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Sravanthi Challapalli

Chennai, March 13 Education major and Financial Times publisher Pearson will increase its investment and involvement in India substantially.

Speaking to Business Line, Mr Khozem Merchant, Deputy Chairman, Pearson India, said, “We want to roll out our services in a way that establishes our footprint as that of an education company.”

Emphasising that Pearson’s education services were much more than just textbooks, Mr Merchant said that worldwide, the company has a significant presence in testing and assessment, tuition, professional tuition, accreditation and validation and online education and its management. “That’s about $5 billion of educational services, and we want to try and reproduce some of those in India, which we believe will be achievable with partnerships,” he said. In India, the company’s presence is confined to the field of higher education and a schools’ publishing division but the education space is vastly larger than that, he added.

The partnerships could take the form of equity arrangements, joint ventures or licensing.

The talks are at a very initial stage and the company still needs to identify which parts of the country are potential markets for the expertise Pearson has to offer and with who best it can partner.

Mr Merchant said the company had not yet arrived at an estimate of the investments needed for expanding its presence in India. Pearson has a “fairly fundamental commitment to this market, which will be supported by capital but more importantly by an extraordinarily deep reservoir of educational services,” he said. Pearson not only produces the material for its services but also puts in place the processes by which the learning is dispersed.

On queries about Indian content, he said there is quite a considerable amount that is specific to India but also content from elsewhere with minor modifications. “So much of the desire in the Indian industry is for a global workforce,” he said, adding that Pearson’s aim is to come here in a meaningful and substantial way to fill the talent crunch.

“Part of the task ahead is to roll out our brand of Pearson,” says Mr Merchant, in reply to a query that Pearson itself is not familiar while its units, publisher Penguin and Financial Times, are well-known.

A press release from Pearson says that Penguin Books India sales in 2007 grew 72 per cent and were just short of Rs 100 crore, and that the schools division boosted Pearson Education sales in India by 61 per cent.

More Stories on : Outlook | Education

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