Pearson Plc, the owner of Financial Times and Penguin Publishing, is optimistic about emerging markets. Post its recent acquisition of 76 per cent stake in Bangalore-based online tutoring company TutorVista, Pearson is planning an even bigger portfolio for itself. Anish Srikrishna, chief marketing officer, Pearson Publishing India, speaks to Swati Garg
Pearson’s bouquet of offerings is increasing in India. Your future plans?
Our business portfolio in India includes higher education roperties; vocation training under a brand called ‘Indiacan’, a joint venture with Educomp. Also, we recently acquired TutorVista, an online tutoring company, for Rs 577 crore.
In the higher education space we are growing at about 30 per cent. We see all our businesses growing at over 25 per cent. In India, the higher educational market is pegged at Rs 50,000 crore, the vocational space at half that, which affords us plenty of opportunities for growth.
With Indiacan, we will look at providing vocational training in English management and infrastructure management in terms of computer literacy and are looking at opening 300 centres by the end of the year.
So what strategy are you adopting to reach a wider audience?
At present we have 300 people in India, most of whom are in sales or in editorial. Our marketing formula is a business-to-business (B2B) model, by which we seek to ensure that our titles are the recommended ones by the faculty in the reading list. We adapt iconic books on management and engineering for example, to suit Indian audience at a price that is more affordable.
We also ensure delivery at the student’s doorstep. We have an e-commerce portal for this. We have seen the kind of dent Flipkart, an online shopping store, has made in the India and this is encouraging. Also, we have a gamut of marketing initiatives that work on the internet.
The e-book readers segment is booming. What is Pearson’s stand?
There are two aspects to the e-book strategy—the global and the Indian. Globally, we are in collaboration with Apple and a whole lot of other e-book readers for creation of content. Also we create apps that are applicable to the Kindle space. We have a large library of e-books available reader format. In India however, significant movement in the e-book segment is currently missing.
What is Pearson doing in the technology integrated teaching space India?
We are an $8 billion company and we are just beginning in India. Here what we have done is that we have made the books more interactive, allowing the teacher to integrate visual aid integration into the e-book model itself. This would aid teaching, while making it more inclusive; helping the teacher plan in a calibrated manner what the class has understood ensuring active use of the available resources.
We provide boards, we provide CDs with every one of our books, along with teacher training, ensuring that we are able to work within the constraints of the Indian education system.
