In the last 2-3 years, some of the corporate bigwigs in India have ventured into the education space through some way or the other aimed at solving a diverse set of problems. One of the recent ones that I can remember is - Aegis Global Academy, which is a part of the Essar Group.
2 years back when I was invited to meet the founding members of the academy (mostly the top guys within Aegis and Essar), I was presented with an idea that they felt should revolutionize the way people learn about Customer Experience Management, thereby helping people to become better at their jobs in a service economy like India. The debate was that unlike other economies and other educational-ecologies, India had different needs of growth and a different set of people coming from a monolithic educational system.
Along with IIM Indore and SQC Singapore, the Academy was aiming at bringing some of the best learning from service industry right into their classrooms. They had an excellent press meet (at the Essar HQ) and then went onto implement a massive pan-India branding program (in the lines of other Universities and FMCG) to attract some good number of applications for the program. Since it is a certificate program, the number of seats abailable for the course isn't limited.
After a disastrous 1st year admission cycle (and I was a part of meetings, discussions, feedback etc with their team all this time), the program took off at their campus in Coimbatore. The next year, they went back to the same drawing boards and then repeated the same go-to-market strategy yielding similar results. As a partner from the same domain, I was pushing them to go beyond the norm. But sadly that didn't happen.
Some of the major mistakes that rocked their boat were:
(1) A below par go-to-market strategy including a one-size-fits-all communication strategy
(2) Placing their brand amongst the audience that are supposedly the worst kind of decision makers, without directly having any engagement with the influencers
(3) Insisting to follow the examples of a communciation strategy that works well for FMCG, Telecom, (mostly products) etc.
(4) No learning from the feedback of the market
I believe all of these would be looked into by the team at AGA and I guess they will get to the right answers for themselves. However, there is something that I feel went fundamentally wrong in the first place:
Aegis Global Academy wasn't meant to be kick-starting its programs as fill-time options and for the same crowd who take up MBA/PGDM programs through CAT/MAT/XAT etc.
I believe that their first and foremost mistake was to take the same route as any other new MBA institution who join the same bandwagon as 2000+ b-schools have done before them. In one of the discussions with their core team, I had share the data that how over 80% of all B-schools in India fight for only 30% of the MBA Applicants' base, and the rest (i.e. 70%) of the candidates fight to get into 20% of the Institutes in India.
Although its their prerogative and strategy to use the program as a full time option, I believe that given the state of things in the jobs space, and the way people are trying to re-skill themselves while wanting to either keep or upgrade their jobs, the PGP of Aegis Global Academy could have been introduced as a "exclusive club" reserved only to some of the best talent wanting to get under the Essar Group umbrella for a better career. The probable options for the program could have been either distance learning or Online. I would have voted for Online, as if there was an opportunity, I know of people who will give their right-arm to get into the Essar Group and do so through some sort of a credible process.
The PGP then would have attracted more participants from across India (who anyways form the majority of CAT applicants - 2010 CAT had more than 70% guys with work-exp), and enabled these people to compete the 15 months program in say 12 or 9 months while being selected into Essar.
I am sure that there was some relation of the productivity of this program and the objective of Aegis to build up an excellent talent base for itself internally, but in the current state nothing is really happening. There are operational reasons for that too. I am sure every institute of program will have to have a minimum threshold of student-numbers that needs to be achieved to run the program even for one cycle. Aegis' only hope now is to either redirect and redo their Media communications program and hope to engage a bigger audience, or provide the Online program option to people who can do the same through separate campuses of Essar across India.
The problem is that once you position the product, its very difficult to re-position the same parallely. It takes a lot of courage to actually accept the market feedback and understand a new behavior that's affecting the very existence of your program. However, for the sake of this excellent program and its existence, they should give themselves one chance to revive the strategy and implement the same from this year itself.
2 years back when I was invited to meet the founding members of the academy (mostly the top guys within Aegis and Essar), I was presented with an idea that they felt should revolutionize the way people learn about Customer Experience Management, thereby helping people to become better at their jobs in a service economy like India. The debate was that unlike other economies and other educational-ecologies, India had different needs of growth and a different set of people coming from a monolithic educational system.
Along with IIM Indore and SQC Singapore, the Academy was aiming at bringing some of the best learning from service industry right into their classrooms. They had an excellent press meet (at the Essar HQ) and then went onto implement a massive pan-India branding program (in the lines of other Universities and FMCG) to attract some good number of applications for the program. Since it is a certificate program, the number of seats abailable for the course isn't limited.
After a disastrous 1st year admission cycle (and I was a part of meetings, discussions, feedback etc with their team all this time), the program took off at their campus in Coimbatore. The next year, they went back to the same drawing boards and then repeated the same go-to-market strategy yielding similar results. As a partner from the same domain, I was pushing them to go beyond the norm. But sadly that didn't happen.
Some of the major mistakes that rocked their boat were:
(1) A below par go-to-market strategy including a one-size-fits-all communication strategy
(2) Placing their brand amongst the audience that are supposedly the worst kind of decision makers, without directly having any engagement with the influencers
(3) Insisting to follow the examples of a communciation strategy that works well for FMCG, Telecom, (mostly products) etc.
(4) No learning from the feedback of the market
I believe all of these would be looked into by the team at AGA and I guess they will get to the right answers for themselves. However, there is something that I feel went fundamentally wrong in the first place:
Aegis Global Academy wasn't meant to be kick-starting its programs as fill-time options and for the same crowd who take up MBA/PGDM programs through CAT/MAT/XAT etc.
I believe that their first and foremost mistake was to take the same route as any other new MBA institution who join the same bandwagon as 2000+ b-schools have done before them. In one of the discussions with their core team, I had share the data that how over 80% of all B-schools in India fight for only 30% of the MBA Applicants' base, and the rest (i.e. 70%) of the candidates fight to get into 20% of the Institutes in India.
Although its their prerogative and strategy to use the program as a full time option, I believe that given the state of things in the jobs space, and the way people are trying to re-skill themselves while wanting to either keep or upgrade their jobs, the PGP of Aegis Global Academy could have been introduced as a "exclusive club" reserved only to some of the best talent wanting to get under the Essar Group umbrella for a better career. The probable options for the program could have been either distance learning or Online. I would have voted for Online, as if there was an opportunity, I know of people who will give their right-arm to get into the Essar Group and do so through some sort of a credible process.
The PGP then would have attracted more participants from across India (who anyways form the majority of CAT applicants - 2010 CAT had more than 70% guys with work-exp), and enabled these people to compete the 15 months program in say 12 or 9 months while being selected into Essar.
I am sure that there was some relation of the productivity of this program and the objective of Aegis to build up an excellent talent base for itself internally, but in the current state nothing is really happening. There are operational reasons for that too. I am sure every institute of program will have to have a minimum threshold of student-numbers that needs to be achieved to run the program even for one cycle. Aegis' only hope now is to either redirect and redo their Media communications program and hope to engage a bigger audience, or provide the Online program option to people who can do the same through separate campuses of Essar across India.
The problem is that once you position the product, its very difficult to re-position the same parallely. It takes a lot of courage to actually accept the market feedback and understand a new behavior that's affecting the very existence of your program. However, for the sake of this excellent program and its existence, they should give themselves one chance to revive the strategy and implement the same from this year itself.
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