On August 27, the United Education Institute Global (UEI Global) — an education initiative of the New York-based Berggruen Holdings (valuation: $1.5 billion) — formally established its footprint in India by inaugurating the first UEI Global vocational training institute in Delhi. Promoted at a project cost of $10 million (Rs.40 crore), this state-of-the-art institute’s first batch comprises 30 students enrolled in several hotel and hospitality vocational study programmes. By the end of the current fiscal year five more UEI Global academies will become operational in Noida, Mumbai, Trivandrum, Jaipur and Pune, says Praveen Roy, managing director UEI Global.

“We want to start as a home-grown provider of trained professionals to the domestic hospitality industry, and then move logically to outsourcing and skilled manpower export,” says Roy who has more than 15 years of experience as a top-level hospitality industry professional. Prior to promoting UEI Global India, Roy held senior positions in operations and training in several globe-girdling hotel chains including the Intercontinental, Fujiya, the Taj, Oberoi and ITC Welcomgroup after graduating in hospitality from IHTTI, Switzerland and the University of Buckingham, UK.

Roy reckons that Delhi alone will require additional 35,000 trained hospitality professionals for the Commonwealth Games of 2010 and countrywide, 100,000 hotel rooms will be added to existing capacity because of the impressive 8.8 percent annual growth of the tourism and hospitality industry. “In-bound tourism is rising rapidly and is expected to contribute Rs.200,000 crore or 5.3 percent of the country’s GDP by 2010. Consequently the annual requirement of trained manpower will rise from 120,000 currently to 200,000 in the next three-four years. This is the rationale for promoting UEI Global vocational training institutes. Our curriculums have been developed in academic collaboration with the globally renowned Hotelschool in the Netherlands and will prove a landmark in the development of the Indian tourism industry,” promises Roy, who was also the first director of the Institute of Hotel Management, Aurangabad (IIHM-A), promoted by Indian Hotels Ltd (Taj Group) and the Asian member of the leading Hotel Schools of the World (LHSW).

Initially UEI Global will offer foundation certificate programmes in international hospitality management (12 months), food preparation (12 months) and shorter duration courses in bar tending, service operations and room maintenance. “We’re engaged with an Indian and foreign university to offer course credits to students completing our courses which will enable them to be inducted into the third year of hotel management degree programmes. But our main focus is to supply superbly trained professionals to the Indian hospitality industry,” says Roy disclosing that the company will gradually diversify into training professionals for the retail, civil aviation and travel and tourism industries.

At long last vocational training — a blindspot of the Indian education system — seems set to take off.

Autar Nehru (Delhi)

Sports education enthusiast

The huge amounts of prize money, advertising contracts and sponsorships showered on Indian cricketers who recently brought the Twenty-20 World Cup home as also to sportspeople such as Sania Mirza, Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi (tennis), has awakened middle class India to the importance of sports education. Moreover there is dawning awareness in corporate India and academia that sports education develops leadership, teamwork and crisis management skills — all valuable attributes in the workplace.

That’s perhaps why perspicacious private sector entrepreneurs have started promoting sports academies in a big way. The latest venture in this field is the Mumbai-based Neo International Sports Academy (NISA, estb. 2005).

Comments chief operating officer Parag Shah, a self-professed sports fanatic: “The business objective of NISA is to help people to take to sports as a career as also to transform sportspeople into champions. We aim to raise India’s profile in global sports arenas by improving their timings and standards by giving them world class training and international exposure.” As COO of NISA, Shah has full support of the company’s promoter-directors Mushtaq Khan and Vidya Gaikwad.

An alumnus of St. Peter’s High School, Panchgani and Sasmira Textile Institute, Mumbai, Shah believes that after several career and job switches he has found his true calling. “After I graduated in textile engineering with an MBA in marketing I promoted Parag Silk Mills, a firm engaged in the manufacture, import, and exports of textiles from 1984-99. But for various reasons I had to give up the business and worked with several companies including TVS Sky Shop — a big name in skyshopping — where I was the head of operations and vice president. But when Mushtaq and Vidya invited me to come aboard NISA early this year, I was delighted to accept,” says Shah.

