Elements Akademia - conceptualized, funded and run by a group of 12 IIM Alumni - is India's first Finishing School aimed at bridging the gap between academics and industry requirements, thereby making Graduates Employable

India's Service Sector is booming (60% of GDP, up from less than 40% in 1970; 17mn new jobs by 2010) but faces an acute shortage o...> Read more..

Elements Akademia - conceptualized, funded and run by a group of 12 IIM Alumni - is India's first Finishing School aimed at bridging the gap between academics and industry requirements, thereby making Graduates Employable

India's Service Sector is booming (60% of GDP, up from less than 40% in 1970; 17mn new jobs by 2010) but faces an acute shortage of skilled manpower, despite the presence of a large graduate pool (15mn+, 2.5mn new graduates every year).

A part of the malady is perhaps in our university education system which offers degrees but often fails to make graduates "employable" - which is why the organized Sector employment in India is still at a pathetic 13%!

Elements Akademia aims to bridge that gap by offering a 6 month part-time vocational course designed with the help of our corporate partners, who are leading players in various service sectors like Insurance (Max New York Life, HDFC Standard Life), BPO/KPO (Genpact, WNS, Accenture), Retail (Reliance Retail, MobileStore), Banking (Kotak Mahindra Bank. Bank of America Continnum) etc. The content covers the entire hiring requirement in these companies, so students have a 20X greater chance to get selected versus applying without doing this course.

It includes Business communication, Personality Development/ Grooming, Managerial Effectiveness, Basic IT and Domain knowledge in areas of KPO/BPO, Retail, Insurance and Banking/Accounting.

We have a bold '10x10 vision' Making 10,000+ Indians Employable by 2010 - reaching out to 20 non-metro cities to attract students, train them, and then help them get placed with our partners and beyond.

We focus mainly on Tier II cities where 'employability' is a major challenge. The academic rigour of the programme has been very well received by existing students with 91% students rating the course.

Excellent (in a bi-weekly confidential survey). The first few batches have graduated with an 80%+ placement, mostly at starting salary of Rs. 10,000 CTC per month. The course fee is approx. Rs. 20,000 for the six month course. There is also a merit-cum-means scholarship upto 50% - for students with monthly family income of less than Rs. 6000. Some corporate partners also return the fees to the students after few months in job, so effectively, the students do the course for free.In the past 8 months, we have scaled upto 5 cities (NCR, Bhopal, Lucknow, Jaipur, Kanpur) with plans to open 5 more offices within 08/09. We have more than 500 students already registered with us, and are attracting 200 new students every month (will have 2000 students by the end of this year).

A. The Education Sector in India is Huge ($30bn... ET) and Hot (Top 3 sectors to invest in... Evalueserve). Within that, Making Youth Employable is a sunrise sector with $0.5bn market size. Years of socialism has unfortunately resulted in multiple low quality, high cost players. "Employability" is a burning market need: we have 17mn new jobs and only 2.5...> Read more..

A. The Education Sector in India is Huge ($30bn... ET) and Hot (Top 3 sectors to invest in... Evalueserve). Within that, Making Youth Employable is a sunrise sector with $0.5bn market size. Years of socialism has unfortunately resulted in multiple low quality, high cost players. "Employability" is a burning market need: we have 17mn new jobs and only 2.5mn annual graduates, but still Organized Sector employment is only 13%! A credible player who can actually deliver results (placements) at an affordable price will fill in a huge value equation gap. High Quality IIMs cater to only 0.3% of population (320,000 appear in CAT, 1000 get selected). Barring the top 25 institutes, the remaining 1300 BE/MBA colleges generally have poor quality.

B. Very credible management team: Investors and Core Management team from the IIMs with 10-20 years of industry experience. Dean started IIT Kanpur Business School and then SP Jain Dubai and has 30 years of experience in industry and teaching.

C. Fullfilling a social cause: Its an opportunity for us to make some positive contribution to our country and society. Giving a career to a deserving candidate and a lifestyle to a family, surely is as satisfying( if not more) as giving returns to shareholders.

D. Early Financial Indicators very positive: $1mn+ revenues in first full year of Operations, $5mn valuation in last funding round with just 6 months of Operations, Offer from a Top Indian company to buy 20% stake.

E. Fast Growth: 5 Centres, 50 employees, 500 students within the first 8 months. 2000+ students expected by the year end.

F. High Quality Affordable training: 90% of students in a biweekly confidential feedback rate the course as Best Ever. 80%+ placement of the first 6 batches(compared to 10-20% placement in leading private education companies). Fees are at least 5 times lower than other organised players offering similar employment opportunities.

G. Zero percent attrition amongst all Employees: Not one of the employees who was performing average or better has left the company (we have removed some underperformers). Constant and personalized mentoring of employees from IIM investors.

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a) Scaling up without losing focus on Quality: Our vision is to reach $10mn revenues by 2010 (30 months from launch, currently on track). And ensure Tier I quality (currently 90%+ of students in a biweekly confidentia survey rate our course as Best Ever, 80% plus placements as current). Usually quality tends to go down during rapid expansion phase (especially if you use quick options like Franchising). Getting a handle on both Quality and Revenues will be a challenge.

b) Employees as Evangelists: In a Service Sector company like ours, Employee energy (who interact with our customers day in and day out) is not just desirable, it is essential (superior training quality leading to Top MNC placement is our core differentiator amongst the myriad educational outfits). So far, we have been personally maintaining contacts with every employee and have ensured zero attrition (in a sector that has 20-40% atttrition) with our 50 employees. Will we be able to continue this even when we have 200 employees.