From Survival to Sustainability: The Entrepreneurial Journey of Primaly Tuition Centre
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51471/dsv73926Keywords:
education entrepreneurship, service quality, organisational culture, scaling, leadership successionAbstract
On a humid weekday evening in 2025, Azura stood outside the Shah Alam branch of Primaly Tuition Centre and watched students arrive in groups. Parents waited briefly at the curb. Tutors moved between classrooms with lesson folders, printed exercises, and tablets. The centre had travelled a long way from the one rented shop lot that Azura, Helmi, and Syakira opened in Wangsa Maju in February 2009 with RM20,000 and no formal business training. It now operated three branches, employed six administrative staff, engaged about thirty tutors, and generated monthly revenue of approximately RM25,000.
The full classrooms should have felt like a simple measure of success. Instead, they made Azura uneasy. Primaly had grown because families valued personal attention, approachable tutors, and the founders' willingness to adjust support around individual learners. As the enterprise added branches, tutors, programmes, and emerging leaders, that personal culture became harder to reproduce. A student who had received close mentoring in Wangsa Maju should receive the same confidence-building experience in Shah Alam or Gombak. Yet different tutors taught in different ways, branch routines were not fully standardised, and Azura remained the person who resolved many difficult questions.