Now thoroughly acclimatized, Shah has promoted several initiatives with characteristic enthusiasm and energy. On March 27 in collaboration with real estate developers Phoenix Recreations Pvt Ltd, NISA inaugurated a first-of-its- type indoor sports arena in Ahmedabad. Spread over 55,000 sq. ft, it hosts four indoor cricket nets, beach volleyball and beach netball courts. Likewise on September 14, in collaboration with Hallmark Infrastructure Pvt Ltd, NISA inaugurated an indoor sports arena in Chennai, boasting an array of sports facilities including cricket, indoor golf, table tennis, etc. Moreover to provide international exposure in terms of training to Indian students, NISA has tied up with the Australian International Sports Academy (AISA), Caloundra (Australia) to provide intensive training in several games and sports.

A first batch of 68 students (including 14 girls) from the Jain International Residential School, Bangalore recently experienced 14 days of training in cricket, football, golf and swimming in AISA. “We are also looking at conducting tournaments between Australian and Indian school students in various sports,” comments Shah who has affiliated NISA with some leading sports education academies (apart from AISA), — the Greg Brown School for football coaching and the Queensland Academy of Sports, Australia. Back home, NISA’s panel of coaches and advisors include eminent sports personalities such as former India cricket captain Kapil Dev, Australia’s John Buchannan and Tony Dell (cricket) and Australia’s hockey great Terry Walsh.

“There’s a huge pool of sports talent in India. It needs to be nurtured and developed to produce world champions. That’s our objective,” says Shah.

Fair winds!

Gaver Chatterjee (Mumbai)

Enriching early education

Qualitatively acceptable supplementary learning materials such as workbooks, factbooks, practice texts for pre and primary school children are conspicuously rare in India’s school education system. Affiliating boards don’t prescribe them and school teachers are too busy trying to cover the syllabus to research and write them. Consequently children tend to develop resistance to subjects such as geography, science and maths, which they are pushed into learning prematurely. To fill this lacuna in early education, a Kolkata-based firm, Academy of Progressive Montessori (APM) — promoted by early childhood educators Shalini Sunderlal and Anita Alimchandani who were hitherto engaged in teacher training — has diversified into publishing supplementary learning materials under the brand name Purple Patch. Its first publication Eureka Workbook â€” a series of nine exercise books was released in August in Kolkata.

Comments Sunderlal, who was in Bangalore recently (August) to launch the series in south India: “We were approached by several teachers, parents and school managements to recommend workbooks for pre-schoolers. But we found only substandard material. After a long and frustrating search we decided to write our own workbooks, which are child-friendly, interesting and fun,” says Sunderlal, a humanities graduate of Loreto House, Kolkata who started her career in the public relations wing of the transnational Taj group of hotels.

After working for over six years in the corporate world, Sunderlal discovered that her true calling was early childhood education. In 2000 she enrolled for a diploma in Montessori education at the renowned London Montessori Centre. A year later together with teacher trainer Anita Alimchandani (a fellow student at LMC), she promoted APM.

Since then, APM has trained over 500 pre-school educators in the Montessori method including 20 from UAE, Thailand, Bangladesh and Nepal. “APM is the only institute in the country to offer Montessori teacher training at three levels — toddler, pre-school and primary education,” says Sunderlal.

The Eureka Workbook series comprising nine titles, three each in zoology, geography and botany, has been enthusiastically received by pre-schools and primaries across the country. “The books don’t follow any particular syllabus and are useful and fun for all children. Since the formal launch in August, we have been flooded by enquiries,” she says.

Encouraged by the enthusiastic response to the first series, Sunderlal is all set to release another set of workbooks to introduce history and environmental sciences to toddlers. “The excellent response to our Eureka Workbooks has confirmed our belief that a growing number of pre-school managements are keen to enrich the learning of their pupils. So we’re back on the drawing board to plan our next series of learning materials,” she says.

Power to your elbow!

