Like many others, Dinesh Kumar Boswan lost his well-paying job as a hardware designer in Singapore when the dotcom bubble burst in 2001-02. But today, even as jobs and salaries shrink in IT and other sectors, he has no sense of déjà vu.
Boswan is sure his job is safe from economic headwinds and his paycheque, which is over Rs 1 lakh a month, will not contract.
He’s a ‘Chinese mathematics’ teacher who has about 500 students at his centre in Vijayanagar in west Bangalore. On weekends, Boswan teaches the children to use the abacus, a Chinese bead-based calculation instrument. Abacus is a non-school skills-based education platform, which assists children in counting, and increases their concentration, memory, and thinking ability.
Boswan’s five-year-old institute is a franchisee of SIP Academy India, which has a chain of abacus centres. After losing his job in the dotcom bust, he returned to Bangalore, where he met H N Narayana, a senior manager at Canara Bank who had taken voluntary retirement and was running an abacus centre in the IT city. Boswan started his centre with 14 students. Since then, he’s trained 1,200-1,400 kids. And the demand is only growing. “The education sector will remain insulated from the happenings in the world. This job is far more secure than any IT job in these times and the pay is also more or less the same,” he says.
Santosh Raman, a software engineer at one of the top IT companies based in Bangalore, is thinking of walking in Boswan’s footsteps and opening such a centre. Though the 32-year-old techie still has his job, he’s seeing acquaintances from the sector losing theirs.
Several other IT professionals are also considering alternate careers that offer stability and pay as much as their current jobs. Abacus franchisees appear to be a good bet.
Dinesh Victor, director of SIP Academy India, says, “Earlier, abacus franchising was the domain of housewives. Now there is a shift with a lot of professionals showing interest due to the stability associated with this work.” Industry estimates peg the abacus learning market in India at Rs 125-150 crore, growing at over 25-30% annually.
The spurt in demand is such that centres have mushroomed even in tier-III and -IV towns such as Jalgaon, Jalna, Parbhani, Harihara, Sagar, and Hubli.
While SIP Academy India has trained over 85,000 children through its 450 abacus centres across the country, its rival UC MAS India has imparted such training to 2,00,000 children through 2,000 franchisees.
Under the franchise model, the candidate interested in opening a centre can approach an abacus company and pay Rs 70,000 as fee. The franchisee will then be given the course material needed for conducting classes.
Students are usually charged about Rs 500 a month per head, of which Rs 125 is paid to teachers and Rs 100 to the abacus company as royalty. The remaining Rs 275 goes to the franchisee.
“Per month, a franchisee can get Rs 275 from each student. So, if there are about 300 students at a centre, the franchisee can easily earn Rs 82,500 per month. Even if the rent for the centre and marketing expenses total to, say Rs 10,000 a month, the franchisee can still make a cool Rs 72,500,” says Victor.
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
)
)
)
)
)
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}
){kind=small}