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We are pleased to publish interview with Mr. Vijay Shukla who has founded Eduvisors, a Gurgaon (Haryana) based business and management consulting firm exclusively catering to Indian education sector.
Vijay has over 15 years of industry experience, Vijay co-founded a successful mobile data services company, ValueFirst, which raised series-B funding from New Enterprise Associates. Vijay earlier worked with Steel Authority of India, E&Y and Glaxo SmithKline and he specializes in the areas of business development, consulting and engineering. Vijay’s passions are in the area of innovation, value creation, entrepreneurship and education.
An engineering graduate from IT-BHU and MBA from XLRI, he has mastered the ‘art’ of evaluating business strategies and organizational processes through his career with working in the domains of public sector, information and mobile technology, FMCG, and education research and education consulting.
Yogesh K. Upadhyaya from Chronicle talks to Vijay Shukla about his unique business venture for education field.
(Vijay Shukla)
To read his Profile, please click here
Profile - Vijay Shukla.docTo learn more about Eduvisors, click here
Introduction to Eduvisors.pdfQ-1: Welcome, Sir. Please introduce yourself to our readers.
I spent early days of my life in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh. I went to Christ Church College, a school known more for extra-curricular activities than for academics.
I was youngest of the four children of my parents and the most loved one. My two elder brothers and one elder sister always encouraged me to do what I really wanted to do and support me completely without any social pressure. I was never pulled up for the mistakes that I made while I was I child. Such kind of ‘lenient’ upbringing helped me later in my career, specially while I was on the entrepreneurial journey.
I came from a family of lawyers – both my parents were lawyers. I too wanted to become a lawyer. However, I heard about IIT-JEE after I passed out of class 10 and worked towards it only because I was told that it was the toughest examination to clear. Also, I was told that after engineering, I would immediately get a job. So I took up the challenge of writing IIT-JEE when there were not even 10 students from my school who cleared IIT-JEE in the last 10 years. I was fortunate to clear IIT-JEE without any coaching or tuition support. I was the first engineer in my family.
IT-BHU was a lot of fun. I enjoyed every moment at the institute. The informal learning at IT-BHU outside the classroom was equally important to the formal learning within the classroom. I made many friends at IT-BHU and was the class representative for the first 3 years and the secretary of Metallurgical Society in the fourth year.
After IT-BHU, I worked with SAIL at Bokaro and Rourkela Steel Plants and subsequently went to XLRI for post graduate in management. After XLRI, I worked with SmithKline Beecham Consumer Healthcare (now called Glaxo SmithKline Consumer Healthcare) and then with Ernst & Young where I got exposure in consulting.
In 2000, I thought I should start something on my own and I did. I quit Ernst & Young and started working on my first venture in the UK – it was dotcom business proposition. The business failed in less than 1 year. I tried again with my partners to start another venture, which was focused on pervasive computing. After a lot of hit and trial, we landed in the mobile data services space. The company we founded, ValueFirst, later on went on to become India’s largest enterprise mobile data company. We were fortunate to ride the telecom wave. When the company got into auto mode, I decided to operationally exit from it and start a new venture to fill in a gap in the market. I co-founded Eduvisors, a business consulting and research firm dedicated to Indian Education Sector. In addition, I also assist entrepreneurs in setting up and running businesses to create value for them and for the society.
Q-2: How did you get the idea about starting the business venture catering exclusive to educational institutes?
Eduvisors was started earlier in 2009. It was a brainchild of my partner, Bharat Parmar, an alumnus of IT-BHU (1995 Ceramics). The idea of Education sector specific business consulting and research firm is new to India but not unique globally. When we decided to start a business consulting firm, we realized that in order to be really successful, we had to focus on one sector. We scanned the market and discovered that Education sector had a gap with regard to quality business consulting firms conspicuous by their absence. Also, the Indian Education sector is likely to open in the coming years. Therefore, we set-up India’s first professionally run business consulting and research firm dedicated on Indian Education Sector.
After we started, we saw even bigger potential in the scope when representatives from the investor community and the corporate sector too approached us for consulting and research services.
Q-3: Please tell us more about your company
Eduvisors is a knowledge leader in education sector. It is a research & business consulting firm pioneer in providing business advisory and implementation services to the stakeholders in K12 and higher education in India.
