A slew of big-ticket domestic and overseas projects launched under the banner of its for-profit subsidiary Manipal Global Education Services, are set to dramatically transform the Manipal Education & Medical Group from a competent provider of professional education in peninsular India into Asia’s premier higher ed multinational. Dilip Thakore reports The Manipal (Karnataka) and Bangalore headquarters of the Manipal Education and Medical Group (MEMG) — one of the oldest and most respected names in private professional (medicine, engineering, business and hospitality management, nursing and distance learning) education in India — are buzzing with purposive energy. A slew of big-ticket domestic and overseas projects launched under the banner of its for-profit subsidiary Manipal Global Education Services Pvt. Ltd (MaGE, formerly Manipal Universal), which are scheduled to take wing this year, are set to dramatically transform MEMG from a competent provider of professional education in peninsular India into Asia’s premier higher education multinational. In March, the mint new state-of-the-art, multi-disciplinary Manipal International University, Malaysia — under construction with a projected outlay of US$ 200 million (Rs.1,100 crore) and capacity to accommodate 20,000 students on its 140-acre campus in Nilai, south of Kuala Lumpur — will admit its first batch of 400-500 freshers. Meanwhile back home the equally state-of-the-art Manipal University, Jaipur, legislated by a special Act of the Rajasthan state assembly and under construction on 67 acres on the outskirts of the pink city with a projected capex of Rs.750 crore, admitted its first batch of 960 students in August last year. And on November 26 IDFC Private Equity Fund announced an investment of Rs.100 crore in Manipal Servicecorp Facility Management Pvt. Ltd (MSFM), an MEMG subsidiary promoted to provide premises and facilities management services to corporates, which has recently been repositioned as a student-residences and facilities management company. Top of MSFM’s agenda is construction of 5,000 rooms for Manipal University, Jaipur, 500 rooms for Manipal’s Banking Academy in Bangalore and 600 for the T.A. Pai Manipal Institute B-school in Manipal at an aggregate capital cost of Rs.450 crore. After that the company will roll out its services across India and abroad. These ambitious, capital-intensive and unprecedented initiatives are just a few of the projects on the crowded drawing board of MEMG. With the group’s not-for-profit Manipal University and Sikkim Manipal University (under Indian law, education institutions are obliged to operate as charitable societies or trusts) well established and charting their own course under the supervision of independent boards of directors (see box), Dr. Ranjan Pai, the 40-something third generation scion of the Pai family of Manipal which founded the Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) in 1942, has focused his attention on growing Manipal Global Education/MaGE into India’s first heavyweight for-profit education multinational. “With the promotion of Manipal Universal in 2001, now renamed Manipal Global Education Services (MaGE), we have divided the Manipal Group into our not-for-profit domestic institutions, i.e. Manipal University, Sikkim Manipal University and Manipal University, Jaipur, and MaGE which raises capital to establish and manage higher education institutions abroad.…
