CHETAN MAHAJAN IS the president of HCL Learning Ltd (HCLL, estb. 2010), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Noida-based HCL Infosystems Ltd (estb. 1976; annual revenue: Rs.8,297 crore), the well-known IT behemoth. HCL Learning offers ICT (information and communications technology)-enabled mapped curriculums and supplementary development services for K-12 schools, as well as training and education solutions to higher education institutions and corporates countrywide. The company’s curriculums-mapped DigiSchool programme is installed in over 4,000 schools in India and abroad with an aggregate enrolment of 4 million students.
Newspeg. In early June, HCLL planted its first flag overseas by installing adapted DigiSchool programmes in 11 international schools in the Middle East and Africa, and eight in Nepal, which will impact more than 22,000 students. Prominent among the schools abroad which have installed DigiSchool are DPS, Ghana, Indian Language School, Nigeria, DPS Academy, Dubai, Indian School — Al Wadi Al Kabir, and the Euro School, Nepal. Earlier last August, HCLL launched two innovative products — My IIT Tutor and MyEduWorld-Drive — self-learning, plug and play devices pre-loaded with two and three dimensional content mapped with the syllabi of CBSE, ICSE and selective state boards for class I-X students and apps for JEE-IIT aspirants.
Direct talk. “The objective of our international initiatives driven by latest ICT innovations is to impact India’s ICT capability in education upon the world, and to provide ICT-enabled K-12 education which delivers learning with measurable outcomes. We have invested heavily in our state-of-the-art HCL Learning Development Centre (HLDC) in Mumbai which has a 130-strong technical resources team for developing learning programmes for schools affiliated with exam boards such as CBSE, ICSE and a number of state boards, and adapted for boards in Africa as well,” says Mahajan, an alumnus of Northwestern (USA), Punjab and Calcutta universities, with 20 years corporate experience in India and abroad.
Future plans. With the company’s 50-plus career development centres nationwide which were started in 2008, HCLL has expanded its portfolio to provide in-campus and offsite IT and employability skills to graduating students. “We are a 360 degree learning solutions company spanning K-12 and higher education, and are looking at South Asia as our new focus area. We also intend to extend our footprint to 6,000 classrooms worldwide during the next five years,” says Mahajan.
Wind in your sails!
Paromita Sengupta (Bangalore)
BMU driver
Delhi-based Akshay Munjal, a science and business management alum of Bradford University, UK, and Pepperdine University, USA, is executive director of the spanking new state-of-the-art, BML Munjal University (BMU) spread over 50 acres in Manesar (Gurgaon), on the periphery of Delhi.
Newspeg. Named after Brij Mohan Lall Munjal, the founder-chairman of the Hero Group of 20 companies (annual revenue: Rs.30,000 crore) — the world’s largest producers of bicycles and automotive two wheelers (scooters; motorcycles) — BMU, constructed at an estimated project cost of Rs.200 crore, is ready to admit its first batches of 200 engineering, 70 business management and 30 commerce students on August 19.
History. Established under the Haryana Private Universities Act, 2006, the fully residential university is being launched in two phases. Construction of the schools of engineering and technology, business management, and commerce has been completed. Additional schools — liberal arts, arts, architecture and design, natural sciences and law — will be added each year starting with the BMU law school which will admit its first batch next August.
USP. The Imperial College, London (estb. 1907), routinely ranked among the world’s Top 20 universities, has been roped in to play a major mentoring role and will be closely involved in BMU’s curriculum design, content development, research, faculty training and digital research programmes. BMU engineering students will have the added advantage of preferential admission into Imperial College, if compliant with pre-defined criteria.
Direct talk. “Our family is not new to education. As far back as 1962, we promoted the Dayanand Medical College & Hospital, Ludhiana. Since then, we have been associated with establishment of the Mohali campus of the Indian School of Business. The BCM chain of Schools in Punjab, Raman Munjal Vidya Mandir, Gurgaon, BML Munjal Vidya Mandir, Hardwar, and BCM College of Education in Ludhiana were our earlier education initiatives. Moreover, a group company Hero MindMine Institute Ltd (estb.2000) has trained over 250,000 students in life skills and English language during the past decade. Hero Group companies and our ancillaries recruit hundreds of engineers every year who require further training and education. Therefore, BMU is a natural consequence of our activities in education spanning several decades,” says Munjal.
Future plans. With BMU all set to get rolling with the arrival of its first batch on August 19, Munjal who is working full time on getting the varsity on track, is confident of transforming it into an internationally respected university, which will attract foreign faculty, researchers and students. “Within the next five-ten years, BMU will be a prestigious and well-ranked university in India and abroad,” he predicts.
Smooth sailing!
Autar Nehru (Delhi)
Passaro pioneers
Chennai-based V. Karthikeyan and wife Veena are the promoter partners of Passaro Books (estb. 2012), a proprietary firm which imports pre-owned books from the UK for children in the 1.5-12 years age group.
Newspeg. Passaro Books runs retail and online bookshops with over 50,000 titles, and has created quite a buzz in this port city, which prides itself on its intellectual and educational prowess. The firm’s growing customer base includes Indian and international schools, young parents and online buyers from across the country. “Passaro offers a wide range including story, interactive and educational books on different subjects, reference books for the International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) syllabus, popular classics and best-seller titles for young adults,” says Karthikeyan.
History. An engineering alumnus of Anna University, Chennai, Karthikeyan started his career in 1995 at Best & Crompton where he worked for seven years before switching streams to study visual effects and 3D animation at Pentamedia Graphics, following which he landed a related teaching job in Dubai for three years. He returned to India in 2007 and after working for three years as a visual effects supervisor in the Tamil cinema industry, decided to fly solo. In 2010, Karthikeyan and Veena — an alumna of Madurai Kamaraj University — promoted a proprietary exports firm Passaro International and two years later came Passaro Books.
