Archive for the ‘Coaching Institutes’ Category
Bigger Business Via Better Coaching
With over two lakh aspirants appearing for the Common Admissions Test (CAT) last year, it is obvious that most Indian students view a management degree as a gateway to untold riches. It is this mindset that VistaMind Education, a Bangalore-based coaching institute, aims to build on. “Where we really try to differentiate ourselves from the rest, is not just through the use of technology but through the old-fashioned methods of giving personal attention to our students and providing quality work materials,” said ARKS Srinivas who co-founded VistaMind a year ago.
Over the last decade-and-a-half, coaching establishments have become an extremely lucrative business proposition as they attempt to cash in on a 600 million-strong population aged under 35, looking to empower itself through the avenue of higher education. The market estimated at about $10 billion is however extremely fragmented.
“It’s all about reputation, word-of-mouth and results. If you can’t coach students to be amongst the top-ranked, they won’t sign up with you,” said Amitabh Jhingan, national sector leader for education at Ernst & Young.
“The problem with coaching establishments in India is that they offer general solutions to specific problems. The concept of personal mentoring just isn’t there,” Srinivas pointed out.
According to him, VistaMind offers a student-teacher ratio of 1:50, one of the lowest in the industry. Srinivas, 39, along with four other co-founders of VistaMind are graduates of the IIMs and XLRI. They were all previously a part of T.I.M.E, a leading coaching institute in the country, before deciding to set up their own shop. “There were differences in opinion with them (T.I.M.E), and we realised that our vision and growth plans were very different,” the IIM Calcutta graduate said. And it’s a move that seems to have paid off. VistaMind, which currently operates six fully-owned centres spread across Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai, Lucknow, Kanpur and Mysore, plans to establish its presence in Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad by the end of the current fiscal. It also has a franchisee-owned centre in Nagpur.
“We hope to be in at least 15 centres by the end of the year, with a focus on the smaller cities, including Jammu and Patna, either through franchisee model, company-owned centres or through a partnership model,” Srinivas said. Earlier in the year, it also visited IIM-Kozhikode to participate in the premier MBA institute’s placement programme. The opportunities are manifold.
While official data on the size of the entrance examination coaching market is scarce, the CAT training sector by itself is estimated at about Rs. 1,000 crore (Rs. 10 billion) according to industry estimates. “The market is highly fragmented, with the organised players commanding a very small portion of it. For example, the IIT-Joint Entrance Examination market is between Rs. 3,000 (Rs. 3 billion) to 4,000 crore (Rs. 4 billion),” Srinivas said.
Given the state of the fractured market, VistaMind has not stopped at just offering coaching for MBA entrance exams. It also offers a programme called Campus Alliance, through which it offers training for recruitment examinations that job seekers have to undergo in order to get placed with a number of India’s largest information technology companies, including, Infosys, Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services. Through its Campus Alliance programme, VistaMind has trained about 15,000 job-seekers. It also offers coaching for pre-university exams, the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) and the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) for those looking beyond the shores of India.
The company posted revenue of about Rs. 10 crore (Rs. 100 million) for the year ended March 2013, and expects to double that by the end of fiscal 2014. It expects to be profitable in financial year 2014-15. “We are expecting profits to be at about 30% of EBITDA by that time,” Srinivas said. VistaMind has raised Rs. 25 crore (Rs. 250 million) of angel funding, but an infusion of institutional capital will largely depend on the company’s turnover next financial year. “We don’t require that much money right now, since we are not a capital intensive business. If we meet our revenue target next year, we will consider it very strongly,” Srinivas said.
Source: The Economic Times, April 12, 2013
Etoos Academy plans to invest Rs. 1.5 billion over the next 3 years
Etoos Academy Pty. Ltd is a South Korean education company that has ventured into India with a coaching centre in Kota that focuses on preparing students aspiring to join the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). Choi Young Joo, a director of Etoos Academy in Kota, spoke to Mint about the reasons for moving to the town in Rajasthan that’s known as the capital of India’s educational coaching institutes and expansion plans. Edited excerpts:
What brings you to Kota?
