The industry that the company is in, is largely Indian Education, and the labour and employability. This is broadly classified into Learning and Placement as business streams. In the learning space, the industry is further classified into Formal Education and job oriented Vocational Training. Formal education industry has schools and colleges which are either run by Government or aided by Government or Privately run. Further, the higher education commonly referred as college education could be imparted either through regular class room based college learning or through distance learning streams, technology-led remote learning streams. Under these streams we have Engineering / professional education stream as well as Arts / Science / Commerce stream.

PRIMARY EDUCATION

There are 1.5 Lakh Govt recognized schools with 22 Crore students in India. Further, there are 56 Lakh school teachers. This implies that there is one teacher for every 40 students. There are 24 Lakh teachers covered in Regular Teacher Training. Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) is 85% whereas there is 61% drop-out across schools with 70% in SC/ST prevails as on 2007-08 academic year.

HIGHER EDUCATION

Indian Higher Education System is the 3rd largest in the world. There are 350 universities including 102 deemed universities. There are 15,500 colleges out of which 5,000 are professional colleges offering Engineering, Management, and Medical courses with the remaining offering Arts, Science and other courses. There are 1.2 Crore students in regular degree programmes and are over 2 Crore students in distance / open programmes. Present GER is 11% which is much lower compared to GER of schools. Pass percentage of Professional Education is at 60% on an average.

OPPORTUNITIES IN EDUCATION INDUSTRY

The economy continued to show high growth momentum during 2006-07 and 2007-08. As per the Quick estimates of National Income for 2006-07 released by CSO, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) at factor cost (at constant 1999-2000 prices) grew at 9.6 per cent in 2006-07 compared to 9.4 per cent in 2005-06 and 7.5 per cent in 2004-05. The agriculture and allied industry and services sectors grew by 3.8 per cent, 11.0 per cent and 11.1 per cent respectively during 2006-07.

Cess of 1% is imposed to finance Secondary and Higher Education on the service tax payable for all services, by the Government of India in its finance budget year-on-year. Education Cess Fund is used to fund the education as quoted and employability skills enhancement for those who have not pursued education beyond secondary levels of education.

MES and PPP

Ministry of Labour & Employment in pursuance to excellence in vocational training has developed a new strategic framework for skill development namely MODULAR EMPLOYABLE SKILLS (MES) framework in close consultation with industry, State Governments and experts. MES is Minimum Skills Set which is sufficient to get an employment in the labour market. These can be learnt through professional training institutes or through professionals in formal and non-formal way for ones gainful employment.

The Government of India plans to invite Private Participation to develop schools. It is proposed to set up at least 6,000 schools during the XI Plan period, of which at least 2,500 will be through the Private Public Partnership (PPP) route. Private investment of about Rs 10,000 crore is expected to flow into setting up these schools. The remaining 3,500 schools will be built by the Government. While Government shall continue to give affiliation to the schools created and run by Private institutions, the schools under PPP route shall be entirely run and managed by Private Sector under this scheme.