hi everyone this is Kunal Dalal I'm the managing director at JBC and education uh we run a group of international schools in Bombay India I want to understand the business of running a school uh first of all how big is uh the school Market in the education space I mean you know education as a space has received a lot of investor interest lot of startups rais lots of fund the most well-funded startup in India is antech company uh but within the education system where do schools Li how big of the value do they capture so I think uh the education system and the education industry is large but given the size and population in India uh it should have been larger if you look at some of the government spends the GDP spends on education uh in countries around the world uh the percentage of GDP spend is a lot larger than what it is in India um having said that there has been a lot of focus in the last 5 to 10 years by the current government uh on education there's a lot of opportunities that have come up as well in education I think it's a growing industry it's something that people are looking at uh people don't mistake attech uh and some of the other areas in education I think the online at Tech space is completely different it's based on valuations it's value driven there are a lot of investors lot of funding that comes in but when you look at the traditional Ed uh businesses or traditional entities in education like your kid through 12 schools or your medical colleges engineering colleges MBA colleges they are still run in uh a slightly different manner uh all educational institutes in India have to be run in a nonprofit entity so it could be a charitable trust it can be a society it can be a Section 8 company which is for nonprofit that continues even today uh all your government permissions all the licensing all your board approvals all of that are given to you only if you run uh these institutes in a nonprofit entity having said that so you're saying that it is uh no school in India is a private limited business all schools are uh non for-profit like like it's a it's a regulatory requirement that you need to be a not for-profit to run a school like a traditional cbsc IB kind of a school yeah all of them have to be run in a nonprofit in uh none of them are run by private entities uh they cannot be for profit uh there are certain supreme court orders that allow uh a certain amount of profit in uh schooling and education uh there's a very famous Supreme Court order called the TM tmap Pi order which says that reasonable profitability is allowed in education uh and that's kind of governs a lot of what we do but yes there's no private entity uh that can run a for-profit IPO potential structure in education do you agree with this policy it just makes me wonder what's the incentive for people to open a school then if you eventually cannot build a business take it public you know all those traditional incentives for entrepreneurs don't exist uh in the schooling Market from what I can understand so I'd like to answer this in two ways the one one part of me actually agrees with this and I'll tell you why I genuinely believe that if you get into education you have to get into it for the right reasons today you're you know shaping and forming the Future Leaders of the country you you have the ability to set the right value system the right skill de skill set in these you know in these learn Learners so whoever enters into this has to enter with the right intention with the right experience but most importantly enter it with a very very long-term Vision I think if people want to enter education and schools or colleges to say hey in 3 years 5 years 7 years I want a 5x 3x 7x return uh I think then they're entering for the wrong reasons and the eventual product the eventual program that they offer uh could get compromised so one part of me says that no it's good that it's run and nonprofit entities because then only people who are looking at building Legacy building something for 20 years 30 years and Beyond are going to enter it and I think that's the right attitude especially when you're dealing with young kids uh and young kids that are at a very impressionable age there's one part of me that says hey uh you know for exponential growth or for the kind of growth that is required in the educational sector for example in the rural areas in the tier four tier five cities if you want to build quality education and I think that is the foundation to any kind of uh you know growth in a country like India to set the right values to set the right uh programs to get the right mindset it requires a lot of capital so education and especially K through 12 schools are very very Capital intensive uh you have to buy the land get the permissions which is quite a long process build everything upfront before you start getting students and fee and revenue so it is a long-term game it is a long-term plan there's a lot of patience required if things did open up in this industry then a lot more funding would come in a lot more interested parties would uh kind of assist operators to build more and more schools or grow that landscape which would eventually uh help improve the overall education quality and the accessibility to Quality education in larger parts of India not looking at the four metros or the tier one cities because they have access uh to Quality education I'm looking beyond that so that's the way I look at it why does uh you know almost every businessman want to open a school is it just for legacy or are there other ways to make money I think there are two things uh two three reasons one is it really kind of adds to the brand value of the organization when you're running a quality Educational Institute uh today you see a lot of developers building schools uh unfortunately or fortunately Developers are looked at in a certain light and I don't think that's right I think that's a pre notion or a judgment people have which I I I don't think is right but this kind of helps change the perception of the kind of work they're doing uh second is a lot of these uh individuals or Industries industrialists that get into education uh have access to Capital CSR uh funds that need to be deployed so this is a great way to do it uh which really helps improve the overall quality and accessibility to good education uh and lastly if you want uh the real honest answer is it's always nice to get phone calls when admission is difficult and you know parents will do anything and everything to get their child into a good school so it's always nice to get those phone calls and say B please you know admission K get my admission done for my son or for my daughter and that's a different kind of relationship that you build so uh that's probably another reason as well but that's on the lighter note interesting uh so an entrepreneur who's running a school uh how much cash can they take out I mean assuming it's a popular School lot of demand and so on uh is there a like I mean is there the ability to be Wy off running schools or uh like you can add best have some sort of a like a marginal return on your investment so the way I look at it is again education is a very long-term business uh the advantage of it is that it's a annuality cash flow it's an annuality income so if you're invested in this for the right reasons if you're invested in this to build Legacy and to run this for a long term uh then yes of course there are benefits in it uh but again I think all the good schools all the good brands that run educational institutes the key to being Su successful and the key to kind of withstanding competition and everything that happens is taking intangible decisions to ensure the health of the institute in the long run rather than taking financial decisions for the short run I think the moment you start looking at the bottom line and financial decisions uh again I feel over the course of a certain period of time there will be other people that will come in that may run more successful programs and more successful institutes so if someone is here to look at this as a long run really play it out happy to invest a lot of money upfront uh because the capex is high especially in a city like Bombay where we run schools uh I don't think we look at things like return uh you know we're not the traditional uh you know we're not um investment investment banker friendly we don't look at IR return on investment return on Capital employed I think the moment you start looking at those parameters that a lot of other Industries and organizations look at which you should rightly so uh especially when you're deploying funds uh I think there'll be mistakes made but if you start looking at a long run a annual kind of of opportunity uh uh then yes of course uh that that's that's one of the reasons why you see a lot of