Srinidhi Raghavendra (Bangalore)

New premises enthusiasm

Winds of change are wafting over Chennai’s popular and venerated Goethe Institute (formerly the Max Mueller Bhavan). The institute moved to its spanking new premises in Nungambakkam in April this year. From its new vantage point the 19-year-old Goethe Institute (estb. 1988) is all set to give a new thrust to Indo-German cultural and academic cooperation, as also to create greater awareness of the German language in Tamil Nadu. To this end Goethe Institute has tied up with the Indira Gandhi National Open University to launch the first distance learning German language programme in Tamil Nadu.

“Our online distance learning programme will enable students even in the remotest areas of Tamil Nadu to learn German. We also have an active academic cooperation programme with eight universities in Tamil Nadu which offer German as a foreign language. Our partners include the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras, Anna University and University of Madras, with whom we also have student exchange programmes. We would particularly like to expand cooperation in the areas of media education, film, music, dance, theatre and visual arts,” says Dr. Gabriele Landwehr, who took over as director of Goethe Institute, Chennai in July 2004 and spearheads its operations in Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry and Kerala. An alumna of Stuttgart University, Landwehr has wide experience of teaching and consultancy in American universities and during her 30-year career with Goethe Institute, worked in Rome, Los Angeles, Mexico and New York.

Presently Landwehr is focussed on getting the state-of-the-art 12,000 sq. ft premises of the institute ready for lectures, seminars, film festivals, concerts and theatre programmes. Among her priorities are conducting language classes for 1,400 students who are instructed by 15 teachers, augmenting its well stocked library and information centre which provides data on study and research in Germany, supervising its language, education and culture departments, and starting an art gallery to spread awareness about German art. Moreover there’s the German Resource Centre which is open to the general public.

Landwehr has drawn ambitious plans for the Goethe Institute in its new premises. “As the demand for our study programmes grows, we are seeking more teachers whom we can train. Currently we don’t work in schools but we would like to introduce German language learning in secondary schools. To create greater awareness of Germany in India, we have plans to enhance cooperation in the media field through our exchange programme for young journalists. Our international public television programme in which we screen excellent international films, also helps create greater Indo-German affinity and cooperation,” says Landwehr.

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)

Entrepreneur extraordinaire

For serial entrepreneur Bikram Dasgupta, performance is paramount. “In business you need to perform in everything you do. Fancy degrees and high flying academic achievements may help. But in today’s competitive scenario you either perform or you are an also-ran,” he says. And a gritty intent to perform way above average in every enterprise undertaken has earned Dasgupta the reputation of entrepreneur extraordinaire.

An alumnus of IIT-Kharagpur, Dasgupta began his career in HCL (then known as Hindustan Computers Ltd), promoted by billionaire entrepreneur Shiv Nadar and Arjun Malhotra. As business development manager of HCL, Dasgupta was one of the pioneers who helped HCL (current annual sales: Rs.16,000 crore) get off the ground. “We made many mistakes but most importantly we learned from them. It was a new and growing industry and almost everyone who was at HCL at that time has matured into a high-performing entrepreneur,” he recalls.

In 1984, Dasgupta jumped ship to promote Pertech Computers Limited (PCL). PCL which started with seven employees was in the vanguard of the IT industry and soon enough its payroll grew to 1,500 people, transforming it into the largest PC manufacturing company in India.

A decade later Dasgupta experienced the need to move on. “I felt I needed to return to my roots in West Bengal which was then suffering great anguish because of the rising phenomenon of the ‘educated unemployed’,” says Dasgupta.

Following his return to Kolkata in 1995, Dasgupta promoted Globsyn Technologies Ltd, described as “a software engineers’ finishing school”. “From my experience I had learned that there is a vast difference between what engineering schools teach and what corporates want. Globsyn aims to bridge that gap,” he says.

Currently the Globsyn Group (annual sales revenue: Rs.40 crore) which has 250 employees on its muster rolls comprises three companies engaged in the businesses of providing software and IT enabled solutions, consultancy services, training and education.

The group’s TechnoCampus houses Globsyn Business School and the software finishing school. “Compared to other institutions, the training provided here is much more practical and job oriented. This is what makes our students succeed in their workplaces,” says Dasgupta, who is currently concentrating his energies on getting Globsyn Crystals, a BPO venture, off the ground. His other future plans include expanding the company’s operations to countries in South-east Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

Ritusmita Biswas (Kolkata)