Latest / ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence / Why Universities Need To Be Marketable Brands - Burzeen Bhathena, Marketing Director, NMIMS (#017)

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Why Universities Need To Be Marketable Brands - Burzeen Bhathena, Marketing Director, NMIMS (#017) · ContraMinds Podcast - Unlocking Personal Growth and Professional Excellence

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, it is more than that.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll tell you, I'm very happy to say that we are the first university which this year conducted AI assisted personal interviews for our MBA program.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's the we are the first, and this was a proper, proper AI base.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, like you know, other brands have used AI where there were just maybe one or two questions which were pre-fed into the system.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: The system would ask, and your whatever the candidate replied that was recorded, and that's about it.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: Our AI implementation went much much further.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: The candidates SOP and CV were uploaded to the AI tool before he or she came in.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: The candidate would sit questions the AI would ask were based on the SOP and were based on the CV.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: So you did not have very generic questions, you didn't we were actually testing the person's knowledge and the depth of his knowledge rather than testing the ignorance, which unfortunately tends to happen in a lot of personal interviews.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: Because I may be from an engineering background, let's say my interviewer is from the commerce background, there will be a very different thought process because we are using AI, all these issues and these are absolutely normalized.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_02: The best part is of more than 14,000 candidates took this AI-based uh interviews in Mumbai campus.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: We took feedback from a lot of students, everybody said that this was a fantastic thing, and I'm very sure that even leading institutions will very slowly move their personal interview process and make it AI-based.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Today I am in conversation with Burzine Bathina.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: Burzine is the marketing director of the well-known university NMIMS.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Education marketing is gaining a lot of attention with ed tech and new technology disrupting this industry.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Education marketing is undergoing a lot of transformation, and the way marketing campaigns and ideas are being built in educational institutions is truly a fascinating place to know and understand.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Berzine has over 20 years of experience in marketing, having worked with leading media companies and with automotive companies before becoming a marketing director at an MIMS.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: I spoke to Berzine about his interest in taking education marketing role, which normally marketers don't take so easily, and what was his interest to actually look at education marketing as a career.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: Then I spoke to him about how education marketing is being done by institutions like NMIMS, who are their customers, who are their consumers, who are their influencers, how do they market programs, what kind of marketing tools do they use, and finally, how do they reach out to corporates and build their brand.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Berzin shared some interesting insights into how a marketing department is built within an educational institution.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: He also shared some interesting insights into the media mix around how they spend the money in such institutions, and how the fact that professors are also brands which they use as thought leaders to get students into the program.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: With expanding campuses, every campus is a brand that has to be built locally.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: Berzine shared some of the platforms that they use and the ideas that his own team puts together to build NMIMS as a brand.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: It looked like education marketing is a complex machine, and how they really have to plan and build their campaigns was an interesting conversation and learning as far as this episode is concerned.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: Over to my conversation with Barzine Bathina.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: This episode of the Super CMO show was made possible by the great folks at Moving Voice.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: Moving Voice provides a global technology platform built by out-of-home advertising experts automating the process of planning, buying, executing and measuring out-of-home campaigns.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: Moving Walls helps leading brands and agencies to move to audience-based planning, improve turnaround times with automated proposals and implement programmatic digital out-of-form and verify campaign performances.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: Moving Walls helps measure, reach and influence moving audiences across the world.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: For more information, log on to www.movingwalls.com.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people in marketing take up brand marketing, FMCGA marketing, financial services marketing.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: So how did you end up with education marketing?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: So well education for me is much more than marketing.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: I am also a faculty.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: I also teach uh digital marketing has been my forte.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: I've been when I entered digital marketing way back in 2008 when digital was still growing.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of people didn't understand digital marketing, a lot of people were questioning newspaper, TV, radio were outdoors, was still ruling the roost.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: Digital was seen more as like, you know, okay, fine.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: A brand like Times of India is having newspaper, is having a Times Now channel.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, Timesofindia.com is just another touch point where which is there, and that is how advertisers used to see.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, come to like you know, fast forward to 2025, everything has totally changed.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: Things took a bigger turn in 2015 when Geo came and actually commoditized uh internet, internet became cheaper than water.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_02: People had I used to always quip that in India people might or might not have access to fresh water, but definitely they will have access to internet, and maybe they can order someday water on the internet also.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, we've seen that come 2025 with uh with Quick Commerce taking over.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: Not only water, you can today order a snack, you can order whatever you want.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_02: Now, my foray into education happened almost nine years back when I started my career with NMIMS, one of India's leading universities.