From early-morning staffing calls to its own recruitment app, Kiya and Abhay Chokshi are building a business around the everyday needs of teachers and early childhood centres.
A teacher calls in sick. A centre needs cover. For Kiya Chokshi, that is often where the working day begins.
“They call or text Kiya and say, ‘Kiya, can you book a teacher? I’m desperately needing someone,’” she tells Webfit News.
It is a familiar request, but answering it involves more than finding someone available. There is the centre’s way of working to consider, the existing team and the children who will spend the day with that teacher.
Those everyday responsibilities sit at the heart of Aroha Consulting, the recruitment and temporary staffing business Kiya runs with her partner, Abhay Chokshi.
In their conversation with Webfit News, the couple spoke about earning their first client’s trust, supporting teachers, building their own staffing app and remaining personally available as their network grew.
For Kiya, the commitment is deeply personal.
“This is like my third baby. I have two daughters, but I always give more time to my third baby, which is Aroha Consulting.”
Kiya arrived in New Zealand in 2015 with around ten years of recruitment experience. Finding the right position proved difficult, and she began working in early childhood centres across Auckland.
That experience brought together two areas she cared about: recruitment and education.
Working inside centres gave her an understanding of their routines, staffing pressures and the importance of having suitable people caring for children.
Abhay remembers those experiences following her home. In the evenings, Kiya would talk about her day and the challenges teachers and centres were facing.
Those conversations gradually became a question: could they combine her recruitment experience and understanding of early childhood education to offer something useful to the sector?
Aroha Consulting grew from that thinking.
Kiya describes the name Aroha through the values she associates with the work: love, passion and care. During the interview, those ideas repeatedly returned to practical matters, from answering a teacher’s call to helping a centre organise urgent cover.
Before Aroha could build a network, someone had to take a chance on an unfamiliar name.
Abhay recalls months of calls and enquiries as Kiya introduced the service to centres. Establishing the business required persistence, particularly when prospective clients had no previous experience of working with them.
The first opening came through an invitation for coffee.
Kiya arrived at the centre with her young baby. The client welcomed them both and gave her the opportunity to explain what Aroha could offer.
“She gave me the first break,” Kiya recalls.
That meeting gave her confidence to keep going. According to Kiya, the centre remains a client today.
It is a relationship she still speaks about with affection, and one that reflects how she wants the business to operate: clients should know who they are dealing with and feel comfortable contacting them when they need help.
During the interview, Kiya said more than 300 centres were using Aroha’s services.
Aroha’s core services are permanent teacher recruitment and temporary relief staffing. The two respond to different needs, from finding someone for an ongoing position to arranging cover for an unexpected absence.
| Service | What a centre needs | How Aroha helps |
|---|---|---|
| Permanent teacher recruitment | Someone to fill an ongoing vacancy or replace a departing employee. | Discusses the role and the centre’s requirements, searches its network and assesses potential candidates. |
| Short-term relief staffing | Cover for a day, a week or another temporary staffing gap. | Helps arrange relievers through Aroha Connect or direct contact with the team. |
| Longer temporary placements | Support during an extended absence, including maternity cover. | Helps identify staff for the required period. |
| Aroha Connect | A way to organise temporary staffing without coordinating every step by phone. | Allows registered centres to post jobs, teachers to apply and centres to review profiles before selecting someone. |
For permanent recruitment, Abhay says the starting point is understanding what the employer actually needs.
“We don’t just place randomly teachers across the industry.”
For temporary staffing, the time available may be much shorter. Some requests can be planned ahead; others arrive early in the morning when a centre needs someone that day.
In either situation, the couple say understanding the workplace and the person being placed remains central to their approach.
Kiya’s experience inside early childhood centres informs how she approaches a placement.
She says she considers:
Where possible, she tries to send a familiar reliever back to the same centre.
“I always try to give them the same people.”
Kiya says that continuity matters to children, staff and families. A returning reliever brings some knowledge of the setting, while the centre already has experience of working with that person.
