Sanjeev Verma operates a very established education agency brand in the Middle East with offices in Dubai, Oman, Qatar and Libya. He talks about the difference between the Emirati and expatriate market and his plans to add India to his portfolio of education destinations.
The PIE: So tell me how you first got involved in the international education industry?
SV: Well I was actually in India, and I was introduced to IDP, owned (back then) by Australian universities. They recruited students for Australia. My logic to them was that they should have an office in the Gulf, simply because then – and even now – any boy who reaches the age of 18 and is an expatriate has to leave the country, he cannot stay in the country at all unless he is sponsored by an educational institution, that is the case even now.
My son is a case in point; the day he finishes high school, he’ll be 18, he has only two choices; either he enrols in a local university or he starts work, if he wants to live in the country [Dubai]. Now most people don’t want to do this, and in those days there were few education options. You didn’t have any of the Heriot-Watts or any of the universities you see now [at DIAC].
The PIE: So overseas education was an obvious option to young expatriates…
SV: Yes. Most of these kids didn’t want to go home because for them home was as alien to them as to another foreigner. Because they were born here in Dubai, they lived here, so they were quite uncomfortable going home, home being India, Pakistan, Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan. So that was the reason we said ok let’s tap this market, the expatriate market.
“We had this critical mass of people who were high achievers and were wanting to study and could not get into any decent university back home in India or wherever”
In those days, I’m not sure if you remember the Aussie dollar was less than 50 cents to the US dollar so, studying in Australia was very very economical and in a competitive position; it wasn’t as expensive as it is today; it was less that half the price of anywhere else in the world. So we had this critical mass of people who were high achievers and were wanting to study and could not get into any decent university back home in India or wherever it is and they were looking for an alternative, So we introduced Australia to them. We did very well.
The PIE: How did you launch the first office?
We had our first office in Dubai, and initially what we really did was go to the schools, have help desks, have totally dedicated Aussie roadshows. Only people who wanted to go to Australia would come to the roadshow!
The PIE: And was Australia already known then as an Australian education…
SV: Oh no not at all, nobody knew Australia in fact they kept mistaking it for Austria! They kept saying but Europe is only three hours away. Nobody knew Australia and nobody from Australia knew the Middle East either so I think it was a quid pro quo.
The PIE: How did you meet IDP?
SV: I was introduced to IDP through a very close friend of mine who was running IDP in India.
So we started IDP in 1999/2000 and it did very well but then 9/11 happened, so obviously everyone was looking for an alternative to the USA…
“The sponsored do what I call the full Monty, English language, pathways and academics so from a commercial point of view they were very good for us”
And somewhere down the road we changed direction, and instead of focusing on the expatriates and I started focusing on the nationals. Eventually it becomes a number game and I decided if you want to do well you have to have nationals on board, but they are sponsored [by government]. I would reckon about 90% of them are sponsored, by government or a third party – it could be a bank or it could be a ministry. The sponsored do what I call the full Monty, English language, pathways and academics so from a commercial point of view they were very good for us; the yields per student were a lot higher.
Even then I used to tell everybody, I said 9/11 came and one day it will pass, and these guys would go back to America and the UK but nobody could see that because everyone was wanting to go to Australia.
I remember when we started off less than 250 students had been to Australia, and when I quit IDP in 2008 we had about 5000 or 6000 students running about in Australia.
The PIE: Per year?
“When I quit IDP in 2008 we had about 5000 or 6000 students running about in Australia”
SV: Yeah! Like I said we were fortuitious because of 9/11 then a lot of marketing, the Aussies really know how to market international education which is great, unlike the Yanks who have absolutely no clue. So, it did very well but as I said I always believed that one day they would go back to America and to the UK and that’s exactly what’s happening now. So, I started my own company in 2008 called Intelligent Partners and we did focus on the UK and US – that’s what we do.
The PIE: How did you build up your partners in those countries?
SV: We got ourselves audited and certified by an organisation called AIRC, we are the first to get accredited by them, so we got all the boxes ticked. Made sure our staff were trained by the British Council, trained by ICEF, we had all the accreditations; we are accredited by the Ministry of Higher Education.
We wanted to do things and we continue to do things professionally so I think that’s what’s helped us. 80% of our business continues to be referrals and return business, we’ve worked a lot with the government. We are one of the biggest where English language is concerned. We do a lot of government contracts, we send students for long-stay English for 24 weeks all over the world, we do a lot of summer programmes and we introduced students to Ireland; we were the first to do Ireland.
The PIE: How many student weeks do you send?
