It all begins with a dream! A dream of creating, defining, and achieving something. To withstand all the challenges, surpass all the hurdles, and deliver the best of what you have to the relevant industry. The same happened with Vinit Upadhyay, the Managing Director of P. U. Educational Services in the educational sphere.

In the following interview between Insights Success and Mr. Vinit, you will learn how one gets motivated, receives support, gains knowledge about the educational world, visions to mold it, confronts the challenges, and ultimately becomes a global influencer, reshaping the whole industry.

1. Please introduce yourself and your journey as an educator, to our readers, and also tell us what inspired you to pursue this a career?

In my initial college days, I never thought of coming to this segment, but yes, I had a dream to do something special in the field of education. My teacher Prof. Jyoti Bhatia invited me to guide junior students, and things turned around from there. I realized that this is one thing that gives enormous satisfaction and hence started taking more lectures.

Since then, I started taking an interest in teaching more seriously. Today, I have served various educational institutions in various capacities for nearly a decade. Still, I am thrilled to talk to students and feel what I can do better today that I couldn’t do it yesterday. How can I make things easy and precise for the learners that they can enjoy their lessons?

It is really very important for educators to strive for new means and modes to make learners not only to learn for exams. Sometimes it is felt that we are responsible for the short goals of learners. We must give them a broad vision. It is necessary for us to understand the changing learners’ requirements. Still, a lot of educators put emphasis on old methods, which is quite not working. Too much innovation is also difficult for the learners to adapt and for parents to understand, so I always use a mix of both methods, which is key to reach maximum learners to have a quality educational experience.

The journey had a lot of ups and downs, like a rollercoaster ride. Being an educator is not a small thing. It is more than a profession; I consider that it is a huge responsibility that we have; where we design and construct the generations to come. It is not only a business but huge responsibility so we can’t be running after our profits all the time. My grandfather Mr. Pravinkant Upadhyay was my role model in this field who was a principal of G.T. High School in Mumbai. He is my source of inspiration to continuously strive to perform better in this field. In fact, after him, I am the only member of the family who joined in as an educator. That’s how our company has been named after him as P.U. Educational Service.

In this journey, many educators have played a huge role like Mr. Zameer Nathani, Mr. Amit Oak, Mr. Sanjay Bhatia, Mr. Harshad Dixit, and especially Mr. Vijay Sugnani, who I thank for keeping faith in me and allowing me to author various books under his publication which was a turning moment in my life. Writing books gave a new dimension to my teaching skills. Mr. Vijay gave us a free hand to write the best content, which was the biggest motivation to work with him.

2. Tell us more about P.U. Educational Services and how you have helped educational institutes deliver quality education.

We started this journey of P.U. Educational Service with a phone call from my good friend Mr. Arhana Roy. I had left my job and was having free time to think and explore new avenues. His phone call changed things around. He introduced me to his friends who were interested in starting some skill-based programs at their institute. Mr. Roy told me to meet them with my idea. I met them, but things couldn’t work out. I was not having any professional set up and lost the deal despite having a good concept.

On my way back home, I did figure out that this is the right time to explore this opportunity. Why not start with professional set up that suits to the educational institute. That is how I decided to set up the P.U. Educational Service family.

On the way to this journey people like Mr. Jemini Patel, Mr. Sunil Kapadia, Dr. Jay Talati, Mr. Parth Kotecha, Dr. Jharna Kalra, Dr. Hasan, Prof. Tanvi Kothi & many more people kept on supporting us to nurture value-based, skill-driven and more importantly knowledge-based educational service to the educational institute.

Mr. Mehul Buch, who is a renowned actor and a good friend, supported us in the initial stages of our establishment and also a brand ambassador of P.U. Educational Service. We were developing our brand slowly with different associates, and we are quite glad that all trusted us, and we got the opportunity to collaborate with some premier service providers.

In meanwhile, we had lost some more opportunities just because of being new and having no experience with such services. We also had turned down offers that could have been tempting for the young and new entrepreneur but would not have been fruitful for the learners. It was a big decision to take. But today, I feel I did the right thing. We were very clear that we will not be giving false commitments and no false hopes. We would comfortable to earn less but not at the cost of compromising on the quality of our services to the learners and to the Educational Institutes.

