The Story of Spark Club: Part 1 - The beginning
By: Neha Alreja
Tags: Women in STEM, Women In Business, Women, Women In Tech, Startup Lessons

​​Hello there!

My name is Neha Alreja and I am the proud founder of my little venture called The Spark Club founded in 2019, which aims at helping kids learn STEM concepts at an early age through board games, fun science activities, workshops, and many more. While I understand that everyone is busy with their current work pressure, I still wanted to share a little experience of mine on how I came up with the idea of starting TheSparkClub.

Customary graduation photograph which was taken by my dad to share on the family Whatsapp group

To begin with, I started my career as a Software Developer holding a Masters's Degree in Computer Science from BITS Pilani.

Since my school days, I always had an interest in helping people understand different topics in the curriculum, luckily I was able to do that successfully. In short, I loved teaching to a great extent. One fine day, in the month of November 2019, out of the blue I decided to pursue my hobby in teaching and thought of giving it a try by conducting a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) workshop for kids starting from age group 4+ over the weekends. Well, for one thing, I loved teaching and secondly, I didn’t want my life to run on a monotonous tune of my 9–5 job. No doubt it was paying for my everyday needs but I soon realized that doing something good for the future of our community is more important, so I decided to give it a shot. I tried my level best to help kids see their future in an optimum stage in which they can grab concepts the fastest.

​​​​Moving forward I, along with my husband Rachit, then finally decided to start with our first trial workshop for kids having age group 4+. As a thumb rule in the digital era, we started posting the details on social media channels which included Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. In the beginning, I personally was pretty skeptical if we would get any response for this workshop post since it was our first workshop but out of blue, the response was overwhelming. That moment when we received our first response RSVP to our STEM workshop, my happiness knew no bound. Then came the second RSVP, the third and so on the responses kept coming in. I understood that the parents in this competitive world — despite their busy schedules — are trying their level best to provide every method available for their child’s development.

The first workshop in our humble abode in Basavanagudi, Bangalore

It was the day of the workshop and as we didn’t have a venue decided on our trial workshop, we conducted it at our home in Basavanagudi, Bangalore. Soon after 10 o’clock, parents along with their children kept coming in and within no time our house was full of children and their parents. One thing we always had in mind is that parents have their things to deal with and we didn’t want to pressurize them with this workshop. So, in the workshop, we provided all the materials required for our little session of experimentation. While I was busy interacting with the kids, my partner was busy interacting with parents and serving them tea alongside so that they don’t get bored enough sitting and waiting for the workshop to end.

This is the point where I faced our second problem on how can we keep parents engaged while their kids are in the workshop. As a workaround and with response data we collected, we started collaborating with restaurants and cafes where we could conduct our workshop so that while parents can have their merry time around the kids are attending the workshop. It was a gamechanger I must say!

Workshop in collaboration with Lahe Lahe, Indiranagar, Bangalore

Now, the responses were overwhelming, where parents kept on asking about when would the next workshop be conducted, Rachit with an entrepreneurial mindset approached me to take this full time. I gave it a thought and finally left my day job and started working at TheSparkClub full time. This was one of the scariest decision of my life but as Rachit kept supporting, I had to give it a try. So at this point, I left my job and was fully prepared on my strategies for the upcoming workshops. In the month of February when children would have their Summer Holidays, we planned for a summer camp that included more than 150 activities. But God had some other plans for us which were no other than the COVID pandemic attack… On 24th March 2020, the lockdown was declared by the government and all our hard work went into vain. Parents, because of the pandemic situation started worrying about their kid's summer camps and we decided to refund the entire amount to all of the parents. This was heartbreaking as the one thing I really loved, started to fall apart in front of my own eyes and I was unable to do anything. This is all for part 1 of my story to TheSparkClub now and now stay tuned on how we dealt with this during pandemic times.