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Market Moving News and Views 
What moves stock prices, bonds, currencies and commodities. News and commentary. 
Investment opportunities in India’s education 
By: Sourajit Aiyer 
Private and foreign interest in India’s higher-education sector is way below the potential. This interest is largely restricted to the more unregulated segments like technical, professional and vocational education. The school and university segments (which form the larger chunk of the sector) are not on the radar due to archaic regulations. 
India may have the third largest education enrollment in the world after USA and China and one of the largest networks of institutions across disciplines, but the majority of these rank very low on quality, prompting many students to go overseas. There are very few quality institutions in India (be it public or private) and they are cannot hope to meet the supply of skilled professionals India needs. 
This gap will become more acute going forward given the country’s growth ambitions, unless private/foreign participation is expanded. This note looks at the challenges currently faced, the underlying rationale and the niche opportunities which private/foreign players might explore. 
The Main Challenges 
Private investment to date has largely been in the vocational, technical and coaching courses. Not so much in schools and universities due to restrictions on establishment structure, foreign investment, high capital outlay and opacity on what is allowed/not allowed, which made investing risk-prone. 
Universities have to be structured with as non-profits, due to the social nature of education. But this limits the returns, given that greenfield-universities are capital-intensive due to the need to buy land and erect buildings. Moreover, surplus funds have to go into the establishment instead of being paid out as dividends. Rough estimates suggest that at least between 1,000 and 2,000 enrolments are needed to generate a decent return on equity (ROE). 
Indians, being experts in finding loopholes, have identified ways to get around the non-profit issue. Private owners create a Trust to run the university, along with a separate company which leases the infrastructure to the Trust. The Trust is responsible for the faculty and the operations. But this Trust structure has some limitations. Pricing of transactions has to be cautiously done to avoid unnecessary scrutiny. 
The current legal structure does not allow degrees to be awarded by foreign universities in India. Getting accreditation for universities is a laborious process. Many Indian private universities are backed by influential politicians. Giving cash donations for seats in certain universities is another notorious problem.
All these make the university business a tough nut to crack for foreign players. Lack of clarity on ongoing legislations regarding education quality and malpractices is deterring fresh private/foreign participation. But these are challenges mainly in universities. There are several other segments in Indian higher-education where private/foreign players could participate easily. 
While it is true that the challenges in the university segment have to be addressed to increase the pool of aspirants for other segments (since students might be ineligible for those segments without graduating from universities first), nevertheless the current addressable opportunity for those segments is also large enough. 
Why Invest in Education 
First is the circle of growing economy, income, middle-class aspirations and job competition. A growing economy providing opportunities for income along with growing aspirations of the people for a better life would boost their willingness to pay for education. Increasing competition in the job market would also make it inevitable to add education and skills, if one has to stay in the right side of the growth curve. 
People will demand it for their value-addition and to keep themselves relevant in a competitive workplace. Education is less prone to economic cycles. Spending on education often increases in tough economic times, as people seek to add weight to their CVs in a competitive scenario. Elasticity of education spending is high – for every 1x increase in income, the increase in education spending will be more than 1x. 
A fundamental driver is the high quantum of young population, with rough estimates that about 1 million Indians will turn 18 years each month. Public spending on education is low in India and the scope for it to grow further is restricted due to limited fiscal capacity. This makes private/foreign participation imperative if the supply of quality education has to increase. 
The resulting competition among institutions may improve the value of the offerings, which bodes well for students. The good thing is that the Industry is open to taking people on based on interviews/tests which test their knowledge, merit and thinking, rather than solely on their certificates. But getting selected for the interview actually depends on the certificate in the first place. 
This cycle should push student demand for quality education further. For India, the rationale is not just about making its youth job-ready or re-skilling its executives. This also has an enormous earnings potential for the country, which it is now losing, as many students go overseas to study. Moreover, increasing the supply of quality workforce is imperative to support the government’s economic growth ambitions, and this can only be possible by furthering investments into quality education. 
Education has been a priority area for the government and 100% FDI through the automatic route has been allowed since 2000-2001 in some segments. The government has also set itself a target of achieving a Gross Enrolment Ratio of about 30% in higher education by 2020. While it still has work to do to bring more clarity on the policy and regulatory front, the opportunity for investment exists as the facilities, quality, infrastructure etc. in majority of the institutions are currently quite poor. 
This is also a strong opportunity for the country to build a competitive advantage using its educated/skilled workforce, and emerge as a leading knowledge-driven economy in a competitive world. 