As an education company we wanted to expand our horizon and India is the right place. People in India are focusing on education, especially on (institutes such as) IIT. Environment here is quite similar to Korea. We have a good expertise in online coaching and this can significantly reduce cost. We can be a customized content provider to students (preparing for admission to top engineering schools).
You came eyeing the IIT entrance market but in the last few months things have changed. How has it affected your plan?
There is a downfall in the student flow this time if you are talking about the IIT market. Last year, 4,500 students came to us both for long-term and short-term courses. This year, it is 3,500. IIT market has 500,000 students, the AIEEE (All India Engineering Entrance Examination) market has 1 million. If you are focusing on all segments (including school boards and other engineering universities), then no problem. We can look at study-from-home material, customized test-prep for expansion. We have a long-term view on India. The first three to five years will be time for investment and then we will harvest.
What’s your expansion plan?
To begin with Delhi… We want to have centres in 15 cities. We have invested Rs. 300 million since we started our operations (in 2011). In next three years, by 2015, we have plans to invest some Rs. 1.5 billion more. As India grows as an economy, we will grow with it.
You are emphasizing on customized online test-prep market. Please explain.
If somebody wants to read just a chapter or section, let’s say of mathematics or physics, we can give him that. It’s more of demand and need-based. We have both long-term course spanning over eight months and short-term of one or two months. We aim to give students level-wise test-prep, problem-solving, supplementary education. We believe that offline market is about the top 30% and rest is the online market. In India, we can expect some 20-25% revenue from offline mode and rest from the online segment.
Source: Mint, September 10, 2012
Coaching institutes spot gold in revamped engineering entrance plan
Private coaching institutes are eyeing a business opportunity in the government’s decision to have a common engineering test. They have begun to alter their training modules in an attempt to attract younger students. “Earlier, students would look at class XII exams as a mere qualification for the joint entrance examination (JEE) and All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE) but now, they have to become more serious,” says Pramod Maheshwari, Director, Career Point.
The 20-year-old training centre based in Kota, Rajasthan, is betting on school students to increase enrolment rate by 20% next year. Career Point coached 30,000 students last year and admissions for this year are on. The institute moved in for the kill in January itself, when there when there was a buzz around the government creating a single entrance examination that paid heed to board examination marks. It began enrolling students with the new objective of helping them secure the maximum marks possible in board examinations. “We will now coach them on scoring above 90% and not just 70%. Our fees will increase from 2013 by 15% as well from Rs. 50,000 per annum,” says Maheshwari.
The Union HRD ministry recently replaced multiple examinations like the IIT-JEE and AIEEE with a single entrance examination to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs). Under the new rule, students will have to appear for two admission tests on the same day – JEE Main 
and JEE Advanced, and the merit list will take into account board examination marks as well as the two admission tests.
In 2012, nearly 500,000 students appeared for the IIT-JEE examination to test their luck in 15 IITs while 1.1 million took the AIEEE for a foothold into NITs and other engineering colleges. Coaching institutes see their pot of gold in increased student numbers. CL Educate, for instance, expects it to go up to 5,000 by FY14 from the current 2,000. “A back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that the market for engineering tutorial examination is around Rs. 500 crore (Rs. 5 billion) and in all possibility, will double in the next year,” says Gautam Puri, MD. At least half of the 1.1 million students who appear for the AIEEE and the 500,000 who take the IIT-JEE go in for private coaching, he says.
Since it is not clear if the new pattern will accept scores in physics, chemistry and mathematics or include other subjects as well, coaching centres like Career Point plan to give tuitions in the languages as well. However, some institutes are walking the thin edge, wondering whether the new decision on entrance tests will eat into their niche offerings. Patna-based Super 30, for instance, only takes 30 students from underprivileged backgrounds who are sure-shot IIT successes. If the government considers such students’ Class XII scores, it may be in a bit of a spot.
Most of the students come from rural backgrounds where the emphasis on languages, for instance, is nil. “We hope they give us sample papers because it has now become a matter of survival,” says founder Anand Kumar. The institute currently has four professors teaching physics, chemistry and mathematics. “Although we will not recruit another faculty member, the stress will now be on how to take in students who have a natural flair for languages as well,” adds Kumar.
