Singapore premium preschool Trehaus to open first international branch in Jakarta in 2024
[JAKARTA] Trehaus – a Singapore-based education technology company that styles itself as a Silicon Valley-inspired pre-school and childcare provider – is taking its brand overseas for the first time, with Indonesia set to be its first stop.
It will open a new centre in the capital Jakarta by the second quarter of 2024. Located in the commercial and business area of Senayan, it will take in up to 100 students aged between six months and six years.
In a recent interview with The Business Times, Trehaus co-founder and chief executive officer Elaine Kim described the response to the new pre-school as overwhelming, with the waitlist already at capacity.
“In Singapore, we have a lot of students who are from Indonesia, so we already have very strong ties to the country. It’s a market that presents a huge opportunity for our edutech platform to make an impact,” she said.
Dr Kim, a medical doctor who spent a decade caring for terminally ill patients, said the Trehaus School in Indonesia has found appeal among Jakarta’s rising middle-class families. The fees range from S$2,400 to S$3,000 a month.
Since its establishment in 2019, Trehaus School has worked with education experts from the likes of Stanford University’s Bing Nursery School and the Khan Lab School (both in California) to design the “Trehaus Method” curriculum.
This early childhood curriculum is coined the “Littles’ Programme”, which is themed after six jobs – CEO, engineer, philanthropist, entrepreneur, creative and chef. It aims to instil life skills such as logical reasoning, experimenting, creative thinking and the basics of coding.
“From the start, we always wanted to try and solve what we feel is the biggest issue in the world today, which is education inequality. We want to make sure that our kids are ready for the future,” said Dr Kim.
Dr Kim, the daughter of former Singapore member of parliament Lily Neo, is married to venture capitalist John Kim of Amasia VC. They have three young children.
She co-founded Trehaus together with fellow entrepreneur and mother Elizabeth Wu to enable parents to overcome the challenge of choosing between work and family.
The Trehaus School in Singapore is at Funan Mall in the Central Business District, with 100 children enrolled. It is integrated with a co-working space that allows parents to work and be near their children during the day.
Despite the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic when schools islandwide were forced to shut and learning had to shift to online, Dr Kim said that Trehaus’ pre-school business has stayed resilient and is profitable.
She said discussions are underway with various strategic investors to secure funding for the expansion into Jakarta. There are also plans to open a Trehaus School in Los Angeles in the US.
“We have experienced 100 per cent year-on-year growth. We don’t spend on marketing, yet people have reached out to us. There has been a lot of interest in bringing Trehaus to other countries,” she said.
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