This week, I have a yet another promising venture with me. Elements Akademia is a private limited company providing vocational training into courses on Banking, Financial Services, Retail and Insurance. Mr. Vinay Sharma, COO – Elements Akademia shares his views on a few subjects I popped up to him.
What follows is a transcript of the interview;
Can you give an insight about the elements that make ‘Elements Akademia’ so sang-froid.
After spending quite some years in corporate life, objective was to do something which is not only a good business but also serves the larger interests of our country and society. So, education and within education, employability is a burning issue which is not only leading to societal unrest on one side but also is a slowing the growth of economy due to dearth of right skilled people.
We have twin customers. The students whose #1 unmet need (survey across graduates in 10 Tier II cities) is a Job. We help them get a top notch placement in a good MNC. The Corporates are our other customers. The #1 unmet need of HR there is the availability of large pool of ready to perform hires. We meet this need by training students on precisely the skill sets required by the companies.
“We offer Careers, not just English.” Element Akademia offers scope in Insurance, KPOs/BPOs, Banking, Retail, Telecom, Hospitality etc whereas English is a major concern for only BPO’s - Why did particularly emphasize on rectifying something that no one is pondering about?
After interacting with leading influencers and educationists we understood this problem of un-employability. On the other hand, our interaction and experience in industry tell us the real shortage of talent especially at entry level for service sectors like Retail, banking, insurance and BPO/KPO.
Hence, we found this to be win-win propositions where in we can develop a business model by bridging this skill gap
Tell us about your team members. Are you planning to include some more work-force at present?
Nishant Saxena, CEO, an IIM-L alumnus, has extensive Pan-Asian (Japan, Philippines, India, Singapore) experience in P&G, consistently rated as one of World’s Top 3 Most Admired companies. He worked in areas of Finance and Strategy (Regional M&A Head and before that deputy CFO of India Operations), and has been profiled by Business World as a “Leader-in-Making”. He is also a visiting faculty in IIMs, NUS, SP Jain etc.
Vinay Sharma, COO, an IIM-C Alumnus with more than 12 years of experience, was most recently BU Head of Marketing in Airtel India, and prior to that was a Senior Manager in Comsat Max (JV with Lockheed Martin), Blowplast (Makers of VIP luggage) etc. He has consistently won Outstanding Performer awards and brings with him rich Marketing & Sales experience.
Prof. Tapan Bagchi, BTech from IIT Kanpur & PhD from Canada, is the Honorary Dean. He brings with him four decades of experience which spans 16 years in Exxon Mobil US, as well as founding Chair of IIT Kanpur’s B-school, which he set up in 1983. He also headed NITIE as Director and helped setup SP Jain Dubai B-school as Dean. He has authored 6 test books and 75 papers.
The Academic Advisory Board includes Padmashri Prof. Pritam Singh (former Director, IIML), Prof. Rajeev Srivastav (Former Dean, IIM Lucknow), Prof. Neerja Pandey (IIML, founder chairperson of communication group), Prof. Archana Shukla (IIML, National HR expert) and Dr. Sashi Rai (Member, UGC).
So, each plays a complementary role leading to expertise and experience in all critical areas. We keep on recruiting as and when required but as of now team has stabilized.
What are the growth prospects of a pass out from Elements Akademia? How far should he ascertain his career horizon?
Students are undergoing our 6 month Executive Programme in Services Management in our centers and are getting placed with our corporate partners like Genpact, MNYL, Bank of America, Shopper Stop etc. After that, they can grow and build good careers within these top companies
Institutes and corporates avail our services leading to enhancement of their students/ employees and making them more productive and employable
What are your plans about geographical expansion?
Scale up shall happen through 5 avenues:
Immediate will be to become bigger in existing cities. Currently our revenue in most existing centres is only 20% of the revenues of the largest education company in that same city. We need to bridge this gap.
Second will be geographic expansion. Once we hit Rs. 1-1.5 crore revenues in key cities, we will expand from current 5 cities to 20 cities.
We will focus more on Strategic Alliances and long term contracts. We are in final stages of discussions with various governments, MFIs, and organizations for contracts worth 50 lac each.
We will look at offering more/high priced courses.
Long term, we see the same unmet need being present in most developing countries.
India is a country with huge manpower resource with more job seekers than providers; do you think that the trend will change?
We don’t think the scenario will change immediately. However there is an important issues of mismatch between what job providers want and what job seekers have. This gross mismatch in skills if taken care of can significantly affect the unemployment problem and let these youth join mainstream corporate sector. This is what we are trying to do.
Hence, skills development as opposed to conventional education will be more effective in solving unemployment problem.
What would you like to share about your revenue model?
Our revenue Model has three revenue streams
Fees provided by students who undergo the courses in our centers.
Fees received from companies for providing trained manpower.
Revenue from strategic training assignments with leading institutions and companies.
How did the cash flow in the initial stages of Elements Academia? How did you bootstrap?
Personal savings and fund support from friends and mentors. Networks amongst High Net Worth individuals, a business plan that appealed to people and personal credibility.
We started off at the usual slow note where the first trench of funds took 9 months to materialize. But then the moment we had shown initial success, and were ready to go for Series B funding, we had more subscribers than investment needed and actually had to say no to some people. What a circle!
How do you plan to legalize? Government licensing as a school or a firm under Companies Act?
Ours is a private limited company which is a ‘for profit’ organization
What's the biggest surprise you've had in the Elements Academia recently?
Success we received in our strategic business despite starting late on this part of business.
What are the learning experiences at Elements Academia?