Source: The Economic Times, June 8, 2012
Coaching firms now set eyes on ISEET pie
The government wants to check the booming coaching class business with a single test to replace multiple engineering tests. Bring it on, says the Rs. 23,000-crore (Rs. 230 billion) industry. A day after the Indian Science Engineering Eligibility Test (ISEET) was announced, the homepage of Career Point, a coaching institute based in Rajasthan’s Kota, the hub of training institutes in the country said: “Welcome ISEET 2013. Being a pioneer in adopting all changes in IIT-JEE and AIEEE, Career Point proudly announces admission for the ISEET course.”
The ISEET, expected to roll out next year, will eliminate India’s two largest engineering entrance tests — the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) and the All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE). Institutes are quickly adapting to the upcoming regime, which was designed in part to check their rampant growth. India, which has a Rs. 1.8-trillion education and training market, produced 800,000 engineers last year.
“We expect more students because of the gap between school teaching and competition, which is the application of concepts which needs practice. However, now, students will have to appear for the aptitude test besides the advanced learning test,” said RL Trikha, Director, FIIT JEE, the largest player in the engineering coaching business. Over 20,000 students have signed up at the institute this year, with the number of candidates growing 10-15% every year.
ISEET will test comprehension, critical thinking and logical reasoning, along with problem-solving ability in basic science subjects. The two tests will together indicate a candidate’s scholastic level and aptitude for science and engineering and give 40% weight to class 12 Board exams. This means coaching centres will have to expand their curricula to include school syllabus – something which FIIT JEE offers in its two-year integrated school programme called Pinnacle. “In the last three years, a large number of candidates is common to IIT-JEE and AIEEE rank lists. The ISEET, which allocates weight to marks in class 12 exams will help students focus on academics,” said Satya Narayanan, Chairman, CL Educate (previously Career Launcher).
Brilliant Tutorials is the platform partner for CL. While the bulk of Brilliant’s 40,000 students are IIT aspirants, 8,500 out of 100,000 CL students are engineering aspirants. The industry feels the coaching class business will continue to thrive. “Coaching classes are related to the aspirations of students and there will be fierce competition for the remaining 60%, after the 40% weight to school exams. The government may not be completely successful in controlling the business,” noted Shalini Sharma, Head, Higher Education at the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).
CL’s Narayanan said with the new test, there will be no escaping the school syllabus. His institute will start offering coaching in school curricula soon. “As long as such competitive exams remain and the number of students increase, they will always need extra coaching to perform better than others. We have been changing our coaching in line with the changing patterns of engineering exams and aptitude training is something we impart to all our students,” said Ajay Antony, Course Director, IIT-JEE exam at Triumphant Institute of Management Education (T.I.M.E.). However, coaching institutes are divided on the issue of fees. While Antony says there could be a 10-15% increase, others say fees might decline.
Source: The Financial Express, February 27, 2012
IIT coaching centres play a board game
With the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) working out the nitty-gritty of the format of a new Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), IIT coaching centres are also firming up their course of action to ensure that their business does not suffer. Kota-based Career Point Systems, for instance, will launch a school curriculum coaching division and also look at partnering with schools to train students on campus. “Seeing the kind of shift the regulatory framework might bring in, we are looking at incorporating some changes in our business model,” says Pramod Maheshwari, the Chairman and Managing Director of Career Point Systems. “We are gearing up to open a school curriculum coaching division by the next academic year. So far we have been preparing students for competitive exams, but now we have decided to partner with schools and prepare them for board exams too,” he adds.
Coaching institutes say they prepare students for high-end examination and though the IITs’ move will reduce the students’ dependence on them, the impact will be short-term. “The changes may impact the business for the initial two years, but things will be back to normal later,” says Maheshwari. “Even today the majority of 12th standard students take tuition. Coaching institutes will now focus more on teaching students in a way that they secure more marks in the board examination as well as in the aptitude tests. Aptitude tests like SAT, GMAT or CAT require a certain kind of training which coaching institutes have been providing,” adds another director from an IIT-JEE coaching institute in Nagpur.
