Pooja Goyal

Founder Director, Intellitots

Pooja Goyal started her professional journey with stuff dreams are made of – a brilliant student, with an engineering degree from a premium institute IIT Delhi and then an MBA from INSEAD, France, she worked with companies like Adobe and Palm across India, Europe and the US. Always ready to explore, she founded a successful technology startup in the Bay Area and then led product  marketing teams at PalmSource and Adobe. It was while working with Adobe that she decided to move back to India for a 2 year stint.

With Gurgaon as her new temporary home, at least that’s what she thought at that point, she went out to look for a perfect school for her children. To her dismay, she was very disappointed with the quality of day cares and schools in town. Her experience with nannies and governesses wasn’t very encouraging either. Someone else might have taken the situation as an inevitable part of life and would have moved on with some compromises but Pooja had a different perspective. She saw an untapped opportunity there and started Intellitots, a school for 6 month – 6 year old children in partnership with her IIT batchmate Shivani Kapoor.

Of course, the plunge wasn’t all easy as she had to toss aside a very successful career for something unknown. But she figured that she didn’t have anything to prove to someone or herself anymore. While she would have definitely reached very high on corporate ladder the way she was going but she was aware of the trade-offs too. She was clear that selling software all her life wouldn’t mean as much to her as would doing something out of sheer passion and making an impact in society.

Education was something that had always been close to her heart and she loved being around kids. She immersed herself with all the knowledge that she could get about education through all possible sources like – reading, research, courses and practical experience.

She went through her share of hurdles like finding real estate in a place like Gurgaon with all its red tapism and other problems.

There was more support than the problems, as Pooja, an eternal optimist, would like to think. Her family encouraged her all along. It was easy to find like-minded, talented and passionate teachers as Gurgaon is teeming with female intellectual capital not able to employ their caliber due to familial constraints. To Pooja being a woman is an advantage than otherwise because of their natural ability to multi task and high emotional quotient.

A natural learner, Pooja feels she gets inspired by everyone she meets. There is something to learn from every interaction.

Talking of work-life balance, she is happy that she has that luxury by virtue of her field of work. Her driving factor has been to be significant than to be just successful. As she sees it, her children are stake-holders in her life and if she is not able to impact their lives, everything else is meaningless. Being with them while they are growing up is a conscious decision she has made, even if it means saying no to offers of growing her business to other parts of the country.

“Others may not do the same, it is their prerogative. It is important for me. It is very important to know one’s priorities and goals”, she says.

Going forward, she has a vision of setting up a world-class school that offers education till 12^th standard. With completely unorthodox, futuristic and sensible approach to education, she lights up when she talks about her plans. “The world has changed and so should education system, especially with so much technology on our side, we are ready for a revolution in education”, is what she feels.

According to Pooja, mentoring has a crucial role to play in any entrepreneur’s journey. While the person is struggling with intermingled questions, a fresh perspective with an understanding can work wonders.

“Biz Divas has been a great support system for me and I was put in touch with some amazing mentors through it”, she tells. Being a part of Biz Divas Mentoring Leadership Program, she learnt a lot about certain areas of business she was experienced in, like acquisitions, from senior leaders in the industry right when she needed it.

“Sometimes you may not get a ready-made solution from your mentor but bouncing off ideas with someone senior opens so many vistas you cannot imagine working on your own”, she muses.

She also believes in Biz Divas’ philosophy of paying it forward. One step at a time, one person supported is all it takes to inspire and change the whole world.

A fun loving and easy going person at heart, Pooja has this message to give aspiring women:

“A lot of women do not give priority to their dreams. Make your dream a priority. That is not a selfish thing to do. If you do something you enjoy, you end up spreading happiness all around you. If you are out of work for a long time, you tend to lose confidence and that makes for a vicious cycle. Try. Try and be ready to fail! Do whatever it takes to smoothen your entry into uncharted waters. The first step has to come from you, the rest will fall into place.”

Intellitots today is a leading provider of early education and preschools, employer-sponsored child care and educational advisory services in Delhi NCR. Intellitots has been awarded the Education Excellence Award for Fastest Growing Early Education brand in Delhi/NCR.