From one little boy,
to a whole library
of possibilities.
We started Rebel Rio with our son, Rio - and a simple idea: what if children could discover creativity, business and possibility through stories made especially for them?
The people behind Rebel Rio.
We created Rebel Rio as a family project, from an idea that started at home with Rio.
It started with wanting to teach our son something.
We’re Sanjeev and Sonia, the husband-and-wife team behind Rebel Rio.
We started Rebel Rio with our son, Rio.
I’m Sanjeev, a self-taught photographer and videographer . I’ve been working in photography for around seven years and have built my photography business from the ground up. When Rio was born, I started thinking about how I could introduce him to some of the things I had learnt through my own journey - but in a way that made sense to a young child.
One of those things was photography.
I wanted Rio to understand what a real camera was, how you take a photograph and, eventually, how a hobby can become something much bigger.
I didn’t want his first understanding of photography to simply be taking pictures on a phone. I wanted him to see the creativity, the skill and even the business behind it.
And alongside that, Sonia was building her own understanding of business too.
While Sanjeev was growing his photography business, Sonia was becoming an important part of that journey too.
She supports the business behind the scenes, from helping with marketing and thinking about how we present the business, to being there at photoshoots and helping manage enquiries and everything that comes with running a growing business.
It meant that conversations about business naturally became part of our everyday life.
We would talk about how the photography business was doing, what was working, how we could reach more people, how customers found us and what it actually takes to build something from the ground up.
Sonia wanted to be able to share some of that knowledge with Rio too - not just the idea of owning a business, but the wider skills and understanding that sit behind it.
Things like understanding money, saving, spending, financial awareness, making decisions, solving problems, communicating with people and understanding that a business is something you build over time.
And that’s when we realised that Sanjeev’s experience in photography and Sonia’s experience supporting and helping run the business could come together in something we could share with Rio.
At the same time, we wanted to start reading him books about business.
Not complicated books. Not books that assumed you had to be at university, have a degree or spend years working for different companies before you could think about starting something of your own.
We wanted to show him, from an early age, that an idea can become a business.
We also started thinking about something else: why should children have to wait until they are adults before they are introduced to these ideas?
The earlier children can be exposed to simple ideas around business, money, creativity and problem-solving, the more naturally those ideas can become part of how they understand the world around them.
It doesn’t mean every child needs to become an entrepreneur. It simply means giving them access to knowledge that might help them understand what is possible.
That became something we both felt strongly about.
So I wrote our first story: Rio Starts a Photography Business.
I put Rio’s name into the story and made Mum and Dad characters too. When we read it to him, something really special happened.
He recognised his own name. He recognised himself in the story. He knew that Mum and Dad were part of it.
And he loved it.
That reaction made us think: why don’t we make another one?
One story became another.
Each book started with something Rio already knew, loved or was curious about.
Rio Starts a Photography Business
Our first story. We wrote it after Sanjeev’s own self-taught photography journey, wanting to introduce Rio to cameras, creativity and business.
Where it startedRio Opens a Restaurant
We wrote this one from Sonia’s love of cooking and our family’s love of Dishoom, wanting to show Rio how food, creativity, marketing and customers can come together.
A family ideaRio Opens a Plumbing Business
We wrote this one from Rio’s fascination with water, boats, rubber ducks, bath toys and bubbles - showing how something a child loves can become a skill that helps other people.
Follow curiosityRio could see his own world inside the books.
Sonia has always loved cooking. In fact, she had even thought about starting a small catering business, beginning with cookies, snacks and cakes and seeing where it could go.
So our next story became Rio Opens a Restaurant.
The idea was inspired partly by our love of Dishoom and the food we enjoy together as a family. We imagined what it would be like for Rio to open his own restaurant, with Mum and Dad helping along the way.
Suddenly, the story could introduce things like creating food, choosing a menu, social media marketing, making videos, getting customers, using delivery services and looking after the people who support your business.
And Rio could actually connect what he was seeing in the book with his own little world.
He had his wooden kitchen at home. He watched us cook. He recognised the food, spices and ingredients in the illustrations.
The story wasn’t just something we were reading to him anymore - he was beginning to understand it through his own experiences.
Follow their curiosity.
Then came Rio Opens a Plumbing Business.
That story was inspired by Rio’s fascination with water. He loves playing with boats, rubber ducks, bath toys, bubbles and anything involving water.
So we thought: what if we took something he already loved and showed him how that interest could become a skill, a trade and eventually a business that could help other people?
That became an important part of what we were building.
We weren’t simply writing books about businesses.
We were showing children that their interests, hobbies and curiosity can be the starting point for something bigger.
Then we realised it shouldn’t only be Rio’s story.
At first, these stories were simply something we had created for our own son.
But the more we talked about them, the more we realised other parents might want the same thing.
That’s when we created Rebel Rio.
We wanted families to be able to create a book where their own child could be the main character.
That’s why our books can be personalised. Rio can become another child’s name, and we created Jessie as a female character too.
So you can have Rio Starts a Photography Business or Jessie Starts a Photography Business - or personalise the story with your own child’s name.
Then we thought about siblings.
We didn’t want parents with two children to have to buy two separate books just so both children could see themselves in the story.
It’s about the ideas behind the business.
Although business is where we started, our books are really about much more than starting a company.
Confidence
Creativity
Problem-solving
Saving & financial awareness
Independence
Communication
Helping others
Being proud of what you create
Turning interests into possibilities
They don’t have to wait until they’re adults to have ideas.
They can be curious now.
They can create now.
They can learn how things work now.
And they can start imagining what might be possible for them in the future.
We also want children to understand that a hobby doesn’t have to stay a hobby. It could become a skill, a passion, a career or even a business one day.
There is no guarantee that every child will want to become an entrepreneur - and that’s not the point.
It’s about giving them the opportunity to see what is possible.
We want children to realise they can create stories too.
Our passion for children’s storytelling has also taken us beyond our books.
We run creative storytelling workshops in schools for children from Year 3 to Year 6, helping them discover how a story is actually built.
In a classroom session, children learn how to create their own characters, develop a beginning, middle and end, decide who their protagonist is, build a storyline and think about how their story might finish.
They don’t have to wait for someone else to write the story. They can be the writer. They can create the characters. They can decide what happens next.
Help children discover possibilities early.
Through personalised books and school workshops, we want to make ideas around business, creativity, financial awareness, independence and problem-solving feel approachable and fun.
Most importantly, we want children to see themselves in the stories they read.
Because we started with one little boy seeing his own name in a book.
And from that one little boy, we hope to create stories that help many more children see themselves as capable, creative and full of ideas.
Ideas made possible.