Opportunities for foreign/private participation 
The supply of quality teaching faculty is low in India and their attrition is high. First and foremost, there is a massive opportunity for importing teaching talent or developing faculty-training institutions with foreign collaboration. Without building this critical resource, the very objective of imparting quality education to a higher number of students will not be possible to achieve.
For foreign players, the opportunity is huge in specialized professional and managerial training, where they have an experience track-record. Such courses would be shorter-duration, but the value would be higher considering the career-stage of aspirants who opt for this. Corporate trainings and Management Development Programmes (MDP) are examples in this context. Companies may often sponsor employees for MDPs as a corporate-incentive scheme. 
It is well accepted that employees value non-monetary benefits as much as monetary ones. MDPs help add critical skill-sets and provide networking opportunities. Corporate trainings largely focus on business skills in line with the demands of India’s higher economic growth. In India, famed personalities often impart soft-skill training (for example: Shiv Khera, Deepak Chopra, etc). Opportunities abound for foreign service-providers in these areas, and they can leverage the economies of scale which Corporate India’s large network provides. 
Critical areas for corporate trainings and MDPs include sales effectiveness and delivery, fostering entrepreneurship, team and people management, productivity improvement, business intelligence and data warehousing, managing cross-border business and multinational corporations, de-stressing and work-life balance, developing business strategy and measuring its effectiveness, social media marketing, etc. 
But while corporate trainings and MDPs are valuable in terms of knowledge and insights, they may not have the certification value in the CVs. In a labour-surplus country like India, a stronger CV is often useful to get selected for an interview ahead of others. It is only later, during the interview stage, that one can stress the knowledge gained through corporate trainings. Hence, adding weight to the CV is a necessary compulsion in India. Technical/vocational skills and university education are examples in that context. 
Technical and Vocational Opportunities 
Foreign partners looking attechnical/vocational areas have to stress sectors where India could become a global sourcing base for supplying products/services to overseas markets. That would broaden the potential returns for the country and the service-providers over the longer-term. For example: Japan and Korea developed as hubs for global animation content. But one needs top-notch education providers and industry participation for this vision to materialize. 
They also need to combine the focus areas with the prospects of Corporate India, so that the skills are job-relevant, facilitate final placement and they can use it as a USP for further enrolments. In industrial training, creating employability for low-income youth by bringing in foreign expertise might put a “social-face” to the business and help gain faster acceptability for foreign investments. 
One might also aspire to attract Asian and African students for such vocational/technical courses to increase the demand pool of aspirants. Increasing economic growth in many emerging/frontier economies of Asia and Africa means their youth would also seek specialized, job-ready education. India can leverage this opportunity by becoming a favourable regional base for technical/vocation education for Asian/African youth. 
Global brands entering India can acquire several fragmented institutes under one umbrella to offer a comprehensive set of disciplines or gain economies of scale in operations. Emerging areas include retail store-keeping and purchasing, animation, graphics and VFX, airline ground and flight services, manufacturing and motor skills, textile and apparel design, jewellery and lifestyle product design, beauty and cosmetics, stock market trading, CAD and product design, etc. 
University Education Opportunities 
Opportunities in university education are restricted due to regulatory hindrances; nevertheless there is still scope for foreign collaborations. If a private university bypasses the accreditation process,then it has to build its USP on the quality of its teaching, research facilities and industry participation. 
For example, the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad. Once the brand becomes synonymous with quality, it will see demand from students who perceive a higher value in it as compared to a low-quality, accredited university. Collaboration opportunities here exist for teaching resources, research and consulting.
A limitation is that this cannot work for professions where students need to graduate from accredited universities to be eligible to practice. Foreign and domestic collaborationsmight work on a Franchisee system, similar to hotel or restaurant chains. Local partner brings in the infrastructure, workforce and manages the operations. Foreign partner brings in its brand, subject knowledge, delivery standards, and expertise in research areas. It gets paid for services rendered through a fee, since sharing of final profits might be difficult under the regulations governing dividends. 
This might be relevant in specialized professional segments, where the brand of the foreign partner in that discipline can pull in aspirants. For example: the collaborations with Ivy-League Business Schools. Collaborationjoint-ventures are picking up, there being more than 100 tie-ups between Indian and British institutions alone. 