Last month, the IIT council accepted the recommendations of the T. Ramaswami committee report on JEE reforms and also proposed a single entrance test for all engineering colleges, including IITs, National Institutes of Technology (NITs) and private institutions. The IITs say a notification will be issued in a couple of months which will give details of the format to be followed by the IITs while considering a student for a seat — whether to give 50 per cent or 60 per cent weightage to the board exams and the rest to IIT-JEE scores.
There is, however, a slight confusion and uncertainty about the new IIT-JEE pattern that will be put in place in 2013. “Two years down the line, IIT-JEE might be an aptitude test. The details, however, would be made available only after a formal notification in January 2012,” says the director of an IIT who does not wish to be named. “We have also agreed that the weightage for the board exams would apply to all subjects and not a select few. We decided to implement the new system in 2013 because there will be logistical constraint and feasibility issues,” he says, adding that they now have 15 months to get the new format in order.
Over a decade ago, English and engineering drawing, too, were part of the IIT-JEE examination. IITs would even accept state board toppers directly, informs an IIT director. Four IIT directors Business Standard spoke to said that the change in the IIT-JEE format is the need of the hour. “The Chandy committee report had brought out the fact that there is a correlation between school performance and IIT performance,” says a director. “Today, because of the culture of coaching classes, the schooling system has been thrown out of the window to such an extent that students are not even attending school because of the pressure of such training programmes. We hope this will change that,” the director adds.
IIT directors concur that when students graduate from elementary to secondary school, the elementary school performance is taken into account. And, when one goes from secondary to higher secondary, the performance in the secondary school is considered. Similarly, when one graduates from the secondary school system to the tertiary system, that score needs to be taken into account. “The world over, admissions are based on your overall academic performance. Unfortunately, that logic has been reduced to lip service and this causes all kinds of aberration in the education system, which needs to be restored,” says an IIT director.
Industry experts feel that exams like IIT-JEE have been causing difficulties at the school level because these have shifted the focus from school education. Students do not attend school and instead go to these coaching institutes. “Today, school education and board exams are getting neglected due to the pressures of the coaching class,” says Gautam Barua, Director, IIT-Guwahati. “Students focus only on physics, chemistry and biology and don’t learn geography or English which are subjects taught in schools. The ministry has, therefore, convinced the IITs to consider school education in IIT-JEE,” adds Barua.
While the IITs have given an in-principle approval for the change, the final decision will be taken by the IIT-JEE Committee in January next year. IIT-JEE, say IIT directors, has become a craze among students, largely because of the high-paying jobs one lands after an IIT degree. The directors say it will be an uphill task to bring in changes in the pattern. First, a mechanism will have to be put in place to normalise the school results by the numerous boards which the Indian education system follows. While IITs believe that the changes in JEE will bring the focus back on school education, coaching institutes argue that with the standard of teachers in schools not up to the mark, that idea appears far-fetched.
Source: Business Standard, October 28, 2011
Start IIT-like schools in humanities also
Intensive coaching by private institutes for the joint entrance exam (JEE) to the IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) is leaving students fatigued even after they get admission to the premier institutes, Director of IIT-Guwahati, Gautam Barua, tells Naresh Mitra. Excerpts:
Do you agree with N R Narayana Murthy’s comment that the quality of students entering IITs is poor?
I don’t agree with the comment that IIT students are not good. I don’t fully agree with what Narayana Murthy said. The issue really is how the obsession with coaching is affecting the students entering IITs.
How is the coaching culture affecting students?
It makes its impact on students after their selection. On entering the IITs after undergoing excessive coaching, the students are almost burnt-out and mentally fatigued. Then the IITs for them become a place to relax. Coaching is the primary reason that affects the performance of students. A mindset has been created that if they (students) do not opt for coaching, they may not have the chance to get admission to the IITs. That is why there is such a big business in coaching.