good international schools or even national board schools uh mushrooming in the country so just to give you an example when we started jbcn in 2010 uh that was our first school and we I mean our organization is 20 years old so in 2004 2005 I think there were 100 and some international schools IB schools in India or less today that number has gone to almost 2,000 ID schools in the last 10 to 15 years there's obviously a reason why people are doing that if you look at Cambridge schools that number has gone to Beyond 3 and a half thousand they're growing at about 120 to 150 schools every year there's a lot of traditional schools that have been found following the icsc cbsc program for many many years Legacy schools that are now adopting International programs there's again a reason why they're doing it um so I think if the reasons are right and if the thought is long-term and if the thought is to build Legacy and a solid program and a solid curriculum then yes why not a w School in Mumbai with say a th000 seats would be making what kind of Revenue ballp I mean it's a very simple math if they have thousand students if your fee is 5 lakhs a year it's 50 craws if it's 8 lakhs a year it's 80 CWS if it's three lakhs is 30 CR so the math is quite simple in that sense there's no hidden fees in most schools I would like to say uh so the revenue calculation for anyone is very easy in terms of the actual fee that they pay fee depends on the location like the more premium the location the higher the fee you can charge or like what are the things to determine how much fees a school could judge uh I think the fee depends on a lot of aspects one is the board and the curriculum that you intend to offer the second is the student teacher ratio that you intend to maintain in your school so for example at jbcn our student teacher ratio is 8 is to1 so if we have uh a th000 Learners we have between 120 to 130 faculty and this doesn't include the admin staff the support staff I'm talking about pure teaching faculty so the student teacher ratio uh plays a big uh is a big reason the third are all the external or non-academic programs if I may use that word so the co-curricular programs is school offers um is robotics part of the school program is sports part of the school program is music is drama is entrepreneurship is design thinking uh there are lots of programs and skills that today's Learners require so are they all part of the school program in what capacity are they run by external vendors are they run by internal vendors or are they run by internal employees so it's a combination all all of that and then yes the location of the school also does matter and I'll tell you why it's nothing to do with whether there's affordability or not all your electricity costs maintenance costs property costs security costs uh invigilation uh CCTV all of those costs are based on what we call the ready reona rate which is the rate the government sets for that area so today I have a school in parel which is in South Bombay and I have a school in Bly which is in one of the suburbs of Bombay the property tax that I pay in parel is four times the property tax that I pay in borly because the ready reer rate which is set by the government for the two areas are different and the property tax is a percentage of the ready rear so yes the location also does matter but how does the ready rear rate affect anything beyond the property tax so your electricity cost your property tax your maintenance costs uh the Land Development cost there's a lot of costs that are associated on the ready reckner even your so we have a lot of government permissions that you require to start a school and after you start a school also there are permissions that are required to be renewed on sometimes early sometimes three early all of those permissions are also based on the cost and location at which you are okay okay is the fees controlled by the government the fees that a school can charge uh no the fees is not controlled uh at least in Maharashtra there was a control put uh just before covid in Gujarat where the government came up with a scheme saying you can't any school can't charge being Beyond 25,000 rupees a year or 50,000 Rupees or something like that it was challenged and now it's been removed uh what it what the control is not the fee you can charge but there are certain laws and acts around the increment of fee so whether I start my school with a fee of 100 rupees or 500 Rupees is my prerogative but once I once a learner comes into the program they say that her parent needs to have visibility over the next 12 years so I can't start at 500 and say next year it's th000 and then it's 1200 and 1500 where the math of a parent goes ha so there are certain regul regulations around how you can increase the fee uh it's not necessarily a percentage but there's a process uh so for example at jbcn we're very very compliant with all these processes uh we have a formal PTA which is a parent teacher Association we propose the fee to them have discussions around the fee uh explain why we need to increase the fee by X or Y percentage it is approved and ratified and then the fee is uh put forward also whenever you do the fee there are two options one is you can declare a fee for two years at a time or three years at a time the government has come up with a new regulation where when a parent joins your school you can decide the fee for 10 years or 12 years make the parent sign and hand it over so for new schools at JBC and what we're doing is a nursery parent we're saying this is your fee from Nursery till grade 5 and then this is your fee from grade 6 till grade 10 so there's visibility for 8 to 10 years saying I'll pay 100 today 108 tomorrow 112 day after 120 whatever that number is and they have signed off on it they have the clarity they can do the math thing hey in 10 years of 15 years of schooling this is what I have to spend can I afford it not afford it does this work not work for me and then take a decision okay is that common or I think that's not a very common practice right what that kind of visibility uh no it's not very common because people are unaware unsure of their cost uh but I believe that since this law came out a year ago or two years ago I can't remember we've started implementing it in new schools it's very difficult to do it in old schools where there already students existing because I feel it shows our it shows transparency and it shows our commitment to a parent saying hey we are willing to commit to you if you are willing to commit to us and I think that relationship is important interesting okay uh typically are most schools acquiring land or are they renting land I think both uh groups of schools that are in a hyper growth phase typically go in for rentals because the capex is lower uh also what happens in a rental is today for example jbcn is Bombay Centric tomorrow when JBC goes beyond Bombay to get permissions deal with the government etc etc in different states different languages different um sets of permissions requirements gets difficult it's always better to have a local landlord who can do all of that uh people who are looking at growing in a more structured Manner and not in hyper growth I think typically go in for uh ownership and then you have a few groups that are really large they've been doing this for 60 years 70 years they have 100 120 schools built really strong brand names all over India they do a combination of both they do some hent and mostly ownership because they have a full they can afford to have a full infrastructure team a in team they have an understanding on a pan India basis of how to deal and get these permissions and lies in and so on and so forth so that there are a couple of groups uh that have been in this for many many years and uh are excellent at what they do and they able to build this on a panand basis okay so when you're saying like large change like say DPS uh I would have thought that uh they would do a lot of franchising uh they like so DPS franchising as a concept operate in schools yeah so DPS is largely a franchise model uh I was talking about a podar or a Ryan group that have been doing this successfully for many many years so they have different models I mean their scale and their ability to do this is outstanding but and they manage the schools on their own they don't do a frany model no they they manage the schools on their own okay there are a lot of groups of schools that do franchise uh and they've done it quite successfully personally for me we've not gone down the franchise way um my simple take and the example I give is uh I don't think when you're dealing with children and shaping the lives of children you can give a recipe and turn out a burger uh it's not it doesn't work that way I think you have to be involved you have