Mumbai-based Bhupendra Acharya and Bhavana Sharma are founder-directors of Taj Eduglobe Ltd (TEL, estb.2015), a new-age company offering aptitude testing and career development services to students individually and through education institutions. Under its Discover Brain programme, the company offers psychometric testing services — Dermatoglyphics Multiple Intelligence Tests (DMIT) and mark enhancement techniques (MET) — which enable students to identify their special intelligences and competencies. Test results are supplemented with professional career counseling services.
Newspeg. In January, the company launched a countrywide initiative to offer students its Discover Brain Psychometric Tests (Rs.2,500) free-of-charge. Since then, TEL’s 110 trained counselors have administered over 200,000 free psychometric tests to students in more than 15 cities including Mumbai, Pune, Rajkot and Chandigarh. Moreover, it has signed up 250 franchisees to set up its testing centres across India.
History. A commerce graduate of Acharya Nagarjuna University, Andhra Pradesh, Acharya is a serial entrepreneur. Earlier he launched Acharya Tours and Travels and Global Shine before promoting Taj Technotech Ltd in 2012, an IT company which also provided aptitude testing services. In September last year, he registered Taj Eduglobe to exclusively offer psychometric testing products and career counseling to students.
“The objective of TEL is to enable students to discover their learning styles, special intelligences and aptitudes through tried and tested psychometric tests and to make informed career decisions,” says Acharya, chairman of TEL, which already boasts 35 client schools including Singapore International School and RBK International Academy, Mumbai and Delhi Public School, Siliguri, among others.
Direct talk. “Our DMIT test not only helps identify students’ aptitudes and strengths, but also provides parents and teachers the basis for remedial programmes. On the other hand, MET helps students to improve their memorisation and recall skills through scientifically proven brain exercises,” says Bhavana Sharma, an alumna of St. Joseph’s College, Darjeeling and a former fashion and lifestyle entrepreneur who signed up as TEL’s founder-managing director last year.
Fees: Rs.8,500 per student for DMIT and MET.
Future plans. With its complimentary psychometric tests being received enthusiastically and generating word-of-mouth publicity, Acharya is bullish about the future. By year end, TEL plans to extend this service to 700,000 students in 1,800 schools countrywide. “Over 35 schools have already signed up for our testing and counseling services and we are confident we can expand it further. With growing awareness of the critical importance of high quality education, this sector is poised for expansion. Therefore we have also drawn up plans for providing education consultancy, teacher training and retailing school uniforms and other education accessories,” says Acharya.
Dipta Joshi (Mumbai)
CUP explores new horizons
Ratnesh Kumar Jha is the Delhi-based managing director (South Asia) of Cambridge University Press India Pvt. Ltd (CUP). An alumnus of JNU and Delhi universities and the Kellogg School of Management, USA, Jha began his professional career with Citibank, USA, and served with GE Capital, Reliance Telecom, Vodafone and Educomp Solutions (2010-2013) prior to signing up with CUP. 
Newspeg. CUP and its Chennai-based division, Cambridge English Language Assessment, organised the second edition of the Cambridge English South Asia Partnership Summit on February 23-24 in New Delhi in partnership with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce of India (FICCI). The objective of the summit: provide a platform to discuss the future of education and the skill-sets required to excel.
CUP history. CUP is an affiliate of the top-ranked University of Cambridge, UK (estb.1209), engaged in the business of publishing academic textbooks, monographs, journals and education material for schools. Since it began its South Asia operations in 2006, CUP has established an excellent reputation for publishing high quality K-12 English, maths, science and social sciences textbooks prescribed by over 10,000 schools affiliated with CISCE, CBSE, CIE, IBO and state examination boards. Currently, the company has 53,000 titles in print, and produces 4 million academic texts and supplementary reading books per year.
Direct talk. “High-quality content is the USP of our textbooks written by accomplished authors from the South Asian region. All content is approved by a syndicate of Cambridge University — routinely ranked among the best universities of the world. We want to support learning in India and therefore we have also ventured into digital learning and higher education resources,” says Jha.
Last year, Cambridge University Press India entered into a partnership with Vidyanta Skills Institute, Gurgaon (Haryana), a National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) partner, to develop content for vocational education and training (VET) programmes. Under the partnership agreement, CUP and Vidyanta Skills will develop content for nursing schools and VET students in state government secondary schools. “This content and training will be delivered digitally and/or in hybrid mode,” says Jha.
Future plans. At present only 18 percent of CUP content is offered in digital mode. This percentage is likely to rise significantly with a number of digital products/solutions from communications and teacher development to English language learning services set for launch.
“India has the world’s largest student population. Therefore, CUP which has been at the forefront of school textbooks publishing for over a century, now wants to extend its outreach to train and skill students through the digital medium. Our goal is to transform into a multimedia and multi-platform learning solutions provider which will have a positive impact on K-12 and higher education,” says Jha.
