Sunday Posts

I often get asked about training business in India. This is a summary advice that I shall give, based on my experiences so far, on where the opportunity is. I think too many corporate training businesses in India try to ape the western companies. Often, they are offshoots or aligned to some Western publishers or training providers. The problem is - this alters their agenda. Rather than being driven by the markets and its needs, these businesses become tied to targets set by their Western partners. I have been in situations myself, and also asked around other entrepreneurs, why they follow these targets so unthinkingly. Two reasons are normally given. First, these Western partnerships are viewed as crucial to competitive existence. Second, it is assumed that Western companies have a better business model for corporate training that India needs, and hence, it is not about servicing the market but about introducing a 'high-quality' product or an idea. The problem with this approac...

Also, Bill Gates talks about Khan Academy here.

Suddenly, our lives have become difficult. Bad news is everywhere: Terrorist threats, global warming and great recession spoilt our party. As the Cold War ended, we breathed a collective sigh of relief and made a new start, but this relief is all but gone now. Worse, we only have ourselves to blame. It now seems that we are incapable of living in peace. The bad news isn't everything though. We have made significant progress since the end of Cold War. Remember, we did not have any of this - the Facebook / MySpace crowd, read-write web or iPhones - then. Whatever is the bad news, we have made tremendous progress and opened enormous possibilities. Just that the media is so intent on bad news that such optimism sounds out of place. I am an optimist, but I think bad news is for real. I am as concerned about global warming as anyone else and do not deny the human responsibility towards it, but I refuse to see it as the end of the world and haven't yet started building my arc (or he...

The world seems to be discovering India. At least, the cityboys are. The talk is that India is that 'emerging' nation now, which will put China behind. My taxi driver says so, one may assert. Besides, the Indian growth rate, compared to the anemic European and North American ones, looks stellar. There are two reasons about this excitement regarding India. The first is Demography. After all, China is ageing, and India is full of young people. Lots of commentators, Nandan Nilkeni among them, talks glowingly about the 'demographic dividend'. The idea is that with so many young hands to work, this is indeed India's moment to lose. The second factor, though a bit cliched, is democracy. Indian democracy is a crowded, chaotic circus, but it is still the country's most crucial asset against the social discord that is bound to happen when a country changes course so dramatically. While the Chinese migrant labour may have to suffer in silence, only to rebel with force and...

In the next few years, the private education industry in Britain will undergo a fundamental change. Private Education is already one of the most dynamic industry sectors worldwide. Something like the transportation industry in the 1990s, this is a sector stretched for capacity, with serious quality problems and increasingly noisy demand from its constituents, students in this case, that it gets its act together. In America, things have already moved forward quite a bit. We have already seen the emergence of some of the world's largest private education companies there, along with the accompanying innovation, dynamism and career opportunities. Britain has lagged behind, despite its stronger vocational and practical education tradition. No doubt, some of the K12 companies have done well. However, the publicly funded model of Higher Education has constrained the emergence of serious private players in this sector. All that is changing now. Last month, the government allowed BPP Educa...

It is one of those moments: I am tired of my rusty old self and want to make a fresh start. So, no mid-life crisis for me. That would be against the principles I grew up with: Never mind the difficulties, keep working and things will happen to you. Sort of thing my grandfather, who built a successful business from the scratch, would have approved. He went by some sort of Asian value - 'the man who rises up before dawn 360 days a year, never fails to make his family rich' - but this may as well pass by the name of 'protestant work ethic'. But, whatever it is, it serves me well. Despite the inescapable ups and downs, recessions and all that, it helps to keep my head down and keep moving. This is what I am doing right now. I had to write off my last few years of work, relationships and all that, and make a fresh start. But that was okay: I could condition myself to think that my life is starting afresh and I must be humble enough to absorb the difficulties and keep my mind...

Earlier, I was reading Ricardo and wondering whether technology will remove the 'rent' associated with well-known place-based colleges and expand the access to accommodate the teeming masses that are knocking on the door. I did not think I was arguing against good education: I was arguing against the elitism in education, which in turn allows the formation of education ghettos in sub par community colleges and training institutes. My thoughts have moved forward, in line with my reading about Alfred Marshall's life and work, and I have started wondering about another impact that technology may have on education, by altering the time frames we are used with. Yes, I typically thought education is 'long run', and advised so to the wannabe education entrepreneurs. However, my usage of the terms, 'short run' and 'long run', was more in line with popular use, than the meanings ascribed to them by the economist who first used them; Marshall, indeed. Marsha...