SV: About 7-8000 per year
The PIE: And what proportion of that is Emirati now?
SV: Oh, 99%, for English language it is 99.9%. As for universities, we place about 300 students per year for the universities. I also believe, and I’ll be honest with you, if we don’t evolve and change our model it will disappear within five years from now, it will be dead. It will be like the travel agent.
The PIE: Right, so how are you going to evolve?
SV: So, we’re trying to do vertical integration. We’re trying to get back into the delivery model a little bit, like I was telling you we want to start looking at delivering English language plus soft skills in India. And we’re also looking at India’s very big market, and we’ll be the first organised company that will actually market Indian universities overseas, to send students from the MENA region to study in India.
“Two weeks later he realises that it’s so cheap in India! And labour is cheap so somebody does something for you, you don’t have to do your washing..”
The PIE: And why do you think students from MENA will be interested in India?
SV: Cost. Bottom line, absolutely. Lets not kid ourselves. What normally happens and I can even give you the mindset of the guy when he reaches India, the first two weeks are absolutely traumatic, he just can’t hack it, the noise, the population, the sounds, the smells. Two weeks later he realises that it’s so cheap in India! And labour is cheap so somebody does something for you, you don’t have to do your washing, you don’t have to do your cooking, you don’t have to do your cleaning, somebody does it for you!
The PIE: Are Indian universities attuned to ensuring adaptation?
SV: I think it’s a very big challenge for them, and I think they really need to get off the block at some point. There’s so much demand from the domestic market, that they don’t feel its worth their while to look at international students. I’m telling them it’s not only about the money; it’s about the fact that if you don’t have an international market your rankings in the world will not move up.
You need to open the minds of these people, you need to have exchange students, you need to have faculty exchange, and you need to see different modes of teaching, best practices. And that is what internationalization is all about, its not only enrolling students, so unless the Indian universities start thinking a little bit differently, nine out of 10 them don’t even have international offices, they don’t even know what its all about, like I said they don’t even need to.
“Nine out of 10 Indian universities don’t even have international offices”
The PIE: Amity must be different..
SV: Yes, Amity is different because it’s run differently and they’re global. SP Jain are different.. But the others who are looking at it, are moving in that direction but the majority don’t think they need to.
The PIE: And so, tell me about your footprint in the UAE now.. so you started in Dubai.
SV: We started in Dubai and now we have an office in Qatar, we have just opened an office in Oman as we speak, and we’ve opened an office in Libya.
The PIE: Is that a challenge operating in Libya at the moment?
SV: It is, but every new enterprise is a challenge, even Oman which I’ve known very well for many years will still be a challenge because we’re setting up anew and we have to start from scratch to a certain extent. Except for the fact that we have brand equity and goodwill.
The PIE: And your working just in Arabic, I imagine, in those countries?
SV: Yes, right now it’s only in Arabic.
The PIE: Where do you think that the Libyan students will want to go?
SV: A lot of them would want to go to the UK, that is one of reason we’ve set up there. We represent about 70-80% of the UK universities. 70-80% is already a huge amount. There are only about 120 universities and we represent about 80.
The PIE: So do universities offer you differing rates of commission?
SV: Where the UK’s concerned I think it’s very standard, most of them offer you 10%, but having said that; everybody asks you isn’t there a conflict of interest? And I said not really because, one point is that my councilor has no idea what my commercial agreements are, it is a firewall. Also, the reason we are successful out here, and 80% people come back to us, is because we are guided by the students’ interests and we are here for the long-haul.
“The reason we are successful out here, and 80% people come back to us, is because we are guided by the students’ interests and we are here for the long-haul”
If you misguide your student and you tell him to go to a university which is not in his best interest, I guarantee you within 12 months you’ll be pulling your shutters down.
The PIE: Do you favour placing students in a university where they are very sensitive to assimilation or is it much more about rankings and course?
SV: Students really guide us more than anything else. A lot of students have helicopter parents, who are hovering on top the student telling them what to do, they are very keen on their rankings and stuff and even then we do try to tell them that its also important how a student assimilates.
For example you don’t want to send a student from Asia to an all-white WASP college in America, it might be very good but he’d feel out of place and he won’t be confident. So you have to take that into consideration, you’ve got to take the students’ cultural background into consideration. Besides the academic aspects, a lot of non-academic aspects, such as cost.
So if you take all that into consideration and propose it to the parents and the students, the decision is eventually the parents, has to be; you are only guiding them, that’s your role. Your role is to advise them, and tell them the pros and the cons, and let them decide.
