A women entrepreneur, and founder of Agarkar Center of Excellence (ACE) Sports Ed, Fatema Agarkar is the Career Change Makers Award 2021 “Top Visionary Educator” award-winner.
Her journey towards providing world-class education in India started when she realized that there was a need for proper infrastructure, updated teaching methods and more professional, holistic approach towards teaching in private educational institutions. Through her services, she wanted both the families and staff associated to the educational institutions to benefit.
A graduate of Mumbai-based Sydenham College of Commerce & Economics, Ms. Fatema Agarkar was the State and University topper of her batch. She holds an MBA from Birmingham (United Kingdom), as well as B. Ed and ECCE degrees. After returning to India, her passion and deep understanding of the educational market gave her the idea of stepping into the business of professionalizing and improving the quality of educational institutes through consultation, audits, and other unique solutions.
With her wide expertise in education, business and administration, along with a strong educational background, Ms. Fatema Agarkar has helped set up 50 educational institutes. These include pre-schools and high with both national and international curricula in different parts of India. She has also helped in setting up a school for children with special needs.
Her previous experience in the business includes co-founding three start-ups. The present venture (ACE Sports Ed), co-founded with her husband, Ajit Agarkar, a sportsperson, has two parallels. The sports parallel focuses on including sports as part of the curriculum, after-school sports activities and setting up specific divisions for sports in the school management. The other educational parallel works on consultancy, management, curriculum designing, auditing schools, workshops for parents and interaction with students.
The goal of her company is to provide opportunity for to teachers develop in their careers, equip parents with good strategies, and help students become the best of themselves. She says that the research and management that gives a positive assistance to all the stakeholders of the educational institute – right from the teachers to the students, parents and educators – makes her company stand out from the rest. The exposure she got through her experience about international curriculum has made Ms. Fatema Agarkar understand the importance of technology in education. She is working towards including child-centric, modern technology in educational institutes.
This successful women entrepreneur believes that making personal connections and forming bonds are important in building a successful customer base. She says that it’s not just about meeting requirements, but also about the quality, personalizing and customizing, and going beyond the expectations of her customers.
Apart from her role as a co-founder of multiple start-ups, she is an avid reader, and a fan of horror and crime mystery books. Her interest and passion towards innovating in business and understanding patterns made her read more management books, putting her on the advisory board of the Lit-o-fest Mumbai.
Ms. Fatema Agarkar advices that deep understanding and research of the market is needed to start a business – not just passion and a business action plan. She advocates enjoying hard work, saying it really makes a difference in the output.
