Manipal Education set to add more courses,plans campus in Sri Lanka

“In India corporate education and training is a huge market. We are looking at technical areas like diagnostics and healthcare management. Construction is another sector we see large potential right from basic construction work to supervisory and managerial jobs,” said Anand Sudarshan,managing director and CEO,Manipal Education.

In all these verticals,Manipal will have corporate tie ups offering diplomas,certificate courses and short-term programmes

The group currently offers a banking and finance course for probationary officers at the ICICI Bank and Bank of Baroda,with two more banks in the pipeline.

The company also runs short-term and certificate programmes for entry-level retail sector. It has tie ups with retail majors like Shoppers Stop and Reliance Retail. Manipal hopes to partner with at least 40-50 companies in the next the five years for customised education and training formats. The group’s corporate education arm includes companies such as Meritrac,a testing and assessment company,IndiaSkills,a joint venture initiative with City and Guild,UK for skills certification and U21 Global,an online business school.

While the Indian industry requires more than 15 million skilled workers per year,the country’s formal education system has been said to have fallen short when it comes to creating employable graduates.

Sensing large market potential,job training institutes have rushed to fill the employability gap,giving rise to a huge corporate training market in the country,which is pegged at over R2,000 crore,excluding the IT training programmes. According to Kaizen Education Report,2010,the corporate training market in India is growing at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22% over the last four years.

As part of the education group’s overseas expansion,last year in November,the company announced plans to set up a $180 million multi-disciplinary international university in Malaysia. Outside of India,the group owns and operates educational institutions in Antigua,Dubia,Nepal and Malaysia through Manipal Universal Learning (MUL),an education and training company. While MUL only provides training services in India,it owns and operates educational institutions abroad,which are allowed to have profit-based models.

In February 2010 MUL managed to rope in R200 crore from PremjiInvest,while Catamaran also invested R200 Crore in December. “We are not looking at raising any more funds at present. We are also not exploring IPO any time soon,” said Sudarshan