to know what you're doing there has to be quality control there has to be a focus on the program on the philosophy the culture of the organization um and our take and Route is to focus on building one school every two three years trying to make it the best and most sought after school in that area before we move to the next one okay uh coming back to land uh you said that there are a bunch of regulatory requirements uh so so so the land needs to be certified as land for school use is is that the case or like why can't you just rent any piece of land and start a school there just I mean okay let's maybe go a step back and say if I want to start a new school today what are the steps what are the kind of hurdles I need to cross in terms of regulatory requirements and stuff like that uh what will be my 0 to one Journey sure so I'll just answer both questions here uh the first part is you don't have to have a school Reserve Rand but in your metros and T1 cities if you don't build a school on a school Reserve Land then it's unaffordable so so School Reserve Land is uh like subsidized the rent is subsidized or okay the the ready reor rate and the value of the land is subsidized and hence the recil or the purchase price is subsidized because you can only build a school on it uh so so the developer the land owner realizes that there are a smaller group of people that can purchase it you can only go and get permissions to build a school and so on and so forth okay in terms of the steps to build a school I think uh Step Zero or minus one for me is to identify why you want to build a school what is the rationale with which you want to build a school and what is the key focus of your school I think if you don't have that in place and again I'm coming back to what we discussed earlier if you're looking at numbers and financial models and that's why you want to build a school I think uh that's where you can go wrong in the long run so I think step the first step is to identify the culture the philosophy and why I want to do this what is my intention of doing this uh once you kind of identify that once to kind of build your base philosophy of what kind of school you want to build why you want to build it how you want to build it then I think uh the step or the process is very similar to starting any business that any organization may do you have to identify a gap you have to identify which area you want to do it in what is the competition what are the other schools in that area what is the cost of land what is the viability around it uh the permissions is a long drawn process so typically from the day are needed I just you can list out a few also broad headings uh so I'll tell you you need between 43 to 48 no's from 43 to 48 different government bodies to start a school wow um so if I start listing it it'll you know it'll take a long time in this uh in our chat so there are a lot of different government bodies you work with to get it and if it's a firsttime school then you also have to do the first step which is ensuring you have a charitable trust or an entity within which you can run it that itself is a process you have to kind of present your case as to why you want to do it how you want to do it before you get those permissions uh so it is a longrun process and which is why I keep seeing that people who want to get into the education business have to do it for the right reasons uh which is why you've not seen too many uh you know investors and individuals jumping into the space okay uh can you like very broadly what are those 43 regulations uh regulatory approvals you need like some you could so them together into some categories so there's a whole bunch of regulatory approvals required for uh the building uh and uh the structure around the building there's a lot of building is safe from that perspective the safety and the usability of the building there's a lot of permissions required around the FSI that is available which is your for FL space index on a particular piece of land how much can you build there are some certain height restrictions in education which you have to follow there's a lot of different permissions around fire safety fire norms uh there's a lot of regulations so then you need so that is from the building perspective and the infrastructure perspective and these would mostly be from the municipality a lot of it from the municipality but they also different departments so you need there's a offshoot of the municipality where you need certain permissions from the education department there's a offshoot for the fire department there's a offsuit for okay uh drainage now they have a concept of green green school so they have an offshoot where you have to do things like rainwater harvesting uh how do you kind of turn your uh uh water how do you get certain uh you know Green initiatives in your building so that's a separate group of permissions uh some of it are linked to the municipality some of them are not then you have the state government so you go to the state government uh for a bunch of permissions that culminates into eventually getting a permission Colum mantrala or a state nooc which gives you a school code which allows you to run a school so today if your son or daughter leaves my school and goes to another school uh there's a school Cod that recognizes yes he or she was there till grade four or grade five and another school can accept it and so on and so forth and which board and ex then you need permissions from the board that you want to do so whether it's an international board a local board a state board a central board and there are certain requirements and permissions that are there for that and then there are certain permissions required for the entity in which you run the school uh describing the nature of the school why you're doing it how are you funding it what is the process and so on and so forth uh there's a lot of State Norms around the teacher qualification the teacher requirements and so on and so forth so you have to meet all those requ requirements as well to get the required permissions for the entity in which you're running so there are multiple uh there are lots of different uh uh government uh uh departments that you li in with uh things have got a lot smoother uh the ease of doing business has really helped a lot of these permissions now are online which makes it easier faster but it is a process it's it's not something that I can conceptualize today and say hey in 3 months I'll build a school uh it takes it takes its time for example even when you get the final permission to construct you don't get permission for the entire building you get it in different phases where you build the plint they come and check it they make sure that you haven't violated any Norms then they give you up to a certain FSI they come and check it make sure you've not violated those norms and then you build it so you can't even build build the whole building in one shot it gets very difficult to get that permission so there's a process around it and I I think rightly so uh I think it's important that people don't uh misuse or you know there's certain open space requirements there's certain fire Norms I think absolutely critical and important to be checked and monitored while building anything that will have kids in it or young adults in it so I think I think it's okay wow it is such an uphill battle to start a school I I wonder why anyone does it at all um say there is a school which earns 10 crores in fee Revenue annually are there other sources also for monetization besides the fee Revenue uh like for extracurriculars or for um like you know enabling other people like a lot of schools have these coaching classes which are also coming in then running classes there and stuff like that are those like significant the other sources of revenue so uh I think there are two uh you know the different ways of doing this largely if you look at International Schools premium schools uh the only Revenue source is the fee because the way we do it is the focus is on quality and everything is part of the school program and the way we run it uh there are schools that run in two shifts for example so then you're using the infrastructure from 7 to 1:30 and 2:30 to 7:00 conceptually is it right to have kids studying 2:30 to 7:00 I think that's debatable but a lot of people do it uh people do rent out uh their infrastructure after school hours again something we don't do but I know that some of them rent out their halls for marriages for catering functions and all of that so I think it's uh it depends on the nature of uh the school and the vision from the promoter group of what and how they want to do it sometimes uh and again no judgment here I think sometimes it's important to do it a lot of them also do it to use that Revenue to subsidize