Dilip Thakore interviewed Vijay K. Thadani, co-founder and chief executive of NIIT Ltd, in his office in Delhi. Excerpts:
This year the company is all set to inaugurate a NIIT University in Rajasthan. Is it corporate policy to transform NIIT into an end-to-end — K-Ph D — education company?
Yes. Although we started NIIT in 1981 as a computer training company driven by the urge to put the millions of educated unemployed to work by ‘bringing people and computers together successfully’, over the past two decades we have steadily expanded our operations to provide computer technology to K-12 schools to improve academic performance, and provide vocational skills to college students to make them employable. Subsequently we also began providing skills development training to working executives to improve their productivity, and offering programs in banking, finance and insurance, retail and business management.
By aspiring to make the world digitally literate, we have repositioned NIIT which has learning centres in 40 countries, as a global talent development corporation offering pre-school to Ph D education as well as vocational and skills training. The university is a not-for-profit institution sponsored by NIIT with an arm’s relationship.
For the past half century, post-independence india has grossly neglected vocational education. is NIIT addressing this need?
Absolutely. This is our legacy business and we are committed to expanding it even as we become more active in formal education. If the Indian economy is to continue to grow at 9 percent, we need to develop the skillsets of more than 10 million people for the services sector. And in NIIT we believe that we have a responsibility to replicate the success we have had in helping 16 million people acquire IT skills, in other domains of the services economy. It’s true that vocational education has been very neglected in India. This explains the large number of educated unemployed and the phenomenon of skills shortages in all sectors of the economy even as there is massive unemployment. We believe we can substantially remedy this situation by deploying our training and skills development competence in the service industries.
Over 60 percent of NIIT’s revenue comes from business operations overseas. What’s the rationale of expansion overseas when the domestic market is under-served?
Until 1991 NIIT was entirely focused on the Indian market. But if you recall in that year the Indian economy suffered a severe balance of payments crisis which catalysed the liberalisation and deregulation of the Indian economy. Prior to that, like the economy, NIIT too ran out of dollars. That’s when we became aware that during the past decade the company had developed sufficient expertise to deliver IT training and skills development programs to individuals and corporates in the US as well, and earn dollars. After that we became confident that we could deliver our IT training programs in other countries in Asia — in particular China — Europe, Africa and Latin America at marginal additional cost. We have learned a great deal from establishing business operations abroad. Now our corporate mission is to help people around the world become digitally literate.
The major deficiency of Indian education is in public/government institutions. How good is your experience of public-private education partnerships?
Our experience of PPPs with the Central and state governments has been very encouraging. We were among the first companies to start delivering instructional communication technologies — ICT — to government schools. Currently we provide our curriculum-mapped ICT supplementary education services to 9,000 schools, including 7,800 government schools across the country.
Moreover we also work with other government departments, outside education. In short, our experience of working with government schools and other agencies has been very good. We have proved to the Central and state governments that PPPs can work in education and skills development.
NIIT has a substantial presence in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). How does India’s education system compare with China’s? What lessons can educators in India learn from PRC?
Yes, NIIT has established a presence in China where we have 192 branded learning centres providing IT, English and skills development programs to students and learners. One of the important national development lessons which India can learn from the world’s fastest growing economy is to build infrastructure in anticipation of economic growth, rather than the other way around. Secondly, education should be an exclusively Central government subject in the interests of a coordinated national education policy. Third, we should encourage PPPs — public private partnerships — in industry and education. NIIT’s experience in China is a great example: 150 of our learning centres in China are sited within universities owned by the Central and provincial governments. And finally let’s welcome foreigners to teach us, as they do in China. Knowledge doubles when shared.