I am now in the position a brand manager for a new brand finds himself in. It's an exciting process, with a lot of things to be done. With a usual product-based brand, it's about the Go-to-market plan/strategy. But with an educational brand like ours, it's a lot more than that. It's a vision, that has to translate into action on multiple fronts. I am involved as the VC, in setting up Prestige University, a new venture at Indore.
The most difficult part in any educational endeavour is getting the right people. In a university like ours, it's three kinds of people- the students, who would become our Brand Ambassadors, the faculty, who will be the torch-bearers, and the non-teaching staff who will support these without questions.The physical infrastructure is the easy part, and is a hygiene factor.
So we are now on a quest to recruit the best faculty we can find. We have a range of niche MBA programs, so it's not an easy ask. Sustainability, Supply Chain, Analytics, E-business, and Agri-business/Food are the areas we will cover. We also plan to offer a 5-year integrated MBA program, made popular by IIM Indore and others.
Students would come through CAT and similar competitive exams conducted on a national scale. We also have plans to offer programs for experienced people in an online mode, because that enables executives to enroll without leaving their jobs. A lot more is on offer, and will be rolled out at an appropriate time.
2 comments:
How are you tapping into what your customers may be asking for?
Private; NGO; Government (local or federal); Domestic or International?
It has been a while since I paid attention to how Indian schools operate but it would be worth knowing how the education system is gearing to meet the needs of society on a broader scale.
How are you going to define what Success looks like?
What KPI do you /any univ track to measure how they are doing?
What if any is your moat in terms of USP or ensuring you have enough throughput to make Prestige a going concern?
Curious questions from someone with no background in Edu domain. Write if you get a chance.
A university or B school brand takes a while to incubate. Even well-funded ones like IIMs took about 20 years on average, to come into their own, attract good faculty, students and training/consulting. Sometimes we can speed things up in the private domain.
In Prestige, the USP is to have more practical learnings with a longer MBA internship, and bring in industry interaction regularly. Research of both academic and practical types will be encouraged.
We have a great campus coming up, so it should help. The rest is up to students, alumni in future and the faculty. We also plan on some online programs aimed at experienced execs.
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