Young Divya Gopinath of Mylapore worked in the IT industry for over 10 years.
Now, she is on her own. She manages a small business inn education. Teaching children on how today’s technology works. She offers online coding classes and they are booked all the time.
Says Divya, “When I was a kid, the computer science lab in school was the only place where we had access to computers, and hence the only place where we could learn to code. Even though the technology was so old, just watching my first program run successfully and show the words “Hello Divya” on the old big monitor, felt like magic !
Divya went on to have a deep interest in computer science and programming and that helped her sail through her career. Then the entrepreneur’s bug got her.
She says, “I wanted kids to experience these moments of joy when they learn to code, and hence I created Little Monks’ Laboratory with a strong backing from my close family. I firmly believe that learning to code is a fun way to promote problem solving and encourage logical thinking in kids.”
She feels “learning how today’s technology works, will give the kids a strong foundation to apply/use the technology of tomorrow.”
With small batch sizes and flexible time slots, the online coding classes at Little Monks’ Laboratory are open to kids in the age group 7 to 14 years.
Every student moves through four levels of the online coding workshop – Basics of Coding, Game development, App development and Python.
So how did she grow this home-based business?
Divya says she started taking live online coding classes from June 2020 for just three batches of two students each. The online classes were popular and new students started enrolling every month.
“In October 2020, I tied up with an NGO and took online coding classes for two schools in Kanchipuram,” says Divya.
Soon, students were enrolling from all over South India, Germany, UK , US, Singapore and Malaysia. By January 2021, Little Monks’ had trained over 100 students.
In March 2021, Monks partnered with Rhapsody Music to make recorded videos on coding for their online platform – CoCoon. Today, Monks has four trainers and a content creator.
Says she, “All of them are ‘power’ moms like me who gave up their careers in IT, love to teach and are enthusiastic programmers.”
Divya is at Akshaya Apartments, Brindavan Street, Mylapore.
Email ID: littlemonkslaboratory@gmail.com. Phone number: +91 9940203113
