Priti Adani. Jayshree Lalbhai. Manjula Pooja Shroff. Call them the high priestesses of the education sector in Gujarat, or the better halves of super-successful industrialists who chose to move out of their spouses? shadows and carve a niche for themselves. And though education is their mission, their approach roads are as diverse and individualistic as each of them.
Take the case of Priti Adani, wife of one of India?s fastest-growing billionaires and seventh-richest Indian, as ranked by Forbes magazine, Gautam Adani, chairman of the Rs 27,000-crore Adani empire. She?s unobtrusively treading a path hitherto less travelled, both in the education as well as corporate social responsibility (CSR) space, with her school, Adani Vidya Mandir, and various other novel initiatives in the field of education. Adhering both in letter and spirit to her mission statement of ‘Empowering through Education’, Pritiben, as she is affectionately known in her school, is ensuring that the Adani Group actually touches the lives of as many people as possible.
Reveals the disarmingly unassuming and charming lady, who few know is a dentist by profession, ?Though the idea of starting a school aimed at children of lower middle class families was that of my husband, the conceptualisation and execution has been mine.?
A walk through the sprawling school shows that it?s truly a labour of love. With its delightfully colourful classrooms, wide and airy corridors with mosaics of fish and flowers on the floor, a huge steel and chrome canteen with a totally automated kitchen and lush green, impeccably manicured playgrounds, the school is a veritable child’s dream-come-true. And the happy and cherubic faces of the smartly turned out pupils in their grey trousers or skirts and red and black plaid shirts are testimony to the fact that Priti Adani is a hands-on manager who is keeping track of each and every minute facet of the school?s running.
?It’s been a truly challenging but immensely satisfying experience,? she exults. ?When the Adani school project, in particular, was envisaged, we didn’t realise it would be so challenging. That’s because apart from education, we are addressing social issues such as the adjustment of these children into mainstream society. In that sense, this is not a conventional school, as the children’s background and their psychological development is also our responsibility,? she elaborates.
Today, Adani Vidya Mandir, a philanthropic project, has a student strength of over 800 children from the lower strata of society with parental incomes of less than Rs 1 lakh per annum. Not only is education totally free, but children are also provided books, uniforms, as well as three meals a day. Interestingly, Pritiben’s long-term plan is to ensure hand-holding for meritorious students passing out of the school. ?We will provide them guidance and scholarships even at the college level and till they become employable,? she states. Any plans of opening schools along similar lines in other places? ?The model is replicable. We are already mulling opening a school at Orissa, where our new port project is coming up,? she discloses.
Like her husband, Pritiben, too, is a woman in a hurry to spread her area of work. Clearly not enamoured by the trappings of glamour that are associated with the lives of the rich and famous, Gautam Adani?s better half abhors the Page 3 party culture, devoting her spare time to monitoring her CSR and philanthropic initiatives under the banner of the Adani Foundation. These include supervising the running of two ITIs in Deesa and Mundra adopted by the foundation, where the quality of training is being upgraded to ensure employability of the local youth. The group is also assisting the state government in running 104 schools in the talukas and villages of Mundra, the site of its first port project. ?Through this initiative, we are touching the lives of 25,000-30,000 underprivileged children,? says Pritiben with quiet satisfaction. Interestingly though, Adani also has a presence in mainstream education in Gujarat and runs a school under the DAV banner in Mundra.
Unshackling Saraswati
But if CSR is the driving force behind Priti Adani’s forays into education, Manjula Pooja Shroff, wife of millionaire Pratul Shroff, chairman of eInfochipps, a Rs 200-crore technology design services and solutions company, is into the business of education with an eye on, as she aptly puts it, ‘the unshackling of Saraswati’.
Quips the vivacious lady, ?If liberalisation in the early ’90s unshackled Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, then the government?s recent decision to allow foreign direct investment (FDI) in the education sector is a move that will unshackle Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge and education.?And when that happens, Manjula Shroff is taking all possible steps to attract private equity with her Calorx brand of education straddling the complete learning spectrum, from ?the underprivileged to the affluent, from entry point (kindergarten) to exit point (Class 12) and from national syllabi to international syllabi (international baccalaureate)?.
Armed with a degree in political science from the Delhi University, Shroff first came to Ahmedabad to do a management education programme at the Indian Institute of Management (IIMA) 15 years ago. ?My first brush with how education can shape our personality happened when I joined college in Orissa, my native state,? she reminisces. ?Having been in a convent school throughout, I was completely at sea initially when I was exposed to students from small-town schools. It is then that I noticed how these students soon caught up with us through sheer tenacity and hard work and towards the end of college life, were actually giving us a run for our money.?