The team at Eduvisors comprises senior professionals with years of experience in:
* Strategy and operations consulting
* Academia and administration of education institutes
* Transaction Advisory (M&A, Equity and Debt Funding)
* Technology strategy and implementation consulting
* Large projects and program management
* Sales, marketing and brand management
* Professionals with education qualifications from premier global institutes
Eduvisors has offices in: Gurgaon; New Delhi; Hyderabad and Bangalore.
The customer segments of Eduvisors are as follows:
Educational Institutions
* K-12
* Higher Education
International Stakeholders
* Colleges and Universities
* Education businesses
* Not-for-profit organizations
Other stakeholders in Indian Education
*Corporate
* Investors (VCs/PEs)
* Foundations
* NGOs
* Govt. and quasi-govt. org
Q-4: How does a business and management consultancy company impact the Indian education system?
Education plays key role reducing poverty and inequality, improving health, enabling the use of new technologies, and creating and spreading knowledge. Indian Education Sector needs to transform itself to be able to provide accessible and affordable quality education services. It is a sector that is top priority with the Indian government. The Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh set-up National Knowledge Commission in 2006 to get recommendations in with regard to the following focus areas - Access; Concepts; Creation; Applications and Services. Though National Knowledge Commission has done an excellent job in coming out with recommendations on each of the focus areas, there is huge gap in the quality and accessibility of education in India.
No one needs to refer to research studies written on the poor state of affairs of Indian education system to know how poorly it is doing. We all know it. The challenges are many whether we talk about the quality or accessibility. We also know that it is a big sector. If we consider formal (K-12 and Higher Education) and non-formal (pre-school, coaching/tutoring, vocational, books and multi-media etc.) sectors, the estimated private spend is over $50 billion which is estimated to grow to $80 billion by 2012. The public spending is over $30 billion. Also, India has a unique distinction of having over 1 million schools and over 18,000 higher education institutes with a population of over 570 million of citizens who are less than 24 years old.
Therefore, the state of the Indian education sector is unique - extremely large market size with significant scope of improvement.
We believed that rather than getting into discussions and blaming the government, Indian history or the ‘system’, we should ‘do’ whatever little we can to improve the Indian education system. Also, we believed that a significant impact can be made by getting the discipline of ‘management science’ in Indian education sector. A large part of the sector is not-for-profit. However, running educational institutions like businesses only makes them more efficient and effective. Therefore, we set-up Eduvisors, that aims to bring in the discipline of ‘management science’ in education sector.
In addition, with the education sector likely to open up, there will be many possibilities and opportunities created around getting best practices from overseas to India. Currently, over $13 billion per annum is being spent by students from India travelling overseas for education. If the home country provides what the students need, then the money flow out of India will certainly reduce.
Q-5: Please describe your college days
I have many fond memories of the 4 years spent at IT-BHU. It was the first time I went out of home – the hostel experience was full of ‘firsts’.
Prior to joining IT-BHU, I had personally known Piyush Dwivedi (1993 Mechanical, a friend and a neighbor). I reached IT-BHU 4 days before the start date, thinking I would stay with him and not let anyone else know that I was a ‘fresher’. That was the first and perhaps the biggest mistake I made during the IT-BHU days. I reached only to realize that the seniors greeted me with ‘fachha’ and ‘murga’ and it took me 2 days to reach to Piyush’s room. However, when I reflect back, there was a lot of fun and the relationships that one made during the ragging time went really far. There were many seniors, specially in 1993 Mechanical, made me learn a lot (Pushpinder, Atul Rai, Manu, Bagri, Sanjay Sethi, SKB, Kiran etc.). Thanks to the internet, I am in touch with many of them.
Most of the time at IT-BHU was spent in night-outs, Lankating (visiting Lanka area), Limbdi corner, Mochu’s chai and maggi, heated discussions on wide range of topics. I remember a discussion with Abhijit Chandel (1994 Meta and a good friend) on whether it was right to strip an athlete of Olympics medal – the discussion stretched all night! Also, Meta 1994 was a close knit batch. 15 years after passing out, I can recollect the roll numbers of everyone from Meta 1994.
After IT-BHU, I worked with SAIL for a couple of years before joining XLRI. The experience at XLRI was much different. Unlike IT-BHU, folks at XLRI were much more mature and focused. Even when the competition at XLRI was high, due to the time spent in extra-curricular activities, I could build many long term friends. I also enjoyed time spent on leading SAPPHIRE, a student body for promotion of academic-industry interaction.