the school so they do it for the right reasons uh which I think is great uh let me put it this way I think if you have 60 70 80,000 100,000 square ft in a city um like Bombay or anywhere outside Bombay I I think it's up to the promoter and up to the group to individ to eventually decide what they want to do with that infrastructure I don't think there's any right or wrong uh I think if you're utilizing the infrastructure in a positive way in a right way uh no one's going to run a bar over there in the night also because saying classroom KH we run a bar you know those kind of things don't happen so I think if you're using it in the right way if you're using it and maximizing the infrastructure in a a lot of people do that I think that's fair I think that's okay what percentage of Revenue would be like free cash flow I mean and you can for example decide to reinvest and open up more schools or build more facilities or you can decide to take it out but fundamentally what percentage of your Revenue could be like a free cast flow to use as you see fit so I think that's a little difficult to answer it depend depends from school to school and I'll tell you why it depends if uh schools have taken a loan and have debt because then the gestation period is long second is it also depends on how they've built the School people build the infrastructure phase wise or have they built the whole school and then started it that's one thing the second thing is no program starts today if I start a new school I can't start uh to 12th it's it typically takes 7 to 8 years for you to build all your classes and for S to eight years you're only investing and reinvesting into the program into the school because you keep adding more and more classes more and more uh uh facilities and so on and so forth so I think cash flow and then the cash flow is also a you know a derivative of the fee structure and the number of students so I don't think it's I don't think there's a standard answer so I would't say it's 20 to 25% or 10 to 15% or 30 to 35% I think it varies based on the kind of school you're running the fee structure of the school in with which you're running and the initial investment and how that investment was made whether it was made through Equity or debt uh and then I think the numbers vary understood understood for a legacy School let's say 10 years old so all classes running firing on all cylinders what would be the split for them like how much would they be able to have a free cash flow how much would we spent on infra how much on salaries uh and you know what are the other kind of Revenue cost heads so salary is the largest cost head usually for a school uh because if you're running a quality International program I always tell parents this I said I can make a school built of uh made of gold but you're not going to come there because it's made of gold because you're going to come there because of the quality of the teachers the program uh uh the way things are run the results the placements uh and so on and so forth the safety the hygiene so a lot of emphasis is placed on uh that there's huge costs that are attached that so I think you know a large portion of the revenue and when I mean large I mean really large for good quality international schools goes into the people so just to give you a perspective uh in a school of ours that we have 1,00 to 400 Learners the total number of people that work in that school I'm talking from a Didi D which is a support staff we call them V datas that do the maintenance do all the people that maintain the security safety to all the people that maintain the quality in terms of admin hygiene Etc to obviously the teachers and the heads and the senior people and then the principal a 1,00 student school for us would employ anywhere between 350 to 375 people wow so that's a massive cost uh again for us it's important we're looking at the long run we're not looking at short-term cash flow or uh return per se I think we're looking to build something there could be schools that have a different view on this I'm just sharing what we do at jbcn uh so that's you know that is your majority cost and then you have all our schools are fully e condition so there's heavy costs on that uh we have a lot of international programs and TI UPS so we've tied up with an American program called Ras Plus for reading uh math programs we've got programs with the Columbia business school on entrepreneurship these are like subscription costs you have to pay an annual subscription for these programs as a school no so we so we don't charge the parents for this it's all part of the fee no as I mean as a school the school needs to pay the yes yes yes then there's a huge cost on it and technology today uh whether it's your ER P system whether it's uh you know enabling the IT program and systems firewalls today's Learners are smarter than any of us when it comes to technology and hacking and all of that so there's huge costal security and Tech per see and platforms around Tech uh which is also important there's a huge cost on teacher training I think professional development upgrading teachers uh we spend a lot especially when you do IB programs and international programs the board also demands uh regular training we also as organization put them through regular training so I think that's really important uh so yeah a lot of costs involved uh in running a good program having said that of course at the end of the day you do generate some free cash flow you do generate uh uh reasonable profits which are used then for whatever reasons right each promoter group can uh decide what they want to do with that can you like give me broad percentages for like the 1200 cater school as an example which you took like what percentage would be going on salary and so on and so forth uh so salary would be close to 60% of the cost wow okay yeah very people intensive business then it is a very people intensive business yes okay so that is that is our largest cost then you have infrastructure costs now whether it's rental not rental uh whether there's debt no debt so yeah but salary and people is the largest cost uh okay that goes into understood understood okay so you know I want to kind of also understand the difference between the various boards uh you have uh chosen IB and Cambridge boards for jbcn right so just talk to me about how you reach to that decision why not do cbsc and ICC and you know how do you compare the different boards I hope I hope you have a couple of hours for this no I can I can share so firstly I genuinely believe in one thing that whichever board you do and whichever board you adopt what the focus is on the methodology of teaching you can take a state board and teach it in the most International Way Or you could take a really International board and still teach it in a very traditional way of root learning so the board is one part of it but I think the focus is on the methodology of teaching uh and that's what differentiates uh the programs uh to share with you why I got into the education space and why IB and igcc firstly it's from my own personal experience I was really fortunate to do the IB Program myself in 11th and 12th and for people who don't know what is the full form of IB this a little bit of a primary on IB yeah the IB is the international backed program it was started or founded in I think 1974 if I'm not mistaken it's based out of Switzerland and and it's one of the truest form of an International Education the idea of starting IB the philosophy behind it is that a lot of people move around the world and transfer around the world so they should have a common education system when they move from one country to the other rather than having to adopt to education systems of different countries that was the philosophy with which they started and which is why they made it a truly international program because they made it country agnostic in that sense uh so that's the international back program I was fortunate enough to do the IV program myself in 11th and 12th uh I was a pioneering student of Mahendra United World College at bua uh till date I tell people it's the best two years of my life it changed me from a young boy or from a boy to a young man and that's the effect that the program had on me and after that I had the how was the experience different from up to grade 10 versus when you went into 11th uh so one is boarding school so that I think that was amazing living on your own the second is the concept of United World colleges you get people from all over the world so we were 100 kids on a hill in Puna from 64 different countries so that was truly an international experience and third is the actual program which I'll get into uh and then I had the opportunity to study in uh a really prestigious University in America called carnegi