ShrotaHouse is a hub for preschoolers and primary school children to help them explore and enjoy Indian classical music. It has designed programmes to provide novel music learning experiences. Launched as a pilot in 2021 and incubated under the Women Startup Program at NSRCEL at IIM Bangalore, they have reached over 200 children till date.
Madhumita Bhaskar, the founder, is a student of Hindustani classical music. A singer and composer, she has been a disciple of Prof. Milind Malshe of Mumbai, an exponent of Jaipur-Atrauli gharana of Hindustani khayal music, and has been undergoing training in the guru-shishya parampara of music learning since 1999. As a child artiste, she has sung for the popular children’s audio book series Karadi Tales and an i-Dream Productions’ children’s Hindi film Jajantaram Mamantaram released in 2003. She is a trained Bharatnatyam dancer and a self-taught painter/illustrator with many works in her collection. She also writes poetry.
After completing her bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering, Madhumita worked as a senior software engineer and project manager in India and USA but quit her career to pursue the arts while being a fulltime mother. She attributes the one spark that gave her the direction to start a venture, to her little son with whom she loves exploring music, playing, storytelling and just unlearning and re-learning! She is determined to use her strengths as an entrepreneur and changemaker to give back to society through ShrotaHouse.
Madhumita Bhaskar of ShrotaHouse.
Conceived in November 2020, ShrotaHouse was incubated at NSRCEL, IIM Bangalore, in February 2021 as one of the top ideas from over 11,000+ ideas and ventures across India who enrolled into Women Startup Program 3.0 in 2020. “Our journey with WSP 3.0 at NSRCEL has been nothing less than extraordinary with the immense support system that the cohort itself has been, inspite of it being a virtual program. The team at NSRCEL, that comprises mentors across India and professors at IIMB, helped ShrotaHouse in significant ways,” says Madhumita.
ShrotaHouse was selected as one of the top 100 ventures to receive the first round of grant support sponsored by Kotak Mahindra Bank. “Thanks to the networking opportunities fostered at NSRCEL, ShrotaHouse has been able to build fruitful relationships throughout this very demanding yet positive journey,” adds Madhumita.
ShrotaHouse has also been selected into a couple of other top programs and accelerators, including Microsoft For Startups.