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: I started with the distance learning and online learning programs.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: So we started with promotion of those programs first.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: We also introduced multiple programs during the almost one little over four years stint that I had with NMIMS distance learning.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_02: Then in 2021, I shifted to the main university.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: It was a very different ball game because when it came to online, marketing had a very large impact.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: Because if you reg if you through your online promotions, if you manage to spend say 100 rupees and get registrations worth 1000 rupees, you could actually end up taking all the thousand students or whatever you have got.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas in case of the full-time or in case of university, the challenge happens is because the seats are limited and you cannot suddenly increase the number of seats because these are brick and mortar, and these are governed very strictly by UGC, uh, you know, a lot of other bodies also which govern.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_02: So, as a result, whatever marketing we do, the idea is to increase the registration, increase the rejection rate.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: The higher the rejection rate, you start getting better quality students, and better quality students in turn uh translates into better quality internships and of course better quality placements with leading companies in India, which in turn absolutely like you know gets you to a better quality students in your next consecutive drive.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_02: I call this as the virtuous cycle of admissions, and that's something which like you know I try to follow and I try to ensure that we imbibe for different programs at different campuses.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_02: Now, this was something which was very interesting to me.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: It looked like you know, education is something which not many mainstream marketers consider.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: I remember the first time when uh so I primarily came from the auto industry, yeah.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, worked with like you know, had the fortune of being very close to being a part of the Volkswagen digital campaigns way back in 2014, uh, 16 when uh uh digital was not such a big thing.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: Also had a distinction of working for a little short stint with fiat pricer automobiles, or now uh they are known as Telantis in India.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: So these um so my shifting to education was actually viewed by a lot of people as oh, you know, maybe I'm tired of the corporate world or I don't want to like you know too much into this.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: But people don't realize that education is a very high involvement product.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_02: I would say I would actually compare it with a user buying insurance, it is that high an involvement because probably after buying a house, uh maybe a car, and of course, like you know, in India marriages are one of the biggest things where people spend a lot of money.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_02: Fourth biggest investment is education, or I would say, like you know, when it comes to investment, the third biggest investment I wouldn't call wedding or marriage an investment, but still, of course, there are huge spends which happen over there.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: But the third biggest investment that any person would make today is his education, and uh it now earlier it used to be post-graduation, whatever would happen, that was an education.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: Today that starts at the undergraduate level itself.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: As a result, today, brands must be able to, like you know, communicate about what are their different offerings.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_02: Also, today the world is very changing very fast.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_02: Initially, when a lot of there was not the for quality education where parents would actually want to send their sons, daughters, uh, their kids to foreign universities.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: Parents have now realized that the same quality, if not better, level of education is available in India itself, and we as marketeers must ensure that we are able to reach with this message to the parents, to the students, that those days are gone when to get quality education you needed to get into a foreign university, which of course came at a very heavy price.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: You can probably get a better quality education in India itself.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_02: Also, the scenario, global scenario is also changing where foreign universities today are doing tie-ups with India.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_02: Seven years back, NMIMS had hardly a tie-up with around eight to ten universities globally.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: Today I'm happy to say we have almost 60 plus partnerships with global universities across the US, across Europe, specifically UK, France, Australia, and other countries.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a very big thing where foreign universities are coming to India, they are tying up with brands like NMIMS and actually creating twinning programs where a student can do, say, for an MBA, one-year MBA in India, and second-year MBA, they can do it at their university.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and these are some very big marquee names which are offering this kind of MBA programs.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: Similarly, even for engineering programs, where we used to run a program with Virginia Tech, where a student could do three years of his engineering in India and two years after going to Virginia Tech.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: And we have these programs not only in tech but in different streams.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_02: For example, with Virginia Tech itself, we have a program where the student does one year in India, it's a postgraduate program, and one year he goes to Virginia Tech.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_02: Mind you, he actually goes to Virginia Tech.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's not that the the faculty only comes from Virginia Tech over here for maybe around the month after this 12th and then goes away.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't happen that way.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: And because they are going to Virginia Tech and this MSc program, which is there, because it comes as STEM program, the students have an option to work officially in the US for three years, which is a very big thing because you know once they do that, they get the requisite work experience, and probably then, of course, also it's on the student how he grows and how he like you know takes up the job market.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: But these are some of the things which have to be marketed.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_02: It's yes, word of mouth in any industry, uh, that's true for even in education, also plays a very important role.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: But that word of mouth will also come when brands are actively like you know sourcing and reaching out.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_02: So, this is about like you know, what is what really attracts me to the education as an industry.
