How to Scale Your Education Franchise for Long-Term Success
When Trisha Mehta opened an educational branch of her education franchise, in a quaint corner of a tier 2 city, she had one goal, to make a Quality, affordable education accessible to all children, not just the privileged few. The first few months were a complete blur of long hours, speaking about teaching passion ,making quality education affordable to all , and word-of-mouth marketing. And Tada…………it worked !!
Parents loved the personalized learning given to each student and they could see the difference in their wards holistic development , gradually the numbers started rising, and soon she had a waitlist.
But what came next is a story many founders dream of and fear !
The Temptation of Fast Growth
Within the first year, Trisha received a call from a business investor from a prime city who had read about the laurels of her school in a local magazine. He wanted to open ten centers across the satellite region within six months. The offer was lucrative, exciting… and terrifying.
"Fast growth can be a trap," her mentor had warned her over a coffee one morning. “You need systems before scale. Otherwise, you’ll lose what made your franchise special in the first place.”
That advice saved her.
Instead of leaping into sigmoid extensive expansions, Trisha decided to play smart and chalked out processes first. She documented each and every process of the school from teaching, training, curriculum, marketing, parent orientation , health and safety to even templates and many other small details to the core.
Lesson 1: Systemize Before You Multiply
Trisha began by documenting everything: teaching methods, onboarding processes, marketing templates, centre operations, and even how to decorate each branch to reflect the brand. She created detailed playbooks for franchisees.
“Every franchise should feel like a copy/clone/photocopy of the original in spirit, not just the name,” she explained.
Created a cloud-based Learning Management System (LMS) to maintain uniformity in curriculum and track student progress in real time at one go. This ensured that whether a child was learning in Mumbai or Madurai, the experience was consistent and seamless.
Lesson 2: Invest in Training and Support
Scaling left, right and centre wasn’t just about opening new branches—it was about helping and nurturing each of them as per their potential .
She introduced monthly webinars, quarterly in-person training retreats, and an always-on support team for franchisees. Every new business partner underwent a two-week immersive induction and orientation program not just on curriculum delivery but also on local marketing, parent engagement, and student counseling and also mainly on the health and safety standards of the school, which was the prime component of the school !
“Our success depended on their success,” she said. “So we treated our franchisees like partners, not customers.”
Lesson 3: Localize, Don’t Standardize Everything
One of the biggest insights at Birla Open Minds gained is the power of localization.
While the curriculum is standardized, we allowed each center to tweak teaching methods to suit local cultures and languages in coordination with the trainer and a rationale that suits the tweak.. In Chennai, for example, we can introduce bilingual instruction. In small-town Punjab, centers hosted parent education sessions to boost enrollment.
This balance between consistency and flexibility give each center a sense of ownership while staying aligned with the core mission.
The Result: Long-Term, Sustainable Growth
Today, Birla Open Minds is a household name in Prek and K 12 school learning and franchising , But more importantly, it has stayed true to its mission: quality education for all.
“Scaling isn’t about how fast you grow “It’s about how strong your foundation is when you do.”
Because in education, success isn’t measured just in revenue—it’s measured in impact.
And impact takes time, care, and commitment to grow.
