THE BUSINESS OF EDUCATION - International Indian

[ COVER STORy ]
HH Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum and Sunny Varkey
HRH Prince Charles and Sunny Varkey
[By MONA PARIKH MCNICHOLAS & FRANK RAJ ]
Sunny Varkey’s mission of redefining
education in the UAE and beyond has
succeeded in creating what no single
entrepreneur has managed to achieve in
the field of Middle East education. In four
short decades the Dubai based Keralite
‘edupreneur’ who strategically christened
his educational organization Global
Education Management Systems (GEMS),
has successfully developed a multinational
corporation with schools in the Arabian
Gulf and beyond. It is no ordinary feat for
a visionary who cheerfully admits, he was a
good student, but studies were not his forte.
“I love doing business and have always
been an entrepreneur right from the start,”
Sunny confesses.
Charismatic and disarming, his innate entrepreneurial
skills have clearly stood him
in good stead where many a person with
an ordinary educational background like
his may not have succeeded. His success is
the envy of competitors he has left far behind
and much debated by people skeptical
about his ‘business as normal’ approach to
education. “We are pioneers, even radical
you might say, and as such controversy follows
us everywhere we go.” Sunny has succeeded
by bucking conventional wisdom
that conforms to the notion of education
as a non-profit enterprise. Challenging the
way society views high quality education,
he runs GEMS like any successful business,
for profit.
Sunny was born on the 9th of April, 1957,
in Kerala. His parents came to the UAE a
year later as teachers and have taught English
to many of the VIP nationals of UAE.”
Their tuition fee of Rs 25 a month eventually
resulted in the first Our Own English
High School, founded in 1968, which was
then only a makeshift setup.” In the early
1980s, when required by the Dubai authorities,
a purpose-built school was established,
becoming the first step towards the Varkey
global education empire. Did Sunny study
at this school? “No,” he laughs, “I was in
boarding school in India, a short time at
St Mary’s School in Dubai and then completed
my A-levels in the UK.”
He first started his career in Dubai in
1977 in banking, with a stint at Standard
Chartered Bank and helped with his parents’
school, at times even driving the
school bus at 5.30 am. But Sunny was restless
for his own business. And the opportunity
lay right before him. At the age of 23,
when Sunny took over the management of
Our Own English High School, it had 720
students and 27 teachers.
Today, Sunny owns the largest network
of private schools in the United Arab Emirates
– 26 schools with almost 85,000 students
of 124 nationalities and 6,200 “education
professionals” - specialists and staff
from around the world, providing the Indian,
British, American and IB curriculum.
GEMS is the largest employer of Indian and
British teachers outside of their home country.
His goal is remarkable - he wants to be
the biggest private education provider in
the world, with a global chain of schools. “If
the likes of Marriott have four or five thousand
hotels, I don’t know why we should not
be able to do the same,” he muses.
GEMS manages a growing network of
nearly 100 high quality international schools
around the world. Sunny hopes to take that
number to 5000 in 15 years. They currently
have 11 schools in the UK and are in the
process of signing up deals in the USA, Singapore,
China and India. How does he view
the educational sector in India?
“In India, 98% of the so called ‘Educational
Trusts’ are actually commercial,”
THE INTERNATIONAL INDIAN 57