Q-6: Please tell us about your family life
I am practically settled in Gurgaon, adjacent to New Delhi with my family. My wife Kapila has perhaps the most difficult job in the world managing Adhyan (son, 6 years old) and Akshara (daughter, 4 years old). Both Adhyan and Akshara go to a school in Gurgaon called Scottish High International School.
Kapila is an expert in editing and copywriting. She worked as an editor and instructional designer at GE, Encyclopedia Britannica and Thomson Press. She has been a great support and inspiration through my entrepreneurial journey. In fact, in my early days of entrepreneurship, I had little time and little money to offer. I could offer her was dream. Kapila always gave valuable advice and new perspectives related to work or life. She provided unflinching support in various aspects of life. Kapila took complete charge of home and also continued earning so that I could keep moving on the chosen path.
Sir, it was nice talking to you.
Thank you. It was a pleasure to talk to you as well. I am quite impressed by the achievements of various IT-BHU alumni. I would like to share a personal experience at I-BHU in Feb 2009.
I was invited to Banaras Hindu University at Magnum Opus 2009 festival to speak on entrepreneurship and on why certain students must consider entrepreneurship. Among the speakers, there were two representatives from Pixar animations, Kevin Obrien and Michael Obrien (FX Engineer). They spoke about how their company dealt with complexities in animation industry and about how they had to create a Pixar University to create the kind of talent they were looking at. They took immense pride in declaring that ‘Pixar animations’ is now the best animation company in the world. In the Q&A session that followed the presentation, one student asked for their inputs on the actions that he must take to create a Pixar kind of a company (scale and quality) in India. There was a silence in the auditorium and Kevin and Michael were surprised at the question. Of course, they responded very well. However, with such question being asked, I could smell the spirit of entrepreneurship. Not only the student could think big but also he had immense courage to challenge the existing frameworks.
I believe that IT-BHU alumni should interact and assist the students in order to help them realize their dreams.
Vijay Shukla can be contacted at: vijay@eduvisors.org; vijayshukla@yahoo.com
(We thank Manu Goyal (Mechanical 1993) for forwarding us the info about Vijay)
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Education of Vijay Shukla
*B. Tech. Metallurgical Engineering in 1994 from Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India.
*MBA in 1998 from Xavier Labour Research Institute (XLRI), Jamshedpur, India.
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1) Eduvisors
Education Research & Consulting Services
Website: www.eduvisors.org
Welcome to Eduvisors website
A knowledge leader in education as a sector, Eduvisors is a research & consulting firm dedicated to providing business advisory and strategic implementation services to the stakeholders in K12 and higher education in India.
Eduvisors delivers these services through a team of experts who have first-hand experience in the Indian education sector.
A business research & consulting firm dedicated to providing advisory and implementation services to the Indian Education sector, our management team and advisers comprise senior professionals with years of experience in:
* Strategy and operations consulting
* Academia and administration of education institutes
* Transaction Advisory (M&A, Equity and Debt Funding)
* Technology strategy and implementation consulting
* Large projects and program management
* Sales, marketing and brand management
2) ValueFirst
3) Articles on business, management and security- by Vijay Shukla
http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/author/details/Vijay+Shukla/
Articles by [Vi] Vijay Shukla
Articles in SD Editorials :
Why Mobile SMS/Text Messaging?
What is Mobile SMS/ Test Messaging? Mobile text Messaging, or Short Message Service (SMS), as we all know it, is the ability to send and receive text messages to and from mobile telephones. The text can comprise words or numbers or an alph...
SMS as a means for “glocal” communication
SMS as a means for “glocal” communication. Imagine a farmer in a village in India enquiring about the rates of wheat from a trader in China, so that he can take a decision on exporting the wheat. Sounds too global! But yes, that would be th...
Short Messaging Service (SMS) for Enterprise Messaging
Short Messaging Service (SMS) for Enterprise Messaging SMS for Enterprise Messaging – Value added services Short message service, usually called SMS, is a globally accepted wireless service for enterprise messaging (mobile value ...
Wireless Security – getting it right
Mostly the reasons are that organisations simply plug the access points and go live without bothering to change the default factory settings. Wireless local area networks are open to risk not because the systems are incapable but due to ...
4) XLRI, Jamshedpur
http://www.xlri.ac.in/index.php
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Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University
Varanasi 221005, UP