Foreign players might also explore tie-ups with leading scions of Corporate India who are keen to invest in Indian academics. For example, corporate leaders like Azim Premji and Shiv Nadar have focused heavily into quality education. Corporate leaders might also have weight in India’s administrative and political circles, which might reduce the risk factor to some extent. 
Foreign players can look at setting up university campuses in India’s neighbouring countries like UAE, Malaysia, etc where regulations are more facilitative, in case setting up greenfield-universities in India or tie-ups with Indian universities is tough. It can develop those campuses as regional hubs of education for both Indian students, as well as a broader set of students from Asia and Africa. 
For example: UAE invested into its Dubai Academic City and Malaysia has also focused on its higher-education infrastructure. Indian students may prefer this to going to Europe or the USA since the cost of living would be lower. Moreover, students can travel to India more frequently due to proximity and cheaper air fares. 
Key Areas of Development 
Promising collaboration areas include Research & innovation, Content-creation & sharing, Case-study & situational learning, Online learning resources. Research facilities have to be in focus, if India wants to move from being a country of executives to a country of innovators and make its place as a knowledge-driven economy. 
Innovation includes not just technology, medicine, engineering etc, but also fields like agriculture, livestock and green energy. Content-creation & sharing includes development, teaching and consulting for a fee. For the foreign partner, it is a way to make initial inroads into a new market at lower investments. However, ensuring intellectual property rights on proprietary content might be a challenge in a country like India. 
Case-study & situational based learning workshops is another area that might work at lower investments. It can be a valuable and sought-after activity in management/technical education, where the experience of foreign partners would be useful. There is an opportunity to collaborate with existing general institutions or with specialized centers of learning of that segment only. 
Online e-learning modules are doable for working professionals, but they won’t be sought after as an actual course of study in India, since the recognition of e-learning courses has not developed. But these websites can also make advertising money apart from content subscription/course charges, so can be a viable business option. 
Entrepreneurship skills and incubation centers are a key area of higher education that a growth economy like India sorely needs. India is a country where the social acceptability of entrepreneurship as a career is low, and where support infrastructure for start-ups has yet to evolve properly. 
Institutionalized support might bring in more entrepreneurs and address the common risks and myths for the benefit of budding entrepreneurs. India’s existing corporate sector, even allowing for its expected growth, would be able to employ only a certain chunk of the working population. If India’s population truly has to reap the demographic dividend, then fostering entrepreneurship to create more start-ups is essential.
Coming to schools and pre-schools, the opportunity for International Baccalaureate K-12 schools is growing as higher aspiration and higher income levels drive demand. However, the school segment is also bound by regulations similar to universities. 
In the pre-school segment, activity-based learning is picking up in Indian teaching methods, and this segment can gain from foreign collaborations, since activity-based learning has had a longer foothold in those countries. Their experience in developing relevant content in this might add value to the Indian pre-schools segment. 
Foreign investment might still look at the coaching segment for Entrance Exam preparation, though the opportunity for foreign partners is limited. Coaching does not have to comply with seat-reservations, so every seat can be monetized. However, this segment is highly fragmented. Conversion ratio and word-of-mouth marketing work better, rather than brand. 
But entrance examinations are often based on local content, which reduces the scope for a global institution’s expertise. Another challenge is the low supply of instructors, leading to high-attrition and costs for star-instructors. 
Value and Price 
It is imperative that India’s politicians facilitate investments into India’s higher-education sector that can support its economic growth ambitions, promote India in an internationally-competitive market and rank India higher in skills and thought leadership. 
But it is equally imperative to look at the pricing and financing aspect of higher education. India is still a low-income country, and many cannot afford expensive higher education even if they qualify on merit. 
It is essential that foreign and domestic players in this sector keep their pricing competitive and affordable, otherwise Indian students would see better value in travelling to USA and UK, just as they are doing now. 
This may include broadening the education-loan segment through direct, subsidized financing to banks/NBFCs (just like the National Housing Bank does for housing loans), or awarding scholarships to meritorious students who performed well in the initial stages of their course for the later stages of their course. 
There would still be instances when the service-provider charges high fees, because they are targeting higher-end niche clientele, like the Harvard Business School’s Mumbai campus, which offers specialized short-term programs for senior-level professionals. 
In conclusion, foreign and private domestic entrants need to balance the brand, teaching quality, facilities, snob value and pricing, in order to attract relevant students. 
The author is a finance professional in India. Views expressed are entirely personal. 
Pages: 1 2 3 
This entry was posted in In Depth, Views and tagged Asia, development, education, emerging markets, India, innovation, professional development, skills on September 24, 2014 by Antonia Oprita.