IIT has a brand value. Parents and students want to enter IIT without thinking what they will do. So after they graduate from the IITs, many of them don’t go for engineering jobs; they rather go for the finance sector, management or do jobs which have no connection with engineering. We have seen that about half of the students from IITs are really not interested in engineering.
Isn’t that undermining the excellent engineering education imparted by the institution?
It is time for the government to create IIT-like institutions in the field of humanities. Let there be IIT-like institutions in economics, philosophy and other fields of humanities, with IIT-like campuses and branding. Then it will no longer be necessary for students to get admitted to IITs and later join non-engineering jobs.
Does coaching by private institutes make entry into the IITs easier?
IIT coaching is an industry now. But it doesn’t matter to us when it comes to student admissions. Even if there are no coaching centres, the IITs will fill up their seats with students.
Is there a move to make changes in the selection process of IITs?
Yes, the government and the IIT council discussed the issues of the entrance examination and coaching institutes in September. It was decided to change the admission process where the current JEE will be replaced by the school board results and results of an aptitude test. Since there are 30 school boards in the country, a common method of standardized board results has to be decided upon. The method proposed by the council is to use the percentile ranks of students. There is little arithmetic in this. In this method, the absolute marks will be decided as the rank of the student in his/her board along with the size of the board (i.e., number of students taking the examination in the science stream in the board).
Will this method reduce the students’ over-dependence on coaching?
Once this scheme is in place, the coaching part will be part of the board exams. So, with this method, school education becomes very important. I think it will be fine for schools to prepare students for the IITs.
Has the IIT brand changed or lost its sheen in recent years?
Two decades back, the IIT as a brand solely depended on quality BTech students. Today, more than half of all the students in the IITs are in post-graduate courses. So in the 21st century, the IIT is in the process of building its brand through research and development, rather than through BTech output.
Source: The Times of India (Online Edition), October 16, 2011
Fading interest in engineering, entrance test blamed for IIT slide
A day after Infosys Ltd.’s Chairman Emeritus N.R. Narayana Murthy rued the quality of students at the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), experts and IIT officials said coaching centres that help students enter these elite engineering colleges are only partly to blame. The entrance examination, inadequate training in high schools and falling interest among students to pursue careers in engineering must also share the blame, they said.
Addressing a global IIT alumni meet in New York, Murthy said on Monday that most IIT students now fare poorly in jobs and global institutions of higher education. Test preparation centres, he said, are to be blamed for creating a pool of rote learners who enter the IITs. “Thanks to the coaching classes today, the quality of students entering IITs has gone lower and lower,” Murthy said, advocating a change in selection criteria, as reported by PTI.
The IIT-joint entrance examination (JEE) is one of the most competitive in the country, with just about two out of every 100 candidates finding a seat at one of the 15 IITs. In the last academic year, 475,000 students took the test, vying for around 10,000 seats. Many successful candidates rely on private coaching centres to perform well at the examination. Students at these centres are trained through a combination of rote-learning and calculated guess work to score the maximum in a limited time.
For the last eight years, the IITs have chosen a multiple-choice format for the JEE, compared with an earlier version which tested students’ indepth subject knowledge. “The drop in quality intake at the IITs can be attributed to its selection process,” said C.V. Kalyan Kumar, Director of FIIT-JEE Ltd., a prominent chain of tutorials. “Earlier, the selection process was subjective, but in the last eight years, it has gone completely objective.” One correct answer, according to Kumar, fetches three mark, while a wrong answer leads to one negative mark. “This means students don’t hesitate to guess answers. By guessing, you can get 25% right answers,” he said.
The need of coaching centres arises mainly due to poor schooling, but the “government is not strengthening that because it is difficult. If you select students based only on school boards, then the quality will go down further as some boards grant marks without judging the (student’s) calibre,” Kumar said.
Vishal Chandra, an IIT-Delhi graduate who heads a start-up, said the current examination only required students to have a limited understanding of physics, chemistry and mathematics. “You don’t need to understand these subjects in great depth. Tutorials prepare you to tackle these formats.” He, however, added that the IIT-JEE tutorial he attended taught him science better than his school.