The seed of wanting to start a school that provided the grounding of a vernacular school ?given the fact that the analogy and logic of these children is very sound? as well as the grooming of an elite school got sown at that time itself. But it was post-marriage to entrepreneur Pratul Shroff that Manjula Shroff began contemplating setting up her own education brand. Her prowess in management came to the fore when, realising that positioning in this highly specialised industry was crucial to establishing a long-term foothold, Shroff decided to buy ?the required technical expertise and knowhow off the shelf? by investing in the Delhi Public School brand. ?DPS Bopal, set up in 1996, became the twenty-fifth franchise of the DPS chain and had an early-mover advantage,? she recalls.
With a seed capital of Rs 25 lakh paid over a three-year period, Shroff laid the foundation of what is today a Rs 32-crore education brand. While DPS Bopal remains the flagship school, with yet another DPS franchise school acquired in Ahmedabad a couple of years ago, Shroff’s endeavour has been to create her own education brand, which stood for quality and encompassed almost the entire gamut of teaching. Thus, DPS Bopal has within the school itself a unique initiative targeted at dyslexic children called Prerna. If Prerna deals with the learning marginalised, then VisamoKids deals with the educational needs of the economically marginalised. For those aiming for higher studies abroad, there’s the up-market Calorx School offering the IB programme, and for tiny tots there’s a chain of Calorx Pre-Schools. Recently, Calorx has also made a foray into the higher education space with the Calorx Teachers’ University.
With such a diverse spread, Shroff has over the past year, been busy putting her managerial skills to optimal use in ?corporatising the Calorx brand and unlocking its value?. Her rationale is simple: You can’t grow unless you’ve got foreign institutions backing you. ?It’s time to ride the wave in the education industry,? is her shrewd assessment of the current scenario. Her long-term vision? ?To expand the Calorx footprint geographically to make it a national brand in the next three-five years and also to forge collaborative international efforts.?
Sensitising society
For the wife of denim czar Sanjay Lalbhai, chairman of the Rs 3,500-crore Arvind Ltd, education is her ‘karma field’, a passion, as well as a legacy passed on by her mother-in-law. But today, Jayshree Lalbhai is as fiercely protective about her school Rachna, arguably among Ahmedabad’s finest schools, as if it were her own. Says the passionate educationist, ?Education for me is not only about creating knowledge banks, but about creating sensitive human beings. I wanted to work for society using education as a catalyst for change.?
The immensely down-to-earth and affable better half of Sanjay Lalbhai, scion of one of Gujarat’s oldest industrial families, is a qualified nursery teacher from Sofiya Polytechnic in Mumbai and has a Masters in special education with a focus on emotionally and mentally-challenged children from the famous BM Institute of Mental Health in Ahmedabad. Jayshree Lalbhai even worked with autistic and schizophrenic children before she had her own children. ?I left once I had my own children, because I couldn’t devote complete attention and dedication that these children require.?
Rachna, a school started by her illustrious mother-in-law Pannaben Lalbhai in 1963, became the focus of her attention thereafter. In fact, the school’s nursery wing was created by her in 1985, ?because I felt there was a need for a special building for the very young children?.
But it was only after her mother-in-law’s ill-health forced her to relinquish control of the school that Jayshree Lalbhai started taking a keener interest in the running of the school. After Pannaben’s death in 2004, she took complete charge of the school. ?In that sense, I’m just carrying the torch for my mother-in-law,’? she states, a trifle emotionally.
?As a child, I was a rebel myself and never great at academics, but I owe it to the school I studied in for making me what I am today by treating me with unusual sensitivity and helping me tap my true potential,? she recalls. Today, Rachna is a school that treats all its children ?as different people with different viewpoints and sensibilities?. And though a self-professed ‘disaster at administration’, Jayshree Lalbhai is the brain behind planning the minutest details of the school’s curriculum with the teachers.
Apart from Rachna, Jayshree Lalbhai also looks after two schools owned by the Lalbhai family. The century-old schools were started for girls from conservative Jain families. Gangaba Kanyashala and Mohinaba Kanyashala have recently been merged and the English section is being run by the Rachna administration itself. Interestingly, none of the schools run by the Lalbhais target the affluent, despite the fact that both Sanjay Lalbhai and his sister passed out from Rachna itself. The school, located in an overcrowded residential area of Ahmedabad, is today constrained for space, but it more than compensates with love and care. Quips Jayshree Lalbhai, ?Too much love can never spoil anyone, too much indulgence can.?