It is one reason she places value on knowing both sides of the relationship, rather than treating each booking as an isolated request.
Kiya and Abhay divide responsibilities around their different strengths.
Kiya’s work includes:
Abhay focuses on:
Kiya says being directly accessible is an important part of the service. Teachers can contact her when they need support, and centres can raise questions or concerns about a placement.
As the business has grown, that personal involvement has remained a priority.
Aroha Connect began with a problem the couple were experiencing themselves.
Abhay describes the earlier routine: a centre would call in the morning, Aroha would contact several relievers, find someone available, organise the timing and confirm the arrangement with the centre.
Sometimes Kiya was awake at 5am arranging staffing.
Each booking involved another sequence of calls and messages. As more centres joined their network, Abhay could see the difficulty of continuing that way.
“Managing everything on phone, text or call is just not scalable enough.”
With a background in software and product management, he began looking at how technology could take some of that coordination out of the day.
The result was Aroha Connect, a temporary staffing platform built around the work they were already doing.
Abhay describes a straightforward process:
For teachers, the app provides a way to see and apply for opportunities. For centres, it brings the booking and selection process into one place.
Kiya says the team also helps teachers and centres understand how to use the app when they join.
Direct assistance remains available. If a request is particularly urgent, or a centre needs further help, Abhay says they can still call or text.
Working with children carries responsibilities that cannot be set aside because a booking is urgent.
Kiya describes an onboarding process involving checks and preparation before staff begin placements.
According to Kiya and Abhay, this includes:
Kiya says a former Education Review Office officer helped develop the training material used for relievers.
Abhay acknowledges that completing onboarding can take time and require follow-up. He says that preparation is part of maintaining employers’ confidence in the people Aroha places.
Alongside the checks, Kiya looks for a sincere interest in working with children. She considers that commitment essential to being suited to the work.
For Abhay, the purpose of the technology is closely connected to what happens inside a centre.
If less time is spent organising a booking, more attention can go towards the people who need it.
“When a job booking takes two minutes instead of one hour, that time goes back to childcare.”
He sees opportunities for technology to simplify administration and scheduling, while remaining clear about the role of human care.
“When it comes to taking care of our children or our elderly, I don’t think technology can ever replace that.”
That thinking brings the two sides of Aroha together: an app that helps organise the work, and people who remain available to support it.
Asked what she would like decision-makers to understand about early childhood education, Kiya pointed to funding and suitable resources.
She spoke about the pressures centres face when balancing staffing costs, operating expenses and families’ circumstances.
Her priorities included:
Abhay also described fluctuations in teacher availability over their years in the sector, including periods when finding enough staff had been particularly difficult.
Their observations come from working with centres and teachers through those changing conditions.
For all the work involved in recruitment, onboarding and technology, Kiya’s description of what makes it worthwhile is simple.
A centre needs help at the last moment. A reliever is arranged. Afterwards, someone calls to say thank you.
Those conversations bring her happiness and peace of mind, she says.
They also explain why she speaks about Aroha with the affection of a parent. The business takes time and attention, but it gives her a way to combine work she enjoys with support that other people need.
From the first client who welcomed her and her baby for coffee to the centres contacting her today, that personal connection remains a defining part of her story.
| If you are… | Where to start |
|---|---|
| A centre recruiting a permanent teacher | Contact the team to discuss the role and your requirements. |
| A centre needing temporary staff | Register as a company through the website or contact the team about your staffing needs. |
| A teacher seeking temporary work | Select “Register with us” on the website and choose the temporary job seeker option. |
| A centre with an urgent relief request | Call or text the team for assistance. |
Kiya says the team follows up with new registrations, helps with onboarding and explains how to use Aroha Connect.
Website: arohaconsulting.co.nz
Email: kiya@arohaconsulting.co.nz
Phone: 021 269 0033
Sponsored feature based on Webfit News’ interview with Kiya and Abhay Chokshi. Service descriptions, client figures and details of recruitment and onboarding processes were supplied by Aroha Consulting.
