Aloha India expands
By Venkatachari Jagannathan | 11 May 2004
Chennai: What is 127-22+44+55-5-50+240-60+10? While most of us would scurry for a calculator, not Srisliha, a second standard student. She fires the answer 339 even as one completes dictating the sum. The entire process takes just 15 seconds.
Like her, there are many other children with rapid-fire calculating abilities. Apart from additions and subtractions, they also multiply, divide, calculate square roots, etc, all in a matter of seconds.
No they are not child prodigies. Their ability to answer in a jiffy is attributed to Aloha India that teaches the mental arithmetic system using abacus.
A division of the city-based K K Academy P Limited (turnover Rs5 crore), the country franchisee for the Malaysian company Aloha Mental Arithmetic, Aloha India manages its own teaching centres as well as the franchisees.
According to K Kumaran, managing director, the company is in the process of expanding the franchisee network nationwide. "By the end of this year we plan to double our centres in the country to 300. Most of the expansion will happen through the franchisee route." The expansion will increase the Aloha student population to 20,000 from the present levels of 6,500.