It is always said that when one door closes, some other door will open. The same thing happened to us. We got an opportunity to work with renowned institutions within a few years of establishment. Today we have worked with a couple of big universities in India, we have also served some of the international clients from countries like the USA, Germany & UK plus we have worked with some of the reputed educational institutions from Gujarat, Rajasthan, Goa, Madhya Pradesh, etc.

One of our keys to success is our tailor-made programs which are being designed keeping educational institution and learners at the center of our every activity. The whole P.U. Educational Service team continuously thrives on serving the best that we can make their experience worth remembering by giving those best of the services to satisfy their needs. This is just the beginning of new down; I feel our best is yet to come.

3. Pertaining to your experience of more than 10 years in the education sector, how, according to you, has the Indian Education Sector developed over time?

The growth can be seen but not the substantial one. Yes, we are moving ahead, but still, some stereotype attitude and approach is a matter of concern. The speed of the change is too slow. By the time we adopt the change, it is sometimes too late. Education is a segment where we gave the right to education, but we missed on making that right worth remembering and cherishing. I feel a lot needs to be done.

The government of India’s initiative of starting the ‘SWAYAM’ platform is one of the landmark moves, allowing FDI in the education sector, and giving sufficient funds for making structural changes with strategic vision in this budget were key developments. All the stakeholders of the sector will need to start forecasting a broader vision for the generations to come. Grass root development and removing outdated curriculum with dynamic leadership to bring about drastic change.

In the last decade, I have seen changes coming in, but most of them have been either forced or situational in nature. Yes, the focus has been on the development of skills and making learners’ industry-ready are key developments that have taken place in the last 10 years. A lot of emphasis has been put on making educators more of research-oriented, but effort of making educators quality-based researchers has been a lost opportunity.

• What is your opinion on the necessity for skill development within the upcoming generation to be in line with the industry requirements?

Skill plays a vital role in the coming generation. As Hon’ble Prime Minister Shri. Narendra Modi said, “The more we give importance to skill development, the more competent be our youth.” One of the major reasons is that the industrial environment is going through dynamic and rapid changes, so in order to keep pace with that educational environment should also grow with the same dynamics. In order to do that, a focus on quality should not be neglected. It is more of a relevance to the industry to have well-prepared youth to save cost and time to train them. India will be the youngest nation in the world, with those opportunities are coming, but with alarming challenges that speed with which job creation is done will need to gear up the speed of job creation. T his opportunity comes once in the ages, and I guess no country will afford to allow it to go in vain. Skill development will play a vital role in the coming generation.

• As an educator, what challenges have you faced while building your venture in the education services domain?

Education is a key domain in today’s state. Every client looks forward to getting the best of services, and of course, the competition is stiff too. A lot of efforts need to be taken, and in the initial phase creating faith in the mind of the client is the first to serve them the best. It takes a lot of pain to win the trust and confidence of the client. It is enormous responsibility being in the educational service domain, which has well-established giants in the industry.

Being relatively new in the field takes a lot of effort to convince the client that we can also perform. It was difficult to prove that you can also give the best of the services. Our team had gone through a lot of difficulties in the initial days. More or fewer people have a firm opinion that educational services are not beyond the coaching industry. It was difficult to communicate that we are not just a training institute, but beyond that, we are an educational supermarket to meet every client’s expectations.

People can’t see the educational service domain besides the coaching industry, and that is the saddest part of this. We had difficulty in making our value-based educational services domain to function parallel to the customer expectations. Competition is stiff and yes, there are organizations that do promise everything in beginning and then back out at later stage. Our honesty and transparency helped us to overcome that difficulty. As then, we got a customer base that has been associated with us in the long run. Challenges made us come out with the best in us.

• What would be your advice to those aspiring to become entrepreneurs in the education sector?

Be honest, transparent, and guide right to your learners. Avoid false selling or false commitments to the learners. You might be successful in a small period, but in the long run, it will hamper you badly. This domain is different, and to survive in this domain, you need to have a lot of patience and make sure to remain focus on your domain. Many of the giants have diversified in the areas of other domains and lost their goodwill in the market of their original domain. Keep working hard, and clear vision will lead to success.

• What have you envisioned for yourself and your organization in the near future?

Every business has the vision to expand their presence in the market, we are also the same, but we would like to grow more verticals to our organization. In the next couple of years, we would like to register our presence in at least Western India. With an overall vision to have a presence at least one place in every state of the country. Our major focus will be to keep our values intact, no matter how big we grow.