Gallup plans foray in education and training

STRATEGY: The US firm is eyeing business opportunities provided by a dearth of skills among the country's relatively young population.

The Gallup Organization of the US is planning to bring some of its management education and training activities to India, Gallup India's managing partner Prashant Srivastava told Business Standard.

In the US, Gallup has set up the Gallup University, which provides management education-both degree programmes and continuing education-to individuals and organizations. Among its programmes are the MBA in Executive Leadership and a Master's in Business with an emphasis on Global Leadership.

"It's all a question of migrating our programmes to India, adapting them to the conditions here, and being able to deliver them at Indian prices. We are examining the proposal of the government to allow foreign universities to enter the country to provide education," said Srivastava.

"But even if that doesn't come through, we can always partner some Indian business group and provide in-house training for them. We can also partner with an existing institution and provide distance learning and a certification from the US. We are talking to institutions as well as corporates."

Gallup in the US has set up the Gallup Toyota University, where it trains employees of Toyota. It has also set up the Ann-Taylor Gallup University in collaboration with retailing company Ann-Taylor.

"So we are exploring the possibility of partnering with Indian businesses to create a university for their internal and captive requirements. And we are also looking at partnering with an institution for some open programmes," he said.

At one stage Gallup India expected to make its plans public in June this year. However, it has now decided to wait until greater clarity emerges in government policy on foreign tie-ups in the higher education sector, and postponed an announcement to the third quarter of 2007.

The caution has been prompted by the decision of the All India Council for Technical Education to seek an explanation from almost 200 institutions as to why they are offering courses in technical education like engineering and management without prior AICTE sanction. Some 104 institutes are also going in for foreign collaborations without mandatory approval.

The curriculum at Gallup University, which provides education to 50,000 students a year, builds on Gallup's research into managing customer and employee assets and the factors that drive superior individual and organizational performance.

It is also based on a business model that relates each employee's contributions to an organization's financial performance, which, Gallup says, is the result of more than 30 years of research into the factors that have the greatest impact on business performance.

Gallup University offers online courses, classroom courses delivered at its campuses or on-site at client organisations. Gallup University's main US campuses are located in Washington, DC; Omaha, Nebraska; Chicago, Illinois; and Irvine, California. Courses are also offered at many of Gallup's worldwide offices.

In the US Gallup is involved in selection and training of university faculty, and the Indian subsidiary believes it can help in this area. "Gallup can provide assistance in terms of identifying and developing faculty. That's one thing that we don't do in India but we do it in the US. If there's a need we can get started on that," Srivastava said.

Srivastava said that Gallup India had focused on measurement of employee and customer engagement until 2004, but in the last two or three years it had entered selection, training and consulting.

It has been hired by a leading IT company in southern India to develop a pipeline of 200 leaders, a number that could go up to 500.

Srivastava said there was a great business opportunity in setting up finishing schools for retail, BPOs, insurance, banking and telecom for increasing the employability of youth-on the lines of what NIIT did in IT-and Gallup was interested in taking advantage of it, he said.