facebook. Advertising was the best thing that happened. We grew from six children to a whopping 50. The word of mouth also worked wonders and today, we don’t need any advertisement. We have people waiting to join our classes. We are still small but we’ve grown well. We have enquiries from the USA and Indonesia and students are already in queue for Skype lessons.

Who is your most important role model? Personally, I am a very self-motivated person and draw my inspiration from my own self.

[box_light]Website   www.divyaad.wixsite.com/mysite
Facebook   www.facebook.com/Gurukulam-Shloka-School[/box_light]

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