Aarti Chhabria: A Serial Entrepreneur and Changemaker in Ed Space

In an exclusive Interview with Insights Success magazine, Aarti Chhabria – spoke about her entrepreneurial journey alongside giving a sneak peak about her life.

IS: Kindly brief us about yourself, your initial journey since the beginning of your career?

Aarti: Being a business graduate student and a classical dancer, I had the privilege of teaching dance to visually impaired children from the Save the Children India foundation. Teaching dance through the medium of story and experience gave me the urge to launch my maiden company City Sproutz, experiential learning centres post school hours. Going ahead I built Club Sproutz, providing niche experiences to the parenting community and now through Clap Global, my third launch I aim to provide an opportunity to combine the vision of experiential learning and building a compassionate generation with the concept of travellers in classrooms. 

IS: What drives you every day to work? Or what is your motivation which pushes you to enhance Your performance?

Aarti: “Be the change you want to see” the fact that I am getting an opportunity to make changes in the learning system that I have always envisioned. In today’s polarised world children must have a chance to understand the world through first hand experiences so that they can mould themselves to provide and prepare for problems they foresee in the future. Education should be egalitarian, accessible and available to all, is what I strongly believe and try to provide through my platform. An international pedagogy kind of experience that is aspirational to all parents is made available through a gamified fun version to kids.

IS: How does your family contribute to your success? Talk about your family values, the culture Which has strongly impacted your professional journey?

Aarti: A loving and supportive husband who believes in shared responsibility and completely stands by my side through my journey. Together we have raised our lovely 6 year old daughter in a very balanced atmosphere. My father a serial entrepreneur, an enterprising personality who has changed various business profiles from being a garment manufacturer to an agent for big garment houses in Europe to now being  in the finance sector has been a great inspiration to me. My mother with her spiritual bend in life has brought in a balance in my personality that keeps me grounded to a great extent.

IS: Please mention the challenges, issues you have faced in your professional journey and your efforts or solutions you have identified to overcome the challenges.

Aarti: Married into a family that never experienced working women initially there were struggles. But my passion and vision for making the change in the educational scene and benefitting a million kids was instrumental in gradually changing this mind set.

IS: Kindly describe in detail about your entrepreneurship and its unique services and products.

Aarti: Clap Global is a platform that curates exchanges between students and humans across the world to make them great Global Citizens. Exceptional stories from extraordinary yet ordinary people from all over the world is what we offer through our products.

PCT-Physical Clap Talks, VCT-Virtual Clap Talks and ACT- anytime clap talks, an online series of mini video clips from individuals around the world. We believe Global Competence is the need of the hour and hence created this innovative product based on the ethics of building a whole new generation that is far more compassionate towards personal, social and cultural differences.

IS: Brief us about the industry scenario from your perspective.

Aarti: Time could not be more perfect, with the growth of international schooling and children wanting to be better Global Citizens, PISA making Global Competence as the fourth component for ranking a country for education and CIE and IBE introducing global competence as a subject in schools over past 2 years and of course Travel becoming more about real experiences and real people rather than monuments and hotels.

IS: What would you advise to the budding entrepreneurs?

Aarti: According to me every person has an independent journey, what worked for me was the fact that I don’t go by assumptions, I believe in experimenting for complete satisfaction. Try fast fail fast is my theory and I thrive on the ideology that there is always another possibility, it’s never the end.

IS: State your passions, aims, and goals.

Aarti: My passion is to build an egalitarian society when it comes to education. I aim to do this through a learning platform which is true to its time, will continue to be there for decades and centuries and will be of that time relevant like connecting children with real people who enlighten them with stories of what is currently happening around, be it history, geography, gender bias, innovation or technology. My goal is to make sure all this made available to every child anywhere in the world. The immediate new future goal is to reach out to 1 million children in 2 years in the India market.

IS: How are you foreseeing the future in terms of expansion of your business, the advent of new

Technologies and increasing players in the market?

Aarti: There is no direct competition for us yet; we have developed a strong product with 3 levels of curriculum a vetted assessment rubric, quizzes and projects with consultants from UNICEF. The system is built both virtually and physical, we are using technology in the right spaces for scaling. Recently we launched our programme in Sri Lanka, managing smooth operations in another country at limited costs from our head office in Mumbai, made us realise that the world is our playground here on…

IS: What are the technologies that you feel is underrated or overrated in today’s tech-enabled business environment?

Aarti: Technologies are overrated when it comes understanding the emotions of a person. The human chapter is always going to be important. As Jack Ma says, we need to teach our children the soft skills to be able to connect with humans. They should be able to do everything that machines can’t do because we will never be able to supersede something that a machine can do.

Major Prominent Clients: Sunbeam Group of School U.P, JBCN group Mumbai, brands like National Geographic Traveller and AIESEC Communities.

Headquarter in: Mumbai
Founded in Year: December 2015
Employees Headcount: 12