The Hindu Business Line : Manipal goes to school

It’s the perfect combination of education and experience. The Manipal Education and Medical Group (MEMG) with over five decades of experience in the field of higher education, is getting down to basics with the launch of the Manipal K-12 venture.

The aim is to manage, operate and build high quality ‘smart’ schools across the country. Dr Ranjan Pai, Managing Director and CEO, MEMG, says the Manipal K-12 (KG to 12th class) initiative is an attempt at branding primary and secondary education in the country.

The good news is that in the process, several second rung schools that have not been able to scale up due to various reasons — lack of funds, good quality faculty, infrastructure, operating issues — can look forward to a strong academic process being delivered by the MEMG experience.

Also associated with the initiative is Edurite Technologies, which is promoted by online tutoring company, TutorVista, and delivers teaching solutions to over 3,000 primary and secondary schools across the country.

MEMG picked up a minority stake in Edurite Technologies late last year. Manipal K-12 has already had three rounds of funding, including $19 million in the latest round — $12.5 million from the UK-based publishing giant Pearson Group and another $6.5 million from the existing investors, Lightspeed Venture Partners and MEMG.

The CEO and MD, Manipal K-12 Education (P) Ltd is Meena Ganesh, who has worked in marquee companies such as NIIT, Microsoft and Tesco. Along with her husband, K. Ganesh, they have promoted CustomerAsset and TutorVista. “With a vintage education brand like the Manipal Group and the experience of Edurite in delivering technology to schools, we expect to bring the best practices of the corporate world to the academic area,” she says.

The target was to have five Manipal K-12 branded schools by the start of the academic year 2010.

“But we have already gone past that target and have eight schools running under the K-12 brand,” say Ms Ganesh.

A picture of the Manipal Sharada Public School at Mysore.

Today there are Manipal K-12 schools in Jaipur, Mangalore, Mysore and Kathmandu. The company is in talks with schools in other cities across the country and a couple in Bangalore may soon get firmed up. The plan is to have about a 100 K-12 schools in the next five years, which Ms Ganesh expects to achieve sooner than later.

There are two ways in which the Manipal K-12 school chain is expected to grow: the company may take over a school that’s already in operation but has not been able to scale up; secondly, by setting up a new school itself.

In the first case, K-12 would only take over the running and management of the school on a revenue sharing basis while the infrastructure would still be owned by the school trust.

Here, the Manipal tag would be added to the original name of the school like the Manipal Sharada School in Mysore. In the second instance, the school would be built and whollyowned by MEMG.

So, what does branding in primary education mean for the school, teachers, parents and students? K-12 is expected to create a framework for how schools should be run.

It would standardise the curriculum input, the quality of delivery, the learning outcomes and the assessment and evaluation methods.

If K-12 takes over an existing school, then the teachers would be retained and trained to handle the new academic process. In case a new school is set up, K-12 would involve itself right from the hiring stage.

Needless to say, technology would drive most of the teaching methods in these schools.

Edurite has provided e-learning solutions (DigitAlly) to schools following the ICSE and CBSE boards besides various State Board syllabi.

Among the 3,000 schools that use digitised content for learning, are 1,300 Government schools, says Ms Ganesh.

For the teachers, the IT back-up that K-12 would provide would enable enhanced academic delivery. The academic process would identify difficult learning areas, create story boards, graphics and videos in all subjects.

As a result, students see, hear and learn in a ‘smart’ environment. It is well-known that the impact is greater and longer lasting when teaching is supported by an audio-visual. Parents of students in Manipal K-12 schools can look forward to both affordability and high quality education, assures Ms Ganesh.

Apart from Ms Ganesh, Manipal K-12 is driven by its COO, Srikanth Iyer, and the school management line headed by President, Umashanker Visvanath. Iyer co-founded Edurite Technologies in the year 2000 and continued to drive the company’s ICT solutions to schools even after TutorVista acquired it.

With the slowdown making education the hot favourite of most VCs and private equity firms, there are bound to be more players in the field.

Educomp and Everonn Systems, two other names in ICT-driven education systems, are already working with primary and secondary schools the country.

What is the USP that Ms Ganesh is working on to differentiate Manipal K-12 from other would-be school chains across the country?

“Our research and content development work at Edurite has been designed for Indian schools and we will be involved in the day-to-day running of the schools.”

Edurite (now called Manipal K-12) currently has 350 people including teachers, technologists, researchers and school principals constantly enriching the curriculum to be delivered to Indian schools.

“And with the Manipal brand surrounding the Edurite kernel, the K-12 tag will set new standards in the school education space,” says Ms Ganesh.

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