UEI Global, a new venture in the area of hospitality education, is not only setting itself an ambitious pace, but also setting its sights even higher at the entire services sector. The company which started its first school in September 2007 has so far set up four hospitality education institutes (of which two are operational with 90 students between the two) and is aiming to reach a total of 50 institutes by April 2009. That's more than three institutes per month.
However, even before that dream turns into a reality, Praveen Roy (a former Taj general manager and the principal of the Taj-run hospitality management institute) is looking to grab another opportunity; he wants to expand his firm's focus "" he sees it as a natural progression "" to set up a School of Services Management and will cater to retail management and malls and aviation (airport management services and other ground jobs and cabin crew).
Both these sectors "" retail and aviation "" have tended to poach a number of employees from the hotel and hospitality sector. Now, UEI will train especially train them keeping these sectors in mind.
Roy says that with hospitality, he's aiming at leading the market by 2009. The only other institutes of any repute is the government run National Council of Hotel Management (in Noida) which graduates around 4000 students a year from its 26 institutes "" with its fairly well known Pusa Institute in Delhi, a Taj group run school in Aurangabad and a Welcomgroup one run in Manipal. These institutes offer 4 year degrees. UEI's will be one year programmes, which can be upgraded to a degree.
But Roy doesn't care in particular about the competition. If the number of hotels in India actually expands at even half the pace it is projected to (100,000 new rooms across categories by 2010, by some estimates), the demand for his students will multiply exponentially (average employee to room ratio is 1.8:1). Of the 118,000 trained professionals required by 2010, there will be ample scope for all the players. UEI hopes to graduate 2000 students by April 2009 and eventually beat his competitors in terms of size.
Can he ensure quality while maintaining this scorching pace ? Roy and his head of hospitality Ashish Kesharwani certainly think so. They claim their programmes will be different by stressing on basic communication and grooming "" a sort of personality development programme will form the foundation of the courses they offer.
Basic IT skills will also be introduced. Second "" and perhaps the more critical factor "" the hospitality programmes are affiliated to the Hotel School at Hague in Netherlands, one of the premier institutes in the world to graduate from. The courses they offer will be validated and audited by and will be under the academic supervision of this body.
Kesharwani says that they are attempting to "McDonalise" hospitality education - if you see one institute, you have seen them all and will offer students of certain standard, across all institutes. After one year of the programme, the graduate will be able to work while studying to upgrade to the degree and will draw an annual remuneration of just under Rs 1 lakh to start with (after the one year programme).
And where is he hoping to fund all this aggressive expansion from ? UEI Global's turnover by April 2009 on "a conservative estimate" will be Rs 45-50 crore (as he sees it 50% of this will be from hospitality and the other 50% from other services), which can only part finance the company's expansion plans (the top management including Roy are employees, with ESOPs), if it earns a good profit.
Most of their funding will come from Berggruen Holdings Inc, a New York headquartered firm (it's setting up 40 hotels in India), which has so far committed around US $ 12 million (and will be going up to around US $ 30 million in due course). So, he'll have a ready customer for his graduating students. His main challenge shall be to ensure his students meet global quality standards.