Scaling up while maintaining consistency and quality of training delivery
Building a high performing second level of team at centers which can help release our bandwidth for expansion and new initiatives
Building a scalable training engine which has technology solutions
Building a retail brand
What’s your opinion about the similar training Institutes and how do your institute differ from them?
At one level our competition is similar employment oriented courses like NIIT, Aviation. At second level, competition is also from tier II, tier III MBA colleges where also students go for enhancing employability. AT third level, there are mom and pop shops which claim to offer English/personality/job oriented courses but (generally) deliver very low quality. However, the market is so big and diffused that a quality offering with results which we are providing will surely make us a Tier I service provider
Interview: Elements Akademia - Build skills to land your dream job
By : praval
What follows is a transcript of the interview;
Can you give an insight about the elements that make ‘Elements Akademia’ so sang-froid.
After spending quite some years in corporate life, objective was to do something which is not only a good business but also serves the larger interests of our country and society. So, education and within education, employability is a burning issue which is not only leading to societal unrest on one side but also is a slowing the growth of economy due to dearth of right skilled people.
We have twin customers. The students whose #1 unmet need (survey across graduates in 10 Tier II cities) is a Job. We help them get a top notch placement in a good MNC. The Corporates are our other customers. The #1 unmet need of HR there is the availability of large pool of ready to perform hires. We meet this need by training students on precisely the skill sets required by the companies.
“We offer Careers, not just English.” Element Akademia offers scope in Insurance, KPOs/BPOs, Banking, Retail, Telecom, Hospitality etc whereas English is a major concern for only BPO’s - Why did particularly emphasize on rectifying something that no one is pondering about?
After interacting with leading influencers and educationists we understood this problem of un-employability. On the other hand, our interaction and experience in industry tell us the real shortage of talent especially at entry level for service sectors like Retail, banking, insurance and BPO/KPO.
Hence, we found this to be win-win propositions where in we can develop a business model by bridging this skill gap
Tell us about your team members. Are you planning to include some more work-force at present?
Nishant Saxena, CEO, an IIM-L alumnus, has extensive Pan-Asian (Japan, Philippines, India, Singapore) experience in P&G, consistently rated as one of World’s Top 3 Most Admired companies. He worked in areas of Finance and Strategy (Regional M&A Head and before that deputy CFO of India Operations), and has been profiled by Business World as a “Leader-in-Making”. He is also a visiting faculty in IIMs, NUS, SP Jain etc.
Vinay Sharma, COO, an IIM-C Alumnus with more than 12 years of experience, was most recently BU Head of Marketing in Airtel India, and prior to that was a Senior Manager in Comsat Max (JV with Lockheed Martin), Blowplast (Makers of VIP luggage) etc. He has consistently won Outstanding Performer awards and brings with him rich Marketing & Sales experience.
Prof. Tapan Bagchi, BTech from IIT Kanpur & PhD from Canada, is the Honorary Dean. He brings with him four decades of experience which spans 16 years in Exxon Mobil US, as well as founding Chair of IIT Kanpur’s B-school, which he set up in 1983. He also headed NITIE as Director and helped setup SP Jain Dubai B-school as Dean. He has authored 6 test books and 75 papers.
The Academic Advisory Board includes Padmashri Prof. Pritam Singh (former Director, IIML), Prof. Rajeev Srivastav (Former Dean, IIM Lucknow), Prof. Neerja Pandey (IIML, founder chairperson of communication group), Prof. Archana Shukla (IIML, National HR expert) and Dr. Sashi Rai (Member, UGC).
So, each plays a complementary role leading to expertise and experience in all critical areas. We keep on recruiting as and when required but as of now team has stabilized.
What are the growth prospects of a pass out from Elements Akademia? How far should he ascertain his career horizon?
Students are undergoing our 6 month Executive Programme in Services Management in our centers and are getting placed with our corporate partners like Genpact, MNYL, Bank of America, Shopper Stop etc. After that, they can grow and build good careers within these top companies
Institutes and corporates avail our services leading to enhancement of their students/ employees and making them more productive and employable
What are your plans about geographical expansion?
Scale up shall happen through 5 avenues:
India is a country with huge manpower resource with more job seekers than providers; do you think that the trend will change?
We don’t think the scenario will change immediately. However there is an important issues of mismatch between what job providers want and what job seekers have. This gross mismatch in skills if taken care of can significantly affect the unemployment problem and let these youth join mainstream corporate sector. This is what we are trying to do.
Hence, skills development as opposed to conventional education will be more effective in solving unemployment problem.
What would you like to share about your revenue model?
Our revenue Model has three revenue streams
How did the cash flow in the initial stages of Elements Academia? How did you bootstrap?
Personal savings and fund support from friends and mentors. Networks amongst High Net Worth individuals, a business plan that appealed to people and personal credibility.
We started off at the usual slow note where the first trench of funds took 9 months to materialize. But then the moment we had shown initial success, and were ready to go for Series B funding, we had more subscribers than investment needed and actually had to say no to some people. What a circle!
How do you plan to legalize? Government licensing as a school or a firm under Companies Act?
Ours is a private limited company which is a ‘for profit’ organization
What's the biggest surprise you've had in the Elements Academia recently?
Success we received in our strategic business despite starting late on this part of business.
What are the learning experiences at Elements Academia?
What’s your opinion about the similar training Institutes and how do your institute differ from them?
At one level our competition is similar employment oriented courses like NIIT, Aviation. At second level, competition is also from tier II, tier III MBA colleges where also students go for enhancing employability. AT third level, there are mom and pop shops which claim to offer English/personality/job oriented courses but (generally) deliver very low quality. However, the market is so big and diffused that a quality offering with results which we are providing will surely make us a Tier I service provider