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Sourajit Aiyer - MarketMoving, UK - Investment Opportunities in India's Education, Sep 2014

  • 1. Market Moving News and Views What moves stock prices, bonds, currencies and commodities. News and commentary. Investment opportunities in India’s education By: Sourajit Aiyer Private and foreign interest in India’s higher-education sector is way below the potential. This interest is largely restricted to the more unregulated segments like technical, professional and vocational education. The school and university segments (which form the larger chunk of the sector) are not on the radar due to archaic regulations. India may have the third largest education enrollment in the world after USA and China and one of the largest networks of institutions across disciplines, but the majority of these rank very low on quality, prompting many students to go overseas. There are very few quality institutions in India (be it public or private) and they are cannot hope to meet the supply of skilled professionals India needs. This gap will become more acute going forward given the country’s growth ambitions, unless private/foreign participation is expanded. This note looks at the challenges currently faced, the underlying rationale and the niche opportunities which private/foreign players might explore. The Main Challenges Private investment to date has largely been in the vocational, technical and coaching courses. Not so much in schools and universities due to restrictions on establishment structure, foreign investment, high capital outlay and opacity on what is allowed/not allowed, which made investing risk-prone. Universities have to be structured with as non-profits, due to the social nature of education. But this limits the returns, given that greenfield-universities are capital-intensive due to the need to buy land and erect buildings. Moreover, surplus funds have to go into the establishment instead of being paid out as dividends. Rough estimates suggest that at least between 1,000 and 2,000 enrolments are needed to generate a decent return on equity (ROE). Indians, being experts in finding loopholes, have identified ways to get around the non-profit issue. Private owners create a Trust to run the university, along with a separate company which leases the infrastructure to the Trust. The Trust is responsible for the faculty and the operations. But this Trust structure has some limitations. Pricing of transactions has to be cautiously done to avoid unnecessary scrutiny. The current legal structure does not allow degrees to be awarded by foreign universities in India. Getting accreditation for universities is a laborious process. Many Indian private universities are backed by influential politicians. Giving cash donations for seats in certain universities is another notorious problem.
  • 2. All these make the university business a tough nut to crack for foreign players. Lack of clarity on ongoing legislations regarding education quality and malpractices is deterring fresh private/foreign participation. But these are challenges mainly in universities. There are several other segments in Indian higher-education where private/foreign players could participate easily. While it is true that the challenges in the university segment have to be addressed to increase the pool of aspirants for other segments (since students might be ineligible for those segments without graduating from universities first), nevertheless the current addressable opportunity for those segments is also large enough. Why Invest in Education First is the circle of growing economy, income, middle-class aspirations and job competition. A growing economy providing opportunities for income along with growing aspirations of the people for a better life would boost their willingness to pay for education. Increasing competition in the job market would also make it inevitable to add education and skills, if one has to stay in the right side of the growth curve. People will demand it for their value-addition and to keep themselves relevant in a competitive workplace. Education is less prone to economic cycles. Spending on education often increases in tough economic times, as people seek to add weight to their CVs in a competitive scenario. Elasticity of education spending is high – for every 1x increase in income, the increase in education spending will be more than 1x. A fundamental driver is the high quantum of young population, with rough estimates that about 1 million Indians will turn 18 years each month. Public spending on education is low in India and the scope for it to grow further is restricted due to limited fiscal capacity. This makes private/foreign participation imperative if the supply of quality education has to increase. The resulting competition among institutions may improve the value of the offerings, which bodes well for students. The good thing is that the Industry is open to taking people on based on interviews/tests which test their knowledge, merit and thinking, rather than solely on their certificates. But getting selected for the interview actually depends on the certificate in the first place. This cycle should push student demand for quality education further. For India, the rationale is not just about making its youth job-ready or re-skilling its executives. This also has an enormous earnings potential for the country, which it is now losing, as many students go overseas to study. Moreover, increasing the supply of quality workforce is imperative to support the government’s economic growth ambitions, and this can only be possible by furthering investments into quality education. Education has been a priority area for the government and 100% FDI through the automatic route has been allowed since 2000-2001 in some segments. The government has also set itself a target of achieving a Gross Enrolment Ratio of about 30% in higher education by 2020. While it still has work to do to bring more clarity on the policy and regulatory front, the opportunity for investment exists as the facilities, quality, infrastructure etc. in majority of the institutions are currently quite poor. This is also a strong opportunity for the country to build a competitive advantage using its educated/skilled workforce, and emerge as a leading knowledge-driven economy in a competitive world. Opportunities for foreign/private participation The supply of quality teaching faculty is low in India and their attrition is high. First and foremost, there is a massive opportunity for importing teaching talent or developing faculty-training institutions with foreign collaboration. Without building this critical resource, the very objective of imparting quality education to a higher number of students will not be possible to achieve.
