After providing a gamut of services across all rungs of education—from higher education to K12— Manipal Education Group’s, Sikkim Manipal University which offers distance education programmes, launched a virtual campus called Edunxt this week. Anand Sudarshan, CEO and MD,Manipal Education, tells Kalpana Pathak how the group’s growth plans are on track despite the slowdown. Excerpts:
What is Edunxt all about?
It’s a new generation learning environment, which we have created over the last three years. Edunxt will transform distributed learning in India wherein students would be able to have a 'portable campus', 'carry along mentors' and have access to over one million online books and journals. It will be launched first for Sikkim Manipal University's Distance Education students in July 2009.
What kind of investments has the group made in this venture?
We have spent around Rs 30 crore on Edunxt and as it matures, the investments will go up three times. This is an attempt to move from a delivery-centric mode to learning-centric mode. This will be a sound basis for us to expand and we would like to take our students from current 300,000 to 500,000 in the next few years.
Is Manipal reconsidering its expansion plans due to credit crunch?
We are on track and will continue to expand. Due to the economic slowdown, we believe project schedules will take longer but the group has not put any projects on hold. We have however, certainly infused a higher level of caution in projects that need capital expenditure.
So are Manipal’s projects on track?
Yes. The campus for American University of Antigua (AUA), which we acquired last December, is on target for inauguration in 2009. Dubai campus will be operational in 2010 and the others including the Jaipur campus will be on in 2011 start. The self-financed, Rs 600-crore Persons of Indian Origin (PIO) University in Bangalore will be up by 2011-12. Conversation with the government is in progress regarding the same.
Manipal is not very visible in advertising medium. How do you work on brand building?
Education is all about branding today. We have our own muted way of communicating and we are quite successful that way. We tend to be more noticed in the urban league. We don’t need to blow up a lot of money to get noticed. The best way to grow is to build a brand by providing value and that’s our focus.