Rajiv Kumar, a professor at IIT-Kharagpur, said he agreed with Murthy. “But you cannot only blame coaching centres for the mess. IITs have to put their house in order first before blaming anybody else. The exam is yours and the selection process is yours too,” said Kumar, who was suspended five months ago for criticizing the IIT system by using the Right to Information Act. He has filed a public interest litigation asking for reform in the IIT system.
Gautam Barua, Director of IIT-Guwahati, said Murthy was only partly right on the quality of students. “It’s a concern that at least 50% of the students are not interested in pursuing a career in engineering courses offered by IITs. They are good students interested in some other fields. They come to IITs for a good brand name, great peers and it helps them crack exams like CAT (common admission test for the Indian Institutes of Management).” The 2010-12 batch of IIM-Bangalore’s flagship postgraduate programme has 375 students, of which 20% are IIT graduates.
But Ashok Gupta, Dean of Alumni Affairs and International Programme at IIT-Delhi, said neither the IIT brand name nor the quality of its students has gone down. “People should check ground realities,” he said. Gupta said it has always been true that the top 20% of students are excellent, 60% are very good and the rest are average. “India’s market situation has changed,” he added. “Earlier, the top 15-20% IIT pass-outs used to go out to the US and other countries, either for jobs or further studies. Now they get quality local jobs. So those who are going abroad may be average students.” Gupta also said students cannot be blamed for choosing careers in management if they pay better.
But Murthy is not the first to criticise the IITs or the impact of coaching centres. On 14 September, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) and the IIT Council said in a note that they were considering reforms in the entrance exam and that coaching centres were playing havoc with the quality of student intake.
Source: Mint, October 5, 2011
>South Korean tutorial to coach students in IIT-JEE
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South Korea based coaching institute Etoos Academy will set shop in India with its first IIT-JEE coaching institute in Kota (Rajasthan) to be operational from next month. Known as South Korea’s biggest coaching conglomerate, Etoos plans to train at least 5,000 students in the first year of their operations.
Etoos which provides coaching for Korean Scholastic Aptitude Test (KSAT) – the common entrance exam for professional colleges; much like Indian entrance exams like IIT-JEE, has set up its hundred per cent subsidiary in India with its headquarter in Gurgaon, Haryana. “We are planning to train 5,000 students annually from our Kota centre. Next year we are planning to open centres in Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai,” Etoos Academy CEO Park Seong Bok said.
Backed by SK Group, one of the biggest industrial conglomerates in Korea, Etoos focuses on two major businesses in South Korea – e-learning website etoos.com and offline coaching centres. It is also exploring opportunity to offer training courses via mobile phones. “We will partner with telecom companies to offer the course content to students in the rural India,” he said.
Source: Business Standard, April 7, 2011
>CAT trainers offer short-term courses
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Preparatory institutes are tweaking teaching methods for employed candidates seeking entry into business schools. Industry requirements are changing and more candidates with work experience are now applying for common admission test or CAT, mirroring a global trend for B-school education, globally.
B-schools too prefer students with work experience as recruiters tend to choose them over fresh grads, hence the rising preference among young executives to take a career break and pursue MBA. CAT score opens doors to some 150 Indian B-schools including the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) that offer Post-Graduate Programme in Management. CAT trainers are now adopting shorter modules like week-end courses that suit working candidates.
The changing scenario in the management education is forcing all stakeholders to move further towards global practices. Coaching centres say students these days want to get work experience first and then start CAT preparations. Owner of a Delhi-based CAT coaching centre says IIMs are selecting more students with work experience and other B-schools are following suit keeping the recruiters’ requirement in mind. The number of candidates appearing for CAT is decreasing, but there are more candidates with work experience.
In 2008, around 271,000 students appeared for CAT. The number dropped to 242,000 in 2009 when it changed its format to computer-based test. Later, in 2010, some 204,000 students registered for CAT, but 186,000 actually took the test. “Overall CAT aspirants are decreasing, but we see a significant increase in the number of students with work experience.” The last few years have seen a considerable increase in the percentage of students with work experience finally being selected by IIMs and other top B-schools.