  • 3. For foreign players, the opportunity is huge in specialized professional and managerial training, where they have an experience track-record. Such courses would be shorter-duration, but the value would be higher considering the career-stage of aspirants who opt for this. Corporate trainings and Management Development Programmes (MDP) are examples in this context. Companies may often sponsor employees for MDPs as a corporate-incentive scheme. It is well accepted that employees value non-monetary benefits as much as monetary ones. MDPs help add critical skill-sets and provide networking opportunities. Corporate trainings largely focus on business skills in line with the demands of India’s higher economic growth. In India, famed personalities often impart soft-skill training (for example: Shiv Khera, Deepak Chopra, etc). Opportunities abound for foreign service-providers in these areas, and they can leverage the economies of scale which Corporate India’s large network provides. Critical areas for corporate trainings and MDPs include sales effectiveness and delivery, fostering entrepreneurship, team and people management, productivity improvement, business intelligence and data warehousing, managing cross-border business and multinational corporations, de-stressing and work-life balance, developing business strategy and measuring its effectiveness, social media marketing, etc. But while corporate trainings and MDPs are valuable in terms of knowledge and insights, they may not have the certification value in the CVs. In a labour-surplus country like India, a stronger CV is often useful to get selected for an interview ahead of others. It is only later, during the interview stage, that one can stress the knowledge gained through corporate trainings. Hence, adding weight to the CV is a necessary compulsion in India. Technical/vocational skills and university education are examples in that context. Technical and Vocational Opportunities Foreign partners looking attechnical/vocational areas have to stress sectors where India could become a global sourcing base for supplying products/services to overseas markets. That would broaden the potential returns for the country and the service-providers over the longer-term. For example: Japan and Korea developed as hubs for global animation content. But one needs top-notch education providers and industry participation for this vision to materialize. They also need to combine the focus areas with the prospects of Corporate India, so that the skills are job-relevant, facilitate final placement and they can use it as a USP for further enrolments. In industrial training, creating employability for low-income youth by bringing in foreign expertise might put a “social-face” to the business and help gain faster acceptability for foreign investments. One might also aspire to attract Asian and African students for such vocational/technical courses to increase the demand pool of aspirants. Increasing economic growth in many emerging/frontier economies of Asia and Africa means their youth would also seek specialized, job-ready education. India can leverage this opportunity by becoming a favourable regional base for technical/vocation education for Asian/African youth. Global brands entering India can acquire several fragmented institutes under one umbrella to offer a comprehensive set of disciplines or gain economies of scale in operations. Emerging areas include retail store-keeping and purchasing, animation, graphics and VFX, airline ground and flight services, manufacturing and motor skills, textile and apparel design, jewellery and lifestyle product design, beauty and cosmetics, stock market trading, CAD and product design, etc. University Education Opportunities Opportunities in university education are restricted due to regulatory hindrances; nevertheless there is still scope for foreign collaborations. If a private university bypasses the accreditation process,then it has to build its USP on the quality of its teaching, research facilities and industry participation. For example, the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad. Once the brand becomes synonymous with quality, it will see demand from students who perceive a higher value in it as compared to a low-quality, accredited university. Collaboration opportunities here exist for teaching resources, research and consulting.