melon University so when I came back and when I was in my junior year of carnegi melon is when I founded JBC and with my mother and I said that I had I you know I was fortunate enough to have access to this kind of education and this is what I feel that we can do and this is what India needs and more and more schools need to come up with uh these kind of programs and opportunities for learn Learners in the country and that's why I chose and buil schools to run the IB and igcs program now let me tell you the biggest difference between the programs the biggest difference in the programs and if I have to sum it up and they you know I can go on about it and that's what I said I hope you have a couple of hours but if I have to summarize it in one or two key areas the first thing is the assessment pattern today all of us study in a certain way based on the way we're going to be assessed so in a traditional system if you're going to be assessed saying hey what happened in act one scene two in Julia Caesar then you're going to study in a certain way to say hey I just need to know what happened in the ACT versus if you're going to be assessed and a question in your English paper come saying what was the role of women in the 18th century uh when that kind of question comes it's not about knowing the book but it's about understanding the text and when I do multiple texts in English across different genres my answer and your answer could be different because if I have studied a lot of literature from the Indian uh you know context I would say women in the 18th century were subdued for various reasons but if you had studied uh some Shakespeare or some different genres where women had a dominant role so for example in junior Caesar you know uh the women over there had a very dominant role your answer would be different what they're looking for is your analysis and understanding of that if I look at economics for example if you are asked what is the law of demand and Supply the way you study the chapter or the concept is very different lower the price higher the demand higher the price lower the demand the point where demand and Supply reaches as the point of equilibrium we've all studied in that way but if you are asked a question saying hey there's a fashion house and these examples I'm giving you are actual exam questions I'm not making it up so there's a fashion house uh called you know Armani in Italy and they sell jeans for $100 and they sell 100,000 pairs of jeans and next year they came up with a pair of jeans for $150 but they sold 120,000 pairs of jeans how does the law of demand and Supply apply so it's not only about knowing the law but the applicability of the law because over here it's actually elasticity of demand or inelasticity of Supply Which is higher the cost higher the sales because it's a premium good or it's fashion or whatever the reason is so the appical so the first biggest difference in the international programs is what we call you don't learn by road but you learn through understanding the teaching learning strategies that are adopted in the education system focus on concept based learning and not content based learning I think today's education system I always say the focus has to be on relevant education not quality education when we were in school it was about quality education today content is available at a click of a mouse how do you interpret that content how do you use that data is a skill that a learner has which brings it to the next part of the difference today the International Education System focuses on skill development what are the important skills that are required for a learner to be successful as they move forward and success is defined differently and so let me say how what are the skills required for them to be relevant as they move forward communication skill today is really important so your assessment patterns in schools in our schools for example a percentage of your grade is also on communication skills so your projects your presentations today we have grade four grade five Learners doing PowerPoint presentations and presenting their learning we don't determine if a child is IND deligent or Not by a 2hour assessment they give at the end of the year they multiple forms of assessment because there are multiple skills developed in there today's education system or International Education System focuses on skill development skill is acquired through multiple areas Sports in my mind is a huge impetus in our schools uh at jbcn because they teach you collaboration they teach you how to fail they remove the fear of failure I think these are all important skills especially in today's Learners that are wired differently they are a digital generation they need instant gratification they don't have patience a lot of the Learners including my own kids would be more entitled than what we were uh when we you know were young so how do you deal with that and how do you deal with that skill set I think that's important so communication creativity today Learners cannot compete with machines a machine will always beat you so what what is the skill required for you to compete or outdo a machine creativity Innovation communication I think today's Learners have to have the right values when they move out today if you ask me the biggest strength of me or any leader that is required to run a large organization in today's time I would say EQ is more important than IQ people management compassion uh you know uh respect honesty I think these are the values that they have to learn when they be school how do you learn these values you have to display these values so I always say that values are not taught they are caught You observe people doing this and then you learn this I can't tell my son you better be honest if he sees me lying I have to display being honest and honesty for him to uh become an honest human being so the entire outcome of Education in my view has changed and to achieve that outcome we felt an international program which is Progressive which has a difference in methodology which has a different take which upgrades itself regularly today I I tell Learners and parents that like you learn English or Hindi or a foreign language coding is a language you have to learn it's no more a co-curricular program program coding and Robotics is part of life so just like learning English coding is as important these are the kind of programs that need to be part of a school to make education relevant so you said the focus is no longer quality education but relevant education so by this you mean relevance to how the world is changing like you know how for example thanks to something like an AI you don't even necessarily need to have the ability to write uh fancy English because AI can write fancy English for you so is that what you mean uh yes and no I so when it comes to let's take the example you took I still feel that Learners have to write before they type I still think their language skills have to be strong while they may not have to write fancy English but I think the relevant skill moving forward is to ask the right question to get the right answer for me so you still need the relevant skills you still need strong language you still need the uh ability to deduce uh information uh I think AI will give you a lot of data and information but you still need the skill set to be able to analyze it and use it in the right way so research becomes an important skill if you if research is an important skill language is still important to build your research skills so yes when I mean relevant education I mean something that is important to keep our Learners in good stead for the next 10 20 years because the world is changing so fast no one really knows what's going to happen uh you know uh every few years is a new era it's no more decades before there's a new era so I think uh yes I think uh the education system has to be ever evolving changing have have schools figured out how to deal with AI because a lot of the traditional ways of evaluating students through assignments uh are now you know they can be hacked by kids very very easily just they just need to go to a chat GPT type out the questions get the answers uh if you ask a child to make a presentation again like you know there are now such easy shortcuts uh to doing these assignments so have schools figured out what is the way to deal with uh education in this environment where chat GPD is available so easily um yes I think one is AI is here to stay I think it's important for us as organizations to embrace it and not fight it so I think it would be wrong for jbcn to say Hey you cannot use jat GPT you cannot use AI you cannot I think that'll be wrong it's like saying 20 years ago you cannot use computers you can't type you have to write everything because that was the