Introduction

As I was studying how musical.ly rose to power, I couldn’t help but think that on one hand it’s
giving an opportunity of stardom to talented kids but on the other of it’s putting an enormous and
unbearable pressure on majority of gen-z. That India is finally catching up to the jocks and nerds
culture (may be in some pockets, it already has). The shortage of confidence and the excess of
expectations are going to bring new challenges to parenting. The key fields that come to mind
are physique, sports, music, dance and academic grades. Since, human evolution hasn’t kept
pace with the societal expectations, despite exponential investment by kids and parents, their
stress is going to rise exponentially as well.

It means there is a growing market for products and services that promise to help kids and
parents in meeting expectations around fitness, skill development and resume building. To
balance the deficit of astronomical expectations and investment, there is also a huge market for
assistance for coping with stress viz. therapy, meditation, counselling, retreats, getaways and
even ostentatious vacations.

The overcompensating parents need nothing but the best for their kids. So experience is going
to be the key. Only the big brands or aggregator platforms can win. It’ll be interesting to see the
the role that the schools/colleges play here as the kids’ disposable time will be in limited supply
and by design, they posses the lion-share. Either they may grab the cross-selling opportunity or
the tuition/coaching institute history may repeat itself. Higher education industry will continue to
thrive. The institutes based out of or at least having ties to developed countries should dominate
here.

The brands need to figure out the right experience and unit economics. Even if the experience is
not completely virtual, franchisee model should take over and help. To build initial pull,
influencer endorsements may help but eventually the word of mouth and peer reviews will
decide the fate.