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January, 2005 |
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Corporate Focus |
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Alfa & Beta of Higher aims
Strategies of a educational consultancy firm to remain a market leader. Within two years, we shall be the leading institute to help students to prepare for medical college entrance tests, says Dwiraj Sharma, Managing Director of Alfa Beta Institute, which was set up as a coaching centre back in 1992 and is one of the two such institutes that are still surviving. In the meanwhile, many institutes came into being and went into oblivion and the process is still going on with uncountable number of such institutes dotting the Bagh Bazaar and Putali Sadak area.
The success of Alfa Beta lies in specialisation, raising the entry barriers and thinking ahead of the competitors. “We are expanding timely and changing ourselves, while our competitors are sticking to the same old courses they were offering 10 years ago,” he says indicating to the distinguishing feature of his institute. In the year 2000, the institute started providing consultancy to help the students to get admission in foreign universities. In 2001, it opened a sister concern - Alfabeta Institute of Medical Science (AIMS) – making a franchise arrangement with Sahil Study Circle of New Delhi, an ISO certified educational institute. Then in 2003, it shifted its location from crowded Putali Sadak to New Baneswor, at the centre of about eight colleges. AIMS was set up looking at the massive flow of Nepali students who were going to India for taking the classes to prepare for entrance tests in medical colleges. Though the trend is not yet stopped, the Nepali students who want to enrol in Sahil now get diverted from there to AIMS. The students who admit in AIMS get to study and practice the same material that is administered in Sahil and also the faculty is certified by Sahil. If need be, Sahil sends its own faculty here for the required duration. The decision to shift the institute from Putali Sadak to New Baneswor was, however, a tough one. The market perceived it as Alfa Beta’s defeat in the competition that was there at Putali Sadak. But Sharma says, it was a wise decision as the turnover of the institute increased about four-fold now as compared when it was located at Putali Sadak. According to him, AIMS at present teaches around 1,500 students annually in entrance preparation for the medical colleges and Bridge course for SLC appeared students. Alfa Beta, on the other hand is training some 700-800 students per year in TOEFL, IELTS, GRE, GMAT English, Chinese and preparation for Visa interview. One major problem being faced by the existing such institutions is related with the faculty. One reason is the short supply of Physics teachers due to the massive exodus of good Physics teachers in the recent years from Nepal to USA where they were preferred over their counterparts from countries like India, Pakistan and China as the US policymakers thought that it was not good for USA to have the sensitive Physics field to be manned by people only from these countries. The remaining Physics teachers were too busy teaching in 10+2 schools. And they take it as prestige issue to be a full timer at coaching centres. Similar problem was faced also in Chemistry. So AIMS has started developing its own full time faculty paying them very handsome salary. “We pay as high as Rs. 100,000 for good faculty per month. It is not because our business volume has grown so much to afford such a salary. We treat it as an investment for the future,” he says. At present Alfa Beta & AIMS have 30 full time faculties. Plans for the future At present, Alfa Beta is not going to expand in new programs. “We are concentrating on improvement in the existing ones,” he says. The strategy is to improve the quality this year and raise the fee next year so that though the number of students in the institute may go down next year, the revenue would be higher then as compared to what it is this year. To improve the quality, the institute is taking the students for its preparation classes from grade 11 itself instead of waiting for them to complete grade 12. Now it is also thinking of taking a franchise from Delhi Public School to run its course in Nepal itself. Also on the cards is a public library. “Very soon, we will also have our own separate building which will also house a mock visa office to train the people better in this field,” he adds. China Connection Alfa Beta’s education consultancy business is focused in sending the students to study in China. “We are the leader in this field already,” says . In this process, it has taken the exclusive rights from Nanjing Medical University & Soochow University to send students to the university from entire South Asia. Since the business of sending Nepali students only was not going to give the required volume of students, so the institute has started sending students to China also from India. Out of some 160 students it sent to study in the Chinese University this year, nearly 80% were sent from India. For this the institute has established relations with educational consultants in all the major cities of India and from January 2005, its own subsidiary company is opening shop at New delhi under the name of Beeta Educational Consultancy. |
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