revolution we went through and similarly we are in a phase of hyper Revolution and it's here to stay so we must embrace it uh but I'll tell you one thing in again I'll give you an example in jbcn because we have really low student teacher ratios the teachers know the Learners so well a part of their assessment is class participation group work uh presenting projects in school and then you have your larger projects assignments assessments Etc today our teachers will know very easily if this is kunal's work or not kunal's work because while I may have a beautiful answer or a beautiful presentation through chat CPT two days later when I am discussing a topic and debating something in the classroom that is discussed uh my true ability and potential will come out so I think it is important for teachers to know the Learners well and their ability to well you don't need any screening I know they've there are a lot of softwares where you put in the work and they will tell if you've got it from chat GPT or you've copied it from somewhere and all I think it's very simple that our teachers know our Learners so well that they know if it is their work or not their work uh when teachers are handling 8 10 12 kids the ability to know the learner well is very easy excuse me and hence the ability to know whether it's the learner work or not their work becomes easy having said that the way we Orient our teachers is we tell them that hey please equip them with the right tools to use chat GPT or any AI tool effective don't say Hey you cannot use it because I think I'll be doing this service interesting um how do you uh you know how do you get great quality people to stay with you how do you control attrition and because I'm assuming uh schools with lower attrition are going to deliver much better outcome simply because the stability of the teachers the long connection which a teacher can have with kids and you know so so how did you learn what are some of your lessons in terms of attracting great people retaining them [Music] yeah so I think uh there are two or three areas but the number one area in my view and I strongly believe this because I also spend a lot of time doing this in our organization is the culture and environment today people that are in education uh you know I told you that promoters that want to get into education have to get into it for the right reasons so similarly people that get into education a teacher a admin staff or any of them get into it for the right reasons today if you look at salary scales for a teacher and the kind of work that they do versus someone in the field of Finance it's not comparable even though teacher salary scales have gone very very high and they're well paid now and a lot of teachers can make a livelihood out of it you can't compare to a guy in finance okay so people in this industry are in this industry for the right reasons they're passionate about it they want to be there so the number one reason that I strongly believe and that has worked for jbcn to maintain really low attrition and retain people is the culture and the environment you provide uh I think it has to be an environment where I always tell people I want people to come and want to come to jbcn I don't want a teacher to feel like oh it's a job that I'm going to I don't want Learners to feel like oh I have to go to school rather get up saying Hey I want to go to school uh I want vendors I want everyone that enters the school to be happy to want to be there uh to actually feel that they are contributing to the growth of a learner contributing to the impact that they will have on this individual as he or she moves along his educational Journey what are some of the practices or uh you know like how do you achieve this in real life having teachers who are genuinely motivated uh and happy yeah so there are lots of things and when I said I personally spend time I spend a lot of time with HR I spend a lot of time in the schools culture building in interacting with individual teachers groups of teachers Town Halls so there are lots of practices the first and foremost is transparency and honesty so I think that is something that we practice across the board any teachers allowed to come give a suggestion all the senior people in the organization have a open door policy to a teacher can write to me directly and in 48 hours to 72 hours I'll give them an appointment unless I'm traveling and that's applicable to any senior person in the organization so honesty and transparency is the first Common vision is important so we do monthly I spend time with the teachers across the school sharing the vision of the school the goals of the school what we are here to achieve I think it's important for a secondary teacher to know what the pre- primary is doing and for pre- primary teachers to know what were the accomplishments of secondary and the placements Etc so alignment of vision is important because then everyone knows I'm working towards a common goal teacher engagement is really important 80 to 85% of our working staff are uh women and it's a very women oriented industry so making sure that they have a best friend best friend at work making sure they have a voice so we do a lot of external surveys we uh work with a global company called Gallup uh where they do surveys where teachers can share feedback with us or not teachers all employees and then every year we pick up two or three areas of improvement share it with them transparently saying hey you said this is not proper in the school this is how we're going to work on it sometimes we be honest with them saying hey you said that we need more space you know the faculty Lounge is not big enough we say sorry guys this is Bombay you know space is a constraint we can't help you in this but at least we've acknowledged what they've asked for so a lot of communication with the teacher survey feedback teacher engagement is really important so we do a lot of fun activities in in school outside School uh building relationships Beyond a professional level which is important so teachers having friends in school having people they trust having seniors that they can talk to we have an outstanding program called I connect so while you have your performance program where your kras and kpis are given and you they have evaluated regular regularly I connect is where your up to two sometimes three senior line managers talk to you every quarter on your personal requirements so how things at home especially during Co and tough times is there anything we can help you with are you going through anything personally so there's a personal it's almost like a counseling session a lot of money is invested in professional development I think teachers want to grow by innately a good teacher is someone who is a lifelong learner it's someone who wants to learn because only if you want to learn can you impart that skill into the learner so there's a lot of focus on teacher training professional development personal growth within the oran organization P professional opportunities within the organization so that's something we do really really well uh and lastly I mean and secondly so one is the this part of it the second is of course the salary so coming to the culture transparency and the salary we combine this every year we have an international organization called ASA that we work with that picks out salary scales across Ross international schools in India so they'll pick a few schools in the city a few outside the city a few boarding schools and so on and so forth they have a mix and every year you benchmarks we do benchmarking every year we do benchmarking for one uh group of teachers so it could be pre- primary it could be the PE teachers it could be the senior leaders it could be the 9 10 11 12 secondary teachers so every year it's not everyone because that's a very exhaustive process it could be admin but every year we do a benchmark and present it openly and say our salary average salary is at 100 this is what the industry is at and these are the 15 schools or types of schools sometimes they don't want to be named four from Bombay with this kind of background people kind of figed out with school for boarding schools in massui Delhi whatever whatever and we have very transparent and sometimes we've gone to them so two years ago we had an instance where the pre- primary scales ours we were 90 and we saw the Benchmark was at 100 we said hey guys without a question next year the average is going to move to 110 we want to be 5 to 10% above the industry standard no questions asked now what your individual salary will be will be based on your k your performance Etc but everyone will get that bump will your Bump be from 90 to 100 or 90 to 95 and someone from 95 to 110 that will vary based on your line management but the average will move up so again