Autar Nehru (Delhi)
McGraw Hill’s digital driver
Mark Dorman is president of McGraw Hill Education International and Professional, a division of McGraw Hill Education, the well-known multinational teaching development and learning solutions company based in New York (successor to The McGraw Publishing Company, estb.1888). As divisional president, Dorman manages the company’s international operations and professional reference business, which includes a 6,000-titles ebooks programme and online content for medical, engineering and science education.
Newspeg. Last October in Pune, Dorman was the keynote speaker at the Vice Chancellors Retreat 2015 sponsored by McGraw Hill Education India. The august assembly discussed and debated ways and means to enable institutions of higher education to improve teaching-learning and research outcomes through innovative new technologies.
History. An alum of the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, Dorman resigned his commission in the Corps of Royal Military Police and began his corporate career in 2000 with LexisNexis UK, a unit of Reed Elsevier, as head of strategy. Subsequently, he served with Gartner Inc. as head of global product management (2004-2005) and as president and CEO of Wolters Kluwer Law & Business, a multinational information technology solutions company, where he was appointed vice president of the Legal Markets Group in 2008.
McGraw Hill Education (India) Pvt. Ltd, the company’s Indian arm, began operations in 1970 as Tata McGraw Hill and was rechristened in 2013 after the parent completed acquisition of the Tata Group’s equity in the company.
Since then, McGraw Hill has been transitioning from a publisher of textbooks to a multimedia learning sciences company. From its print-based business model, the company is gradually switching to delivery of customised digital content sold through subscription. “We are leveraging our experience in creating education content to deliver digital solutions that are personalised and adaptive. A unique feature of our digital platforms is that the instructor receives constant feedback from the learner which helps him to enable the learner to progress at her own pace,” says Dorman.
According to Dorman, market response in India to the company/division’s digital learning programmes is “very encouraging”. Currently, subscriber institutions include the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Banaras Hindu University, NIT-Uttarakhand, IIT-Mandi and IIT-Roorkee, MNIT Jaipur, NIT-Agartala, IIM-Udaipur, IIT-Madras, IIT-Kozhikode, and National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai.
Future plans. McGraw Hill plans to launch its Digital Learning Ecosystem (DLE) this year. “DLE will enable educators, students and developers to personalise and enhance McGraw-Hill Education’s courseware by creating new content that leverages the power of the company’s adaptive and analytics platforms. This will be a step forward in instructional technology that will support the demands of educators and students to combine learning elements from multiple sources to create distinctive and personalised learning experiences,” says Dorman.
The company’s strategy for India is not to entirely replace textbooks with digital platforms, but to grow the share of its digital business. By 2020, digital products will account for 20 percent of the company’s business, he says.
Jeswant J. M (Bangalore)
Higher education facilitators
Gaurav Surana is founder-director of the Kolkata-based Tutors Circle Education Pvt. Ltd (TCE, estb.2011), a company providing education consultancy services including test preparation and application assistance to students aspiring to study abroad. 
Currently, TCE’s team of five alumni of top-ranked universities (London, IIT-Kharagpur, IIM-Bangalore) provide counseling to students to facilitate their admission into undergrad, postgraduate and MBA programmes of premier institutions abroad.
Newspeg. Tutors Circle is adding two new verticals this year. The first will provide test prep and counseling services to students for undergrad and postgraduate education within India. The other project, ICudB (International Colleges & Universities Data Base), launched in mid-March, is a user-friendly one-stop shop for all information required by Indian students wanting to study abroad. “ICudB will extensively provide college profiles and scholarships information together with applications tracking services,” says Surana.
History. A finance postgraduate of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Surana began his professional career with Merrill Lynch (2004-08) in the US, before returning to Kolkata, and started mentoring students for study abroad prior to promoting TCE three years later. Since then, the company has prepared and placed over 2,000 students in premier universities abroad, including Oxford (UK), MIT (USA), Princeton (USA), Warwick, London School of Economics, St. Andrews University (UK), RWTH Aachen (Germany) and ETH, Zurich (Switzerland).
In March 2014, Surana together with Priyamvada Agarwal — an alumna of Calcutta University with postgrad certification in special education and counseling from Cambridge University — promoted BONDs which helps students prepare for GMAT, GRE, SAT, TOEFL, PTE & IELTS. “Our students are put through a series of intensive mock tests to strengthen and sharpen their skills to crack these exams. With class size restricted to six and students coached by highly-qualified mentors, we have a 92 percent success record,” says Agarwal. Prices for services range from Rs.5,000-50,000.
Direct talk. “Our USP is that we are a team of graduates from top universities abroad and in India. We offer globally equivalent services based on our own experiences with education abroad. Two mentors are assigned to each student to prepare them to write exams and choose the appropriate college/university,” says Surana.
Future plans. With the explosive growth of e-commerce and internet usage worldwide, Surana has drawn up plans to transform TCE into an online business enterprise helping students from small cities to cross every hurdle as they plan their higher education in India or abroad.
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)