Kalanrityaniketan School of Kuchipudi is one of Hyderabad's most respected classical dance academies. Founded and directed by Dr Bindhu Madhavi, the school teaches Kuchipudi to around 800 students across three branches — one in Kondapur, one in Kukatpally, and one in Himayatnagar.
Running a classical dance school at this scale is a significant operational undertaking. Students range from young beginners to advanced performers preparing for Arangetram. Classes run six days a week. Teachers manage their own batches. And fee collection — across three locations, multiple batch types, and 800 families — had long been managed the way most Indian institutes manage it.
Three Excel files. One per branch. Updated by hand. Reconciled at month-end, imperfectly.
The problem with three spreadsheets
The immediate problem was visibility. Dr Bindhu Madhavi could not see the full financial picture of all three branches without opening three separate files and adding the numbers herself. Outstanding fees at Kondapur were invisible to the coordinator at Kukatpally.
The follow-up problem was compounded by scale. With 800 students, even a 10 percent default rate at any given time means 80 families to follow up with. Across three branches, the follow-up responsibility was split between the director and two branch coordinators — each with their own informal system for sending reminders.
Some parents received multiple messages from different people. Some received none, because each coordinator assumed the other had handled it. The results were inconsistent month to month.
The Excel files themselves were a maintenance burden. Student joins and exits had to be updated manually. Fee revisions had to be applied across three files. Mid-month admissions with pro-rata fees required manual calculation.
What the switch looked like
Kalanrityaniketan came to us before Feezy's public launch — they were our first live institute and helped us shape the product from the ground up.
The setup took one afternoon. Using Spark, Dr Bindhu Madhavi walked through the institute's structure — three branches, multiple batch types, monthly fee schedule — conversationally. Spark built the structure in real time. By the end of the conversation, the three branches, their batches, and the fee schedule were all configured.
Student import took the most time — 800 students across three branches, with names and parent WhatsApp numbers, uploaded via CSV. Once imported, Feezy generated fee records for the current cycle automatically.
The first automated reminder cycle ran on the next due date. Parents received branded WhatsApp messages with payment links. The payment page showed Kalanrityaniketan's name, the student's name, and the fee amount.
What changed
The most immediate change was visibility. Dr Bindhu Madhavi can now see all three branches in a single dashboard — outstanding fees, collected fees, and payment status per student across the full school.
Follow-up coordination became unnecessary. Pulse handles the reminder sequence for each parent based on their history. Coordinators are no longer sending manual WhatsApp messages or reconciling who sent what.
The mid-month admission process — always a manual calculation headache — is now handled automatically. New students are added to Feezy, their start date is entered, and the pro-rata fee for the joining month is calculated and collected without manual intervention.
The Tax Drawer has become the year-end process. At the end of each financial year, a single export produces the full year's collections, receipts, and fee summary — ready for the CA.
What is still being improved
We are honest that Feezy is an early product. There are things Kalanrityaniketan has asked for that are still on the roadmap — deeper attendance integration for session-based billing, a teacher payout ledger, and more granular batch-level reporting.
These are coming in the next release cycle (v1.1, June 2026). We are building them directly from the requirements of institutes like Kalanrityaniketan.
For other dance and music academies
Kalanrityaniketan is a classical dance school. But the operational challenges — multi-branch visibility, monthly fee follow-up, teacher batch structures, mid-month admissions — are shared by dance, music, yoga, and martial arts academies across India.
If you run a similar institute and want to understand what the switch to Feezy would look like for your specific structure, write to us at hello@feezy.one. We will walk you through it.
<em>This case study was produced with the participation and approval of Dr Bindhu Madhavi, Director, Kalanrityaniketan School of Kuchipudi, Hyderabad.</em>
<em>Abhinay Singi is CEO and Co-Founder of Feezy, built by ConvertEdge Tech in Hyderabad.</em>