Small Start, Big Finish ; the Vocational and Skills Training Market has Spawned Scores of Successful Entrepreneurs. Many of Them Are Expanding Into Secondary and Higher Education.

Summary

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In 1982 when Rajendra Pawar and Vijay K. Thadani started their first NIIT centre in Mumbai, education as a business proposition was a laughable idea and the computer a complex entity. But, in their search for the gold vein, Messrs Pawar and Thadani had spotted a glint here, a nugget there: IBM had introduced the personal computer in 1981, the Computer Society of India had said Indian industry was hamstrung by a lack of computer professionals, and India at that time had 6,00,000 unemployed graduates. The NIIT founders saw the mother lode: making industry and education talk.

Today, NIIT is one of the world's leading education companies, centered on the premise of employability, which in turn has become a multi-billion-dollar business that has set the pulse of old and new entrepreneurs racing. "Earlier, the word private and education could not be said in the same sentence. Now, the opportunity around employability is huge. A hundred such NIITs can exist, says Thadani, 57, CEO, NIIT Ltd.

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Small Start, Big Finish ; the Vocational and Skills Training Market has Spawned Scores of Successful Entrepreneurs. Many of Them Are Expanding Into Secondary and Higher Education.

The vocational and training business is a baby in the education business landscape, accounting for less than 10 per cent of the whole pie. But it is poised to grow the fastest, between 16 and 40 per cent a year, depending on the niche, according to Technopak. And what is the opportunity size? "India's hum...

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