IMPERATIVES FOR TRAINING INDUSTRY

The Asian Age

That there is a global opportunity for training companies is now well-recognised, but there are key concerns about our ability to tap this opportunity — that of the quality of education and weak admission and examination systems. In one breath, we are proud of our IITs and IIMs because the rigour of their admission processes. And in the other, we expect our training companies to dominate the world without having the necessary investment support to have the best systems and processes and attract the right talent to provide education on a glob al scale. As my friend Prof. Jay Mitra, director of the School of Entrepreneurship at the University of Essex, asks “Large scale with indifferent quality or small scale with high quality seem to be the only options. When will we see a player emerge who can provide consistent quality on a global scale?” This is not intended as a criticism of solid companies like APTECH and NIIT who have shown that they have what it takes to be successful training companies in a market that is obsessed with the success of software and BPO exporters.

On the contrary, the opportunity to put India on the world map of high-quality education probably is most readily available to them since they have already overcome the slowdown of the early part of this decade to regain their relevance partly in India and certainly in global markets, particularly Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The problem goes back to the early nineties when many fledgling computer training institutes in India were just beginning to take off and the market had to move from short appreciation courses in IT to more profitable and sustainable career courses of 18 months duration and more. That is when the groundswell of franchising enabled rapid scaling in the national market, with hungry entrepreneurs as well as ambitious parents creating an unprecedented demand for computer education. With the focus on franchising competence rather than education quality, it was perhaps inevitable that the weak centres would collapse at the sign of the inevitable downturn. The slimmer and trimmer companies that have survived should be more capable of meeting the industry's needs as well as the challenges of quality in a more discerning marketplace.

The early warning here is that close attention to education capabilities, whether it is in India or abroad, and retail or corporate training will need to become the core competence, rather than priming the franchising pump all over again in new markets.

Having been in this industry for over a dozen years gives me the confidence that good sense will prevail and we will see at least one Indian player forge innovative collaborations and joint ventures in key resource centres and succeed in building a billion dollar business in global education.

But let us change track a little and ask: what is needed for our software and business process industry to keep its own tryst with a $100 billion export revenue in the next five years or so?

While there are many ecosystem and business model issues that have been discussed over the last many months, the most urgent and dominant imperative continues to be the availability of industry-ready youngsters. There are a number of small initiatives that are beginning to see the light of day — the finishing schools for engineers coming up in some of the National Institutes of Technology, the quality initiatives being talked about in some of the IITs and, of course, the individual partnerships that many of us are forging with key colleges and universities to participate in curriculum development, final year teaching and pre-placement to align student capabilities with real job needs.

What is needed further is a partnership between industry, academia and the powers that be in the AICTE, state regulatory agencies and world-class institutions from India and abroad that are willing to invest in the future of the country, the industry and youth. Resources of the future will come from different disciplines but the core capabilities and skills need to be defined and taught with uniform quality to make the industry's aspirations come true.

Dr. Ganesh Natarajan is chairman of Nasscom and vice-chairman and CEO of Zensar)