lot of transparency we don't like to hide things you measure performance of teachers what the way uh yeah so uh we have a very detailed uh performance appraisal system uh which is again very open transparent the goals the end goals the expectations are set 15 months in advance so by March April it is set for the next academic year which is July to June is broken into two broad categories three broad categories the first and foremost that we assess teachers are is on attitude for me I think attitude brings altitude uh I can build the competence of a teacher I can't change the attitude of a teacher uh or of an individual not only a teacher so there's a lot of key Focus areas on the attitude of a teacher which in which things like did he or she go out of her way to assist a learner did they identify certain special skill sets in a learn and how did they horn it did they work well with their peers and how did they help a peer and so you know there's a lot of criteria so the first and foremost is attit the second is the technical aspect of it so how well did they how well did they deliver the content the curriculum the program that we set out to achieve uh and of course we have an m& process where we have teacher observations classroom observations by their line managers senior managers Etc so how creative were they what was the use of Technology uh how what was the class response lots of different aspects in terms of the technical aspect which is the delivery of the program when I say program it could involve co-curricular we have a strong program that teachers have trained on something called quality Circle time so we spend a lot of time on EQ twice a week our Learners go through uh a program that the teachers run called uh which is focus on EQ so we talk about bullying open communication sex education hormonal changes uh social media and the effects of social media so it's a design curriculum that our uh we have an enrichment program in the school which is designed by the counselors the psychologist the child psychiatrists and all of that and that's delivered so when I say the jbcn program it includes everything not just the academic program and a part of the assessment is on teacher initiatives so did you step up and Say Hey I want to volunteer to take up this particular event and do it did you set up step up and say hey there's a new program on design thinking that we' have introduced for this age group can I get trained and take a lead on it uh and so on and so forth so new initiatives innovative solutions did I find an Innovative way of teaching the same topic uh differently so so Innovation creativity uh initiative so these there are three or four parameters that we assess them on which we say has a percentage and again it's the line managers and people that are involved and the seniors that say that yes this is what the teacher did or this is what he or she did differently uniquely he or she went and actually did a mini workshop with the rest of the teachers to share something that worked in their classroom classroom management Behavioral Management these are aspects that teachers deal with bullying language how did I deal with it in a positive way so when I say program it entails all of this so a teacher's job is very very hard I always tell parents that my job sitting in my cabin is easier than being in a classroom for that 40 minutes with your learner yeah so true so true so this is how we evaluate okay I want to end with spending a couple of minutes on understanding your journey uh you don't come from like Legacy wealth right so and you spoke of how a school is a high capital investment business you need to do a lot of initial capital investment and today you have five schools uh in like five campuses so how did you how did you do that just take me through that journey of you know so my biggest inspiration has been my mother she's the founder and chers of JBC uh I think you know we we just rebranded ourselves recently in jdc and calling ourselves the change makers because we believe that every learner is a change maker he or she is going to become a change maker when they move forward but every teacher is a change maker because they are bringing in change every day into the classroom so the teacher learner relationship in our school uh is so important that we said that in at jbcn we believe that we are change makers but the foundation of being a change maker I believe is my mother because 40 years ago she broke the glass ceiling by being a young woman entrepreneur who followed her passion was a teacher initially uh out of experience of being a mother said that I think the education system the preschool system in Bombay can change uh so when I moved out of preschool into a high school she started her own preschool and then me that one into six preschools and she was running it all by herself her first school is in was built in 1984 we still run that school Under the brand of children's a pre a preschool is also a play school a play school yes we call it preschools okay understood so so a play school which we call Children's no she started in a small premises with 12 Learners a leaking roof they there used to be dustins over there so that the water would drip in it uh because she didn't have the capital to kind of build on that uh so for me my mother is an inspiration and is the original change maker uh to be a woman entrepreneur she was the she was the first one to bring in a moner system in South Bombay she was the first one to bring a pyp program and IV program in Bombay she's the first one to build a group of international schools so there are a lot of first that she has done but coming back to the Jour she did did this very successfully uh and was a very available parent as well for me uh and the reason she only ran preschools is because of play schools is because they run from 7:30 8 in the morning to 1:30 so she was always there when I came back from school uh and she was very clear she got a lot of opportunities to uh build franchises to run a business to start high schools and she was very clear that my balance of me being a mother and an entrepreneur is very important I always say that people in the education space are so social entrepreneurs not entrepreneur entrepreneurs so I think she is an example of a really successful social entrepreneur I mentioned a little earlier that I had the opportunity opportunity to to the IB program and study in Kani melon and that's when I told Mom that that I want to get into education I want to start an organization that can do this uh being the only kid my mom gave me a bait saying okay if you don't stay back in America and come back to India then I'll help you so it was a win-win situation for Mom and me and that's how we started jbcn in my Junior and Senior year I wanted to take a gap year build this uh my parents gave me one on the backside say please go back and finish graduation and I'm glad they did because I don't think I would have graduated other we started jbcn but we didn't have the capital to build schools we didn't have the funds uh so we started off by Consulting and building programs to be a management armed for schools and the focus was always International Education and from 2003 to 2008 2009 we consulted and supported about 12 international schools all over the country in Hyderabad and Amad in b and rachi and all over uh built some really successful schools ran some really successful programs uh and then we realized somewhere along the line that our philosophy our long-term Vision our core ideology of running Su successful schools started getting compromised by promoters once the numbers came in once the students came in uh the decision making became became different the intangible decisions uh were not taking place uh and that's when we set out and said hey we need to build down School uh my mom through a common connect knew Mr raakesh junjun Wala the late raakesh junjala and then met him a couple of times he had approached her once to start a school but that project didn't go through and she told me sh Kunal he is I've met him a few times but he's a man of he's a man with a gold Golden Heart and I have a lot of respect for him and the few interactions I have with him I'm enamored and I I you know I really respect him so I'm going to just pick up the phone and call him and say hey I'm pinky Dalal I don't know if you remember but I want to come meet you and of course he remember he called us in we had a obviously a bunch of meetings and came up with a plan and he said okay Pinky and Kunal if you want to start your own schools I'm going to invest and support you and uh let's build jbcn schools and uh that's how the Journey of jbcn started in 2008 and N he invested he is still our largest partner uh I I still believe that he is looking upon us and making sure that