There’s A Lot To Learn From Music

Music has a profound influence on most of us and we respond to it in myriad ways, as listeners, producers, or the rare folks that choose to make a career out of it. One such driven individual is Tanuja Gomes, Co-founder and Co-CEO, Furtados School of Music (FSM) Education. Recognising the importance of music in a child’s development, Gomes started collaborating with schools. While her target audience was initially children from 5 to 15 years of age, the company has expanded to include adults as well, especially those who have taken to music as a hobby in the lockdown.

Talking about her journey thus far, Tanuja says, “We have been able to enable music education to over 200,000 students in the last 9 years. For the first time in our country, students have access to organised music learning curriculum, which includes piano, keyboard, guitar, drums, vocals (western and Hindustani).” 

“We have optimised technology and very effectively made music learning available through all channels, which includes centres, app to find a teacher to come home and teach, online music education and partnership with K12 schools to manage music education. Pre-Covid we had 75,000 students across 150 K12 schools. Currently, we are conducting about 2,500 online learning classes per week,” adds Gomes. 

While the numbers look encouraging, building an enterprise came with its own set of challenges. Usually, as regards women entrepreneur in education, there is a perception that she will be happy and satisfied with a small set up. However, Gomes did not undertake this this journey to be small. 

In addition, Covid posed a further challenge when all schools were shut down. However, she took all these challenges in her stride and emerged even stronger. In a matter of 45 days, FSM put together their online learning platform, trained all the teachers to deliver engaging online classes and, most importantly, aggressively reached out and marketed their proposition. Going online has also benefitted their business, with the revenue increasing nine times than any other year. 

Gomes understands that a entrepreneur has to venture out into unchartered territories. Improvising on the present situation, she says, “One of our core business has been partnering with schools, 70 per cent of our revenue last year came from the same. We are disrupting that business by creating a license-based model, such that schools can license our curriculum at 20 per cent of the cost and execute the same with their team. This will help us in the long run as we will be able to scale faster. This model has been well understood by the team and they are executing this change successfully.” 

Taking to technology is non-negotiable in today’s scenario, and Gomes has seamlessly made that transition while carrying her team along.