Raju Babu Sinha is the Kolkata-based vice president of UMESL (Usha Martin Education & Solutions Ltd). Since 2008, he has been managing the K-12 and higher education business of the company. UMESL, formerly Usha Martin Infotech, is part of the Kolkata-based Usha Martin Group (annual revenue:Rs.4,700 crore) which includes Usha Martin Ltd, India’s largest, and the world’s second largest, wire rope manufacturing company.
Newspeg. For the past three years, UMESL has been providing higher education study programmes through its Usha Martin Academy in the distance learning mode. Last year, it promoted 12 K-V schools in eastern India including nine in West Bengal (Barrackpore, Barasat, Santragachi, Kalyani, Durgapur, Jalpaiguri, Siliguri, Dankuni, Malda); two in Jharkhand (Ranchi and Dhanbad) and one in Patna (Bihar).
History. The Usha Martin Group (estb.1961) which is a heavyweight industrial conglomerate with interests in wire ropes, steel, mines, education, communication software, mobile telephony, infrastructure development, staffing services and media, promoted the Usha Martin Academy in 2000 to develop skilled personnel for conv-erging new technologies and to offer business management education.
Direct speech. “There’s a huge demand for high quality English-medium school education in the smaller towns of eastern India. Last year in a spirit of enlightened self-interest, we started 12 Usha Martin schools in West Bengal, Jharkhand and Bihar. Currently offering only primary education (K-V), we will expand them by adding one class per year to transform them into fully-fledged K-12 schools affiliated with CBSE. These schools will be equipped with excellent infrastructure with content created by an Usha Martin Academy R&D unit and will offer quality, stress-free education to children. There is a great deficit of well-educated and skilled managers and professionals in eastern India and Usha Martin schools will make a substantial contribution to bridge this deficit,” says Sinha, an engineering postgraduate of Gauhati University who served with NIIT Ltd for 15 years in various capacities before signing up with UMESL in 2008.
Future plans. Leading the company’s educational diversi-fication, Sinha is all set to expand his horizons. “Our schools in eastern India will be a good trial ground and provide us with the experience needed to expand our K-12 operations to other parts of the country beyond eastern India. With India hosting the world’s largest child population estimated at 450 million, the demand for modern, English-medium education is infinite,” says Sinha.
Way to go!
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)