KM: My experience is actually in the internet and telecoms industries, and I did business in Asia and China in 90s. I set up an internet company with my husband, we sold it to a Canadian telecoms provider, and went to China. I actually attended Beijing Culture and Language University. I fell in love with the country, there is something about it that I found incredibly charming and so exciting. This was 2003-2005.

The PIE: So China was still a new frontier then, pre-Olympics…

“There is something about China that I found incredibly charming and so exciting”

KM: Yes, and I started Grok as a way to keep my foot in China even as we moved to New York. We were incorporated in Beijing, hired some staff, and first serviced venture capitalists that we knew both in Australia and in the US, helping them understand the market for their portfolio businesses.

After two or three years the Canadian government started saying to me: ‘All these education providers who are coming into China need guidance and execution assistance – you should look at this, to see if you can provide commercial services. And by the way we need some research on the education market.’ So we started in 2007 and by 2009 we were almost wholly dedicated to the education market.

In late 2009 we started getting requests from institutions to represent them in the marketplace, so we began to hire one or more dedicated staff to work directly with each customer to pursue their agenda, and that is a primary aspect of our business right now.

The PIE: Oh really. I know of companies who do same in India…

KM: Like Sannam S4 [in India]? Grok is finalizing a partnership with Sannam S4 – for us to be able to deliver Indian services along our model to our customers, and enable them to deliver China-based services for their customers. We’ll be able to do pan-Asian international education engagement and provide consultation and services around strategy that take into account challenges and opportunities in both of those markets.

“By this time next year we’ll have a southeast Asian presence, probably in Malaysia”

The PIE: So essentially, you are providing a dovetailed approach?

KM: You can work with one vendor, develop a high-level strategic relationship with either Sannam S4 or Grok but via that strategic relationship you’ll receive the help that you need to execute strategy in the two major markets.

And by this time next year we’ll have a southeast Asian presence, probably in Malaysia so we’ll be able to truly do it across the whole region.

The PIE: Do you have many competitors in China?

KM: No not really. Some agents provide similar services in the ‘host-a-representative’ service but they don’t bring that historical focus on research, consultation and strategy that we do.

The PIE: Who are your main clients?

KM: We work primarily with Canadian institutions, also some American and Australians too. None from the UK yet – that is Sannam’s forte. Mainly higher education institutions although we work with a language school, Culture Works, which is a very good partner and earnest around their language education.

We also work with the US Dept of Agriculture Graduate School USA; a consortium of American colleges and the province of Manitoba. A typical customer would be a university or college but there are some atypical customers too.

The PIE: Can you give us an example of outcomes achieved via Grok?

KM: One university client had allowed their international marketing to go fallow. They started working with us in September 2011. They had very few international students. We hired a program officer for them and established a local presence in China in March – by September the following year, China delivered about 80 students to them. They were pretty happy.

“One of my interns here spent $25000 getting into NYU with an agent”

They are a really good example of ‘you get out what you put in’. They engaged very holistically, had their deans come to China several times, their president came to China six times. We are helping them achieve results not only on international student recruitment but also on partnerships. This isn’t about the money for them exactly but about internationalising the institution; yes they need the money from international recruitment to fund those activities.

The PIE: That is a pretty rapid result.

KM: It isn’t always as quick as that. Customers who don’t have name brand recognition, even with terrific market management support, are looking at a three-year investment timeframe before they see good ROI. It can take a while and it can take patience.

The PIE: How do you price your services?

KM: We are not an agent and we are really careful to not do anything on a per-head basis, because that’s the agent’s model. We help customers to support their agent networks, but we are not competing with the agent or acting in an agency capacity. [more>]