This change in the intake has a positive co-relation with the number of jobs offered to the work-ex candidates vis-a-vis freshers. The fact that students with even one-year of work experience are eligible for lateral placements (better roles and higher pay packets) makes it more enticing for students to enter the IIMs. “Settling for the not-so-prominent B-schools for lack of work experience would only mean a lower return on investment in the long run,” said Kamlesh Sajnani, MD of IMS Learning Resources. IIM-Lucknow has announced a weightage of 2.5 points for working candidates in its admission policy for the year 2011.
“Globally, B-schools have management students who have work experience. In India, the trend is picking up. Recruiters want to hire a person, who has a better insight of knowledge and practice. We also want to bring in diversity in the classroom,” said Prof. Himanshu Rai, Chairman, Admission at IIM-L. “We want a mixed batch. Also, the student, who has a work experience of 2-3 years, can understand management education better than a fresher. In coming years, most of the B-schools will make a serious effort to create balanced batches,” Prof. Rai added.
Consequently, CAT training institutes see an increasing demand for short-term courses against the traditional 18-month-long courses. “While the long- term programme has traditionally been a requirement for students in the pre-final year of graduation, final year students as well as candidates with work experience have always preferred shorter duration programmes ranging from 6 to 9 months with workshops. As the proportion of CAT-takers gets more and more skewed towards the work experience candidates, we will naturally see a greater demand for such short duration training programmes,” Mr. Sajnani added.
Ahmedabad-based Endeavor too is witnessing change in students’ profiles and their requirements. “Students are becoming aware about what they deserve and therefore, the overall number of CAT aspirants is decreasing. However, the number of aspirants with work experience is increasing. Many working professionals do not need classroom environment for CAT preparations. For them, we have started a Web portal. We have around 200 students from cities like Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune, Mysore, Gandhinagar, Vadodara etc., who are preparing for CAT through this portal,” said Hitesh Devalia, partner at Endeavor. The institute is also planning to launch video-based CAT coaching classes for the working people.
Indore-based PT Education has seen 7% growth in enrollment of students with work experience. “They wish to have their next break through a professional management education. We have started week-end batches for the experienced CAT aspirants. Also, there will be a need for courses with convenient timings, tailor-made soft-skill development module and special personal counseling,” said Manish Saraf, COO of PT Education.
Source: The Economic Times, January 27, 2011
>QInvest picks up stake in education company FIIT-JEE
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QInvest, Qatar’s leading investment bank, has acquired a stake in FIIT-JEE Ltd., India’s leading test preparation company for engineering and medical entrance examinations. Neither the acquisition cost nor the stake acquired is disclosed. VCCircle had recently reported that the Delhi-headquartered company was raising another round of private equity including a partial stake sale by promoters. In July 2009, the company had raised Rs. 100 crore (Rs. 1 billion) from Matrix Partners.
FIIT-JEE was founded in 1992 by Dinesh Kumar Goel initially to train students for competitive entrance examinations for prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). Currently, the company has over 30,000 students enrolled in its coaching programs across 50 centers and 35 integrated school programs in India and the Middle East. FIIT-JEE recently expanded its programs to include training for SAT, Olympiads and National Talent Search Examination (NTSE), a national level scholarship program in India to identify and nurture talented students.
Commenting on the deal, Dinesh Kumar Goel, Chairman of FIIT-JEE, said: “Partnering with QInvest will help FIIT-JEE establish a stronger presence in the Middle East.” Anuj Khanna, Head of Investment Management at QInvest, said: “The test preparation market in India is estimated to be approximately US$ 2 billion and is growing at a rate of 15-20%.”
This is the third deal of QInvest in India. In February 2010, Qinvest picked up 25% in investment banking and broking firm Ambit Corporate Finance for Rs”. 250 crore (Rs. 2.5 billion). In November 2010, Asian Business Exhibition & Conferences Ltd (ABECL) raised an undisclosed amount in exchange for 28% stake from QInvest.
Source: http://www.moneycontrol.com, January 18, 2011
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