Metro People: At-home dad teaches cooking and brewing

T T Venkatesh, founder Tivity, was a full-time stay-at-home husband. A resident of Whitefield, Venkatesh decided that there was nothing to do in Whitefield that didn’t involve going to a mall or a restaurant. “It was very difficult to keep my daughter, family and myself engaged. That’s when I set up Tivity, an experiential centre a while ago,” says Venkatesh.

What’s the idea behind starting this space and what does it offer? “The idea behind Tivity is that it is a place to share your passion. Our limitation is that we want it to be experiential and not a passive space. Here, you don’t watch someone cook, you actually cook the meal yourself and even learn how to brew beer at home and work with clay,” he adds.

The centre caters to all age groups. “We have programming for children, families and adults. Children are an obvious market but there are also lots of adults who are looking forward to learning something interesting and getting their hands messy,” he says.

Venkatesh says that there are many spaces in the city that offer cooking classes, yoga, art and writing but he wanted Tivity to offer all these things with quality. “We have noticed that every apartment building has someone who teaches children art classes on weekends for a couple of hours. These are alright places to send your child for a couple of hours, but in terms of quality and pedagogy, they are quite bad. We don’t want that, we want to be a little more high end. We think that people will be willing to pay for equality,” he says.