A Founder's Note: Six Months In, What I Have Learned Running a Daycare in Gurugram

By Chitra Puri, founder of Just Goofing · June 29, 2026

This is a slightly more personal post than usual. I wanted to take a quiet evening at the end of June to write down what the first six months of running our daycare in Gurugram have actually taught me. Some of it is what I expected. Most of it is not.

The first thing I learned: parents do not want a school. They want a partner.

When we opened, I assumed the questions parents would ask would be about curriculum, learning outcomes, school tie-ups. I had answers ready for all of those. What parents actually asked, again and again, was much simpler. Will you call me if she cries? Will you tell me honestly how he ate? Will you treat my child the way I would?

Six months in, I now know that the parents who choose us are not shopping for a Montessori philosophy. They are shopping for trust. Everything else — the meals, the play, the routine — is downstream of that one thing.

The second thing: the first week is the whole game

If a family's first week goes well, they stay for years. If it goes badly, they leave by month two regardless of how much better things get later.

So we now over-invest in the first week of every new child. The founder calls the parent. The lead caregiver does a home video call before day one. We slow down the settling timeline if the child needs it. We send four photo updates instead of two. None of this is scalable. All of it is essential.

The third thing: small ratios are not a marketing line, they are a survival mechanism

We opened with a 1:4 caregiver to child ratio because it sounded right. Six months in, I now know it is the only thing that makes the rest of the operation work. A caregiver looking after four toddlers can know each child — their hunger cues, their nap signs, their personality. A caregiver looking after eight cannot. They become a traffic controller, not a caregiver.

I have watched centres around us cut ratios to save costs. I understand the math. I will not do it.

The fourth thing: food is harder than I thought

I underestimated the kitchen. Cooking food that twelve toddlers will actually eat, every day, with no repeats in a week, with allergen tracking, with vegetable balance, with cultural variety — it is genuinely difficult.

We rewrote our menu three times in six months. We added a nutritionist consultation. We started doing taste-tests with the kids themselves. The result is good now, but it took longer than I expected to get there. Any daycare that tells you food is easy is not paying attention.

The fifth thing: the hardest conversations are with the parents, not the children

The children are honest. They cry when sad, laugh when happy, sleep when tired, eat when hungry. The signals are clear.

The parents are harder. A parent in a high-pressure job, missing their child, second-guessing the daycare decision, comparing notes with other parents — that parent needs reassurance, honesty, patience, and sometimes a real conversation about expectations. We now spend almost as much time on parent care as child care, and I think that is the right balance.

The sixth thing: Gurugram parents are warmer than the city's reputation suggests

Gurugram has a reputation for being transactional. My experience of running a daycare here has been the opposite. Parents bring sweets on Diwali. They send notes on caregiver birthdays. They recommend us to friends without being asked. They turn up to help when a teacher is unwell. There is a real community here, and I am grateful for it.

The seventh thing: caregivers are the whole product

I could write a thousand-word checklist on infrastructure, curriculum, food, hygiene, air quality. None of it matters if the caregiver is not right. The right caregiver makes a basic room feel like home. The wrong caregiver makes a luxury room feel cold.

Hiring caregivers is the single most important thing I do. I take longer over it now than I did at the start. I have learned to trust the gut feeling on day one of a trial. It is almost always correct.

What I am still working on

• Better health communication. When a child is unwell, parents want a phone call within minutes, not a WhatsApp message in an hour. We are tightening this.
• Stronger parent education. A lot of parenting questions come up in the first six months — sleep regression, biting phases, food refusal. We are building a small library of resources.
• More structured developmental tracking. Parents want to know not just what their child ate, but how they grew. We are formalising this.
• Quieter rooms. Toddler rooms get loud. We are testing acoustic panels.

The questions parents ask me most

"What does a day actually look like?" A predictable rhythm: welcome and free play, breakfast, circle time, a themed learning activity, outdoor or gross-motor play, lunch, a long supervised nap, snack, art and music, then evening care until pickup. The full hour-by-hour routine is on our daycare page.

"What is really included in the fee?" Everything a child eats, wears and naps on at the centre: meals, snacks, milk, diapers, wipes, bedding and learning material, plus a monthly paediatrician check-up. The only other payment is a refundable deposit.

"How will I know my child is okay?" Live CCTV on your phone, photo updates through the day, and a verbal handover from your child's caregiver at pickup.

"Can I visit before deciding?" Yes. Every family starts with a free 2-hour trial visit: walk through every room, meet the caregivers and taste the food.

Thank you

To every family that trusted us in the first six months — thank you. To the team that shows up at 8 AM every day with patience and warmth — thank you. To Gurugram for being a city of parents who care this much about their children — thank you.

If you are thinking about daycare and want to see what six months of learning looks like in practice, come visit. Just Goofing Daycare is open for walk-throughs any weekday between 11 AM and 12 PM. Call +91 78277 91701 to schedule, or just turn up.

With warmth,
Chitra

Just Goofing Daycare, C-2, inside Excelsior American School, Sushant Lok Phase I, Sector 43, Gurugram, Haryana 122009.