we do good work he's he was more like a Godfather to me personally but to jbcn as an organization we've seen some really difficult times when we started off uh a a lot of our school projects were stalled we had court cases we were initial phase we bought certain or we got into certain properties which we later realized were disputed it was a learning phase lots of learnings lots of tough times there were times where we were not sure we can pay a salary for the next month but he was there God was kind and we went through that phase and I am glad I went through that phase because when Mr Jun junal I invested I was all of 26 uh and 25 and I feel that at that time you feel oh nothing can go wrong I wanted to build an education Institute I started a company I consulted so many schools I got funding I got funding from the largest most successful investor in India you know things can't go wrong but I'm glad I went through that fouryear period of real struggle real tough times none of our school projects were taking off but he was a good patient investor who always told us that don't worry this is part of life this is a journey you've always known how to build curriculum and academic programs you have to learn how to go through the whole government process we fell we faltered we made mistakes uh we have to learn the whole process of building infrastructure and good infrastructure and that is a journey and a process we went through and today I can say that we at a stage where we can continue to build schools very successfully with lesser and lesser effort uh and that's been the Journey of JBC and it's been uh a very satisfying journey I think in the space that we are today Learners and parents come up to us literally and meet them socially and they'll hug me and they'll take Mom's hand and kiss her hand and think you know Mrs Dalal because of you my son is where he is today my daughters where he is today uh she has over 10 15,000 alumni from children's Nook we have a large alumni base now from jbcn because we've had many graduating batches across our various schools uh so it's been a journey full of learning lots of ups and downs lots of learnings uh you know one thing I do is I document a lot of our learnings and mistakes we make every every time we do that uh and i' like to refer to them once in a while uh whenever we are building a new school and we make mistakes every time we build a new school as well but hopefully we don't repeat the same mistakes for me it's important that we don't repeat the same mistakes uh and overall very fulfilling very satisfying Journey one thing I forgot to mention is when I started jbcn and I was in Kani melan everyone was applying for a job so I said Cho I should also experience what it is to interview and get a job and I actually got a job on Wall Street with Morgan Stanley and invest to banking in New York and I turned it down because I said no my calling is to come back back and get into education all my friends said you're crazy $40,000 living in New York you're single I mean what's wrong with you uh but I'm I think the universe has a way of telling you uh you know what's right and what's wrong and I'm glad I followed my path and my journey and here we sit today with five campuses over 6,000 students close to thousand people working in jbcn and like I said it's a very fulfilling and satisfying J amazing do you plan to expand Beyond Bombay I think we can still build a few more schools in Bombay I think each suburb is a mini city is a micromarket we believe that there's a lot of potential to build quality educational institutes in those areas and because we've been schools where we're involved in we focus on it for a couple of years before the next one I think there's a huge opportunity but yes eventually uh there you know we will exhaust Bombay and uh we will kind of have to move out uh to different cities and you did try once right uh opening a school in another city we tried to open a city so one of the mistakes and learnings we made very initially what I was talking about is we thought that when we build schools and we got this funding we should build one in different parts of India so so that we are pan here not realizing the operational challenges the government challenges and so on and so forth I don't want to get into it so we bought a land in nakur and Chennai and everywhere thinking we'd open schools everywhere uh the Chennai land we bought ended up being disputed and we got cned into buying that we had to sell that land at a cost lower than what we bought it the naur land we bought because everyone said there's a Mian project and IT project coming up nothing came up we ended up selling the land 14 years or 13 years later at the same cost at which we bought it we bought it in 2008 and sold it in 2022 at the same price that we bought it at uh so yeah we did try and we realize that no we need to build schools in Bombay and even today if you ask me that when we move out of Bombay I will always look at a city where I can build three or four schools rather than building one school in four different cities Okay so that you have the ability to invest in a management bandwidth uh without needing to travel all over the country sure understood okay uh how was covid for you like was there Financial stress fees not coming in did you experience those kind of stresses or because you are in a slightly more premium category so you would probably not have seen that so much yeah I think fortunately while everything that happened around us was really unfortunate I think for an as an organization Co was the biggest learning period for us and I'll tell you why there are two or three reasons uh one is we actually understood the true potential of the people in jbcn on March 20th covid lockdown was announced uh and on March 27th on Monday we had 4 and a half th000 Learners and 600 faculty online running an outstanding program and never stopped for 15 or 16 months that we were lockedown it kept improving we kept adding new softwares we invested a massive amount in technology because when you're online you need to make sure the program is engaging so it was not about just delivering a program but using lots of different tools and I don't want to get into it but we invested in 2025 tools or more we invested in the Wi-Fi of all our teachers to be up to a certain standard we managed to deliver laptops and teacher computers to all our teachers that didn't have devices at home that were stuck in lockdown so the way our teachers pivoted into the digital age and the learning we got as an organization of what the capability of our team is was tremendous we had belief and faith that we can achieve anything in JBC the second is the use of technology and this entire program allowed us to realize how we can bring in efficiency into JBC we realize that there's a solve for a lot of things in jbcn through technology that we were not accessing and it actually allowed us to reflect on bringing in efficiency is improving our systems improving the output from individuals in covid uh so that was the secondary and largely I think we were one of the few School groups the number of Learners in JBC and increased through the two years of co uh we had set up a health test for parents that had challenges with fee it was a very very small percentage uh we gave a lot of Lev uh for them to pay the fee if there were delays it was okay we worked with them uh we were very transparent with parents in terms of we didn't increase the fee for three years we were very transparent I must have met between 600 to 800 parents online in the first two months of covid through Zoom calls explaining the rationale uh we didn't reduce the fee we didn't reduce teacher salaries everyone got salary on time for the 15 18 months we didn't fire anyone uh we paid our bus drivers we paid our security guards we paid everyone and the rationale was that and we explained to parents that why the fee is not reducing is because we said that hey we want to all bus drivers for example know your kids police verified do you want a situation where you have new bus drivers 15 months or whenever Co opens up no we don't Safety and Security is of Paramount importance so parents were with us we worked with them closely we worked with the ptas uh and it was I think it built the bond it built the relationships uh even today when we meet parents we talk about those meetings that we had in Co and how they went and how we supported each other and I think it was apart from everything else and the unfortunate part that happened in the world and for families that suffered I think as an organization it was a really successful 15 months in terms of learning and understanding of the organization amazing thank you so much for your time Kunal it was a real pleasure thank you up thank you so much for having me