Direct talk. “Our USP is pricing. Since we import pre-owned books we are able to sell them at a fifth of cover prices. The major difference between us and others in the pre-owned books business, is that we focus solely on children’s books which are catalogued on the basis of age, authors and subjects. And we only sell titles in mint condition. Currently we have a customer base of 50 Indian and international schools apart from individual buyers across the country,” says Veena.
Future plans. Having got off to a good start, the enterprising duo is confident Passaro Books has a bright future. “We have only scratched the surface of the market for quality pre-owned books. The feedback we have received from young parents, schools and individual buyers is very encouraging. Now we are working on establishing licenced franchisees countrywide,” says Karthikeyan.
Way to go!
Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)
Levelfield progenitor
ARGHYA BANNERJEE is founder of The Levelfield School in Suri (pop. 80,000) in the Birbhum district of West Bengal. The school was promoted in 2010 by the Levelfield Trust whose mission and objective is to “level the playing field” and make quality education accessible and affordable to middle class households in tier-II and III urban habitations.
Newspeg. In May, Banerjee was in Mumbai to explore opportunities for replicating and expanding the reach of the Levelfield Trust to Maharashtra (pop. 112 million), India’s #1 industrial state. “A metro city school and four-five tier-I and/or II schools will give us a ‘hub-and-spoke’ model enabling us to rotate teachers. Since our teachers are mostly from the metros, a metro city school will help us retain them throughout their careers. Otherwise, we tend to lose trained teachers to family, marriage, etc,” he says.
History. An idealistic alumnus of IIT-Kharagpur and IIM-Ahmedabad, Banerjee began his career in ICICI Securities.
Subsequently, he worked with a Chennai-based equity research firm Irevna Pvt. Ltd (now a division of credit rating agency CRISIL) where he experienced first-hand the poor communication and English-speaking skills of India’s ‘educated’ workforce. This disillusionment with the education system was compounded when he began evaluating schools for his daughter aged four in 2008, prompting him to return to his roots in West Bengal and promote the trust and the CBSE-affiliated Levelfield School with an initial investment of Rs.50 lakh.
Since then, this K-VII school has grown, attracting 300 students mentored by 12 teachers. By introducing innovative practices and processes, Banerjee and his wife Asima, a science alumna of Mumbai University, have succeeded in keeping tuition fees (Rs.2,000 per month at the primary level) affordable for the neo middle class. Among them: intensive training of fresh graduates recruited as teachers and in-house development of teaching-learning programmes and materials.
“Our policy is to adopt projects and applications-based education as opposed to rote learning,” says Asima, who supervises teaching materials development at Levelfield School.
Direct talk. “Our pedagogies are designed to ensure learning through comprehension. Critical thinking skills are developed by encouraging children to solve Japanese puzzles such as Nonogram, Shikaku, Sudoku and Kenken. There is also an emphasis on strategy games in addition to chess. The objective is developing the cognitive skills of students so that exercising the mind becomes a habit,” explains Banerjee.
Future plans. Pleased with the learning outcomes of the school’s students and satisfied with Levelfield’s teaching-learning blueprint, Banerjee is exploring other geographies to replicate the Levelfield experience and to introduce — starting with Mumbai and Kolkata — the trust’s metro-centred hub-and-spoke model. “I’m looking for forward-thinking corporates and real estate developers to partner with us to roll out the Levelfield model nationally. It’s an investment in nation building,” says Banerjee.
Fair winds!
Nadia Lewis (Mumbai)
Teacher training evangelists
SUDESHNA SINHA and husband Sujit are co-founders of Shikshamitra (‘Education Mate’), an alternative school and education resource centre (estb. 2005). A psychology graduate of Calcutta University with a special needs education diploma from Mumbai University, Sudeshna has worked in special and mainstream schools for over seven years. An IIT-Kanpur alumnus with a doctorate from Princeton University, Sujit is currently a professor of development at Azim Premji University, Bangalore.
Newspeg. On April 18 Shikshamitra celebrated its ninth year of operations by announcing the launch of curriculum development and teacher training programmes for schools in eastern India. “We will also offer schools gender sensitisation, personality development, and life skills programmes,” says Sudeshna.
History. Given Sudeshna’s specialisation and work experience with underprivileged and special needs children, the couple promoted the Swanirvar Trust in 1990 to provide education to poor and challenged children in West Bengal’s backward North 24 Parganas district. More than a decade later, in 2005 they promoted the Shikshamitra school and education resources centre with a first batch of 17 students tutored by four teachers. However, the school was closed down in 2011, to enable the duo to concentrate on developing teacher training programmes and supplementary content and services designed to improve children’s learning outcomes.
During the past three years, Shikshamitra master trainers have conducted teacher development programmes in 54 government schools training 381 teachers in addition to 407 NGO teachers. Financial support is provided by Indienhilfe, Association for India’s Development (AID) and Wipro Applying Thought in Schools (WATIS) among other education and philanthropic organisations.
Direct talk. “Children of diverse backgrounds have differing learning needs and standardised curriculums prompt millions of children to drop out of the education system. In Shikshamitra we believe curriculums must be customised for schools and special needs children within them, and teachers must be sensitised to the needs of learners,” says Sudeshna.
Future plans. With Shikshamitra’s goals and objectives clearly defined, this go-getting duo is contemporising its teacher training programmes, propagating a libraries movement and developing content not only for children but adult learners, and youth who have dropped out of education. “There’s a new movement in K-12 education with a focus on measuring learning outcomes. Shikshamitra aspires to be in the vanguard,” says Sudeshna.
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)