Summer camps to blenders and from cool talcs to shades

The 'C' Day is made up of Art Activity through Cheer-up cards, Aesthetic Development activity through Clay Fun, Craft Activity through Crazy Collage, General knowledge & Awareness through Countries & Costumes, Math Skills through Corn Counting, Imaginative skills through Colourful Clouds, and Language Development through "C" Clothesline. Sounds a mouthful? And this is just a day's schedule at a summer camp being organized in Mumbai. Such is the hectic activity being witnessed in the summer camps and hobby classes in two months of the scorching heat.

The two-month window when the schools shut for vacations is the time when the high-on-energy kids need to be kept busy, and the parents are ready to spend. This has led to the growth of this not-so-old category, which comes on its own mostly during the kids-vacations. Ranging from the dance classes by Shiamak Daavar and Terence Lewis, theatre-led workshops by Raell Padamsee, Prithvi theatre's summertime workshops, to the summer-camps being organized by education brands like Kangaroo Kids, EuroKids, Funskool and many others, form the cornerstone of this fledgling but growing industry. Add to this the outbound summer camps category and the total industry size as per estimates is about Rs200-250 crore.

Sharing the specific plans, Prajodh Rajan, VP of EuroKids International says, "Last year we had closer to 9000 children at our summer clubs across the country. This year the plan is to conduct the clubs across 350 + EuroKids centres in more than 100 + cities in the country for children in the age group of 3-12 years." Summer Club is a 21 day inbound program focused on children in the age group of 3 to 12 years of age who are divided into 2 broad categories (ages 3-7 and age 8-12). Elaborates Lina Ashar, Founder of Kangaroo Kids Preschools & Billabong High International Schools on their plans; "We have been arranging summer camps for our students to ensure that they get their share of fun in the vacation period." This year, they have tied up with Crosswords to host activities like Puppet Making Workshop, science exploration for good living Workshop amongst others.

The action is also moving out from the cities to the nature and adventure. inme Learning, a leading player in the outbound summer camp category has some innovative plans lined up that include G.A.B.R (Great American Bicycle Ride) a 1600 km, self contained expedition from Seattle to San Francisco for Kids aged 14 to 17, a Kedarkantha trekking expedition, a biking expedition on the dirt tracks of Coorg and rafting and Kayaking program in Rishikesh.

Even though as yet a fragmented industry, some brands do have a clear game plan on strategy and allocations. Tarun Chandna, the young CEO of inme Learning, feels that for such a product word of mouth and referrals are the best marketing tools and elaborates, "To aid this strategy we create very attractive marketing collateral and promotional gifts for each child and have a reward scheme for parents and kids to generate referrals." EuroKids has a dedicated marketing budget for Summer Clubs centered on Print advertisements, hoardings, leaflets and mall activations. They allocate close to 15% of their marketing budget on Summer Clubs.