  • 4. A limitation is that this cannot work for professions where students need to graduate from accredited universities to be eligible to practice. Foreign and domestic collaborationsmight work on a Franchisee system, similar to hotel or restaurant chains. Local partner brings in the infrastructure, workforce and manages the operations. Foreign partner brings in its brand, subject knowledge, delivery standards, and expertise in research areas. It gets paid for services rendered through a fee, since sharing of final profits might be difficult under the regulations governing dividends. This might be relevant in specialized professional segments, where the brand of the foreign partner in that discipline can pull in aspirants. For example: the collaborations with Ivy-League Business Schools. Collaborationjoint-ventures are picking up, there being more than 100 tie-ups between Indian and British institutions alone. Foreign players might also explore tie-ups with leading scions of Corporate India who are keen to invest in Indian academics. For example, corporate leaders like Azim Premji and Shiv Nadar have focused heavily into quality education. Corporate leaders might also have weight in India’s administrative and political circles, which might reduce the risk factor to some extent. Foreign players can look at setting up university campuses in India’s neighbouring countries like UAE, Malaysia, etc where regulations are more facilitative, in case setting up greenfield-universities in India or tie-ups with Indian universities is tough. It can develop those campuses as regional hubs of education for both Indian students, as well as a broader set of students from Asia and Africa. For example: UAE invested into its Dubai Academic City and Malaysia has also focused on its higher-education infrastructure. Indian students may prefer this to going to Europe or the USA since the cost of living would be lower. Moreover, students can travel to India more frequently due to proximity and cheaper air fares. Key Areas of Development Promising collaboration areas include Research & innovation, Content-creation & sharing, Case-study & situational learning, Online learning resources. Research facilities have to be in focus, if India wants to move from being a country of executives to a country of innovators and make its place as a knowledge-driven economy. Innovation includes not just technology, medicine, engineering etc, but also fields like agriculture, livestock and green energy. Content-creation & sharing includes development, teaching and consulting for a fee. For the foreign partner, it is a way to make initial inroads into a new market at lower investments. However, ensuring intellectual property rights on proprietary content might be a challenge in a country like India. Case-study & situational based learning workshops is another area that might work at lower investments. It can be a valuable and sought-after activity in management/technical education, where the experience of foreign partners would be useful. There is an opportunity to collaborate with existing general institutions or with specialized centers of learning of that segment only. Online e-learning modules are doable for working professionals, but they won’t be sought after as an actual course of study in India, since the recognition of e-learning courses has not developed. But these websites can also make advertising money apart from content subscription/course charges, so can be a viable business option. Entrepreneurship skills and incubation centers are a key area of higher education that a growth economy like India sorely needs. India is a country where the social acceptability of entrepreneurship as a career is low, and where support infrastructure for start-ups has yet to evolve properly. Institutionalized support might bring in more entrepreneurs and address the common risks and myths for the benefit of budding entrepreneurs. India’s existing corporate sector, even allowing for its expected growth, would be able to employ only a certain chunk of the working population. If India’s population truly has to reap the demographic dividend, then fostering entrepreneurship to create more start-ups is essential.
  • 5. Coming to schools and pre-schools, the opportunity for International Baccalaureate K-12 schools is growing as higher aspiration and higher income levels drive demand. However, the school segment is also bound by regulations similar to universities. In the pre-school segment, activity-based learning is picking up in Indian teaching methods, and this segment can gain from foreign collaborations, since activity-based learning has had a longer foothold in those countries. Their experience in developing relevant content in this might add value to the Indian pre-schools segment. Foreign investment might still look at the coaching segment for Entrance Exam preparation, though the opportunity for foreign partners is limited. Coaching does not have to comply with seat-reservations, so every seat can be monetized. However, this segment is highly fragmented. Conversion ratio and word-of-mouth marketing work better, rather than brand. But entrance examinations are often based on local content, which reduces the scope for a global institution’s expertise. Another challenge is the low supply of instructors, leading to high-attrition and costs for star-instructors. Value and Price It is imperative that India’s politicians facilitate investments into India’s higher-education sector that can support its economic growth ambitions, promote India in an internationally-competitive market and rank India higher in skills and thought leadership. But it is equally imperative to look at the pricing and financing aspect of higher education. India is still a low-income country, and many cannot afford expensive higher education even if they qualify on merit. It is essential that foreign and domestic players in this sector keep their pricing competitive and affordable, otherwise Indian students would see better value in travelling to USA and UK, just as they are doing now. This may include broadening the education-loan segment through direct, subsidized financing to banks/NBFCs (just like the National Housing Bank does for housing loans), or awarding scholarships to meritorious students who performed well in the initial stages of their course for the later stages of their course. There would still be instances when the service-provider charges high fees, because they are targeting higher-end niche clientele, like the Harvard Business School’s Mumbai campus, which offers specialized short-term programs for senior-level professionals. In conclusion, foreign and private domestic entrants need to balance the brand, teaching quality, facilities, snob value and pricing, in order to attract relevant students. The author is a finance professional in India. Views expressed are entirely personal. Pages: 1 2 3 This entry was posted in In Depth, Views and tagged Asia, development, education, emerging markets, India, innovation, professional development, skills on September 24, 2014 by Antonia Oprita.