• 13:24
  SPEAKER_02: And today I feel you know, you have the PMO of the country, you have like you know, every minister everywhere who are there on different, like you know, who are there on TV, who are there on print, who are there continuously on digital.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_02: So, why not an education institution or a university for that matter?
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: Very interesting.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so what do you think uh the education industry spends on marketing in your view uh in India?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: What could be the size of the marketing pie?
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_02: So, the uh for uh a lot of spends are like you know happening specifically for digital for uh on digital uh to source the students, especially for online programs.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: Online is like you know very heavy.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_02: So, and that way I must say that you know these new A companies which were there or the ed tech platforms which came on, the ed tech platforms really brought about a revolution and they paved and they showed the uh traditional universities which existed for four decades, five decades, how important it is for them also to educate the people and inform them about the different programs that they offer.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: Today there are brands which are spending 50, 75, even 100 crore plus.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: If I take a university as a whole, there are brands who are like you know having budgets which are probably not the same as FMCG or a banking or finance, but maybe I can compare it with auto.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_02: I can assure you that like you know the industry is really close to when it comes to spends of what are done by uh players in the auto sector, which are done by the players in the education sector, so that's something which is definitely happening.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: The spends are like you know, really good.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: We knew a couple of years back one of the ed tech companies when they had uh taken on new agencies, uh their their uh annual budget was up almost 100 crores.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_02: So spends are definitely there, and because the way um the media is fragmenting that's become one of the biggest challenges earlier.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like you know, you could go on to Google, you could go on to um you know Facebook or rather Meta now, and uh that's about it.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_02: But today there is so much of fragmentation which is happening every day.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: Some new platform or the other which is coming, every day there is there are new touch points which are coming in, uh, there are new technologies uh which are happening, uh, programmatic advertising, which is now you know actually getting a very big chunk, which education usually used to shun away from.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, education has now started like you know, looking at programmatic buying also very, very seriously.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_02: That is also giving them registrations, that is also giving them quality students for sure.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_02: So, that respect, like you know, I can assure you that uh the brand spends and the spends will only increase as we go ahead because competition is going to increase.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_02: We've already seen I think two days back, the the chief minister Mr.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_02: Devendra Fadnavis announcing that there will be five foreign universities which are likely to set up campuses at Navi Mumbai.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_02: So the competition is only going to go up, as they say, you know, the pie of the students is not going to increase too much.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: But so competition is going to go up, spends are going to go, and the biggest thing is the AI is really revolutionizing the way the entire world is like you know looking at everything, but specifically advertising, it is really affecting really hard.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: All the players in the education sector have seen their uh cost per lead, cost per registrations all go up because there are not many clicks which are coming in earlier.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: Like you know, you ran an ad because there were like you know so many clicks which were happening, there was not so much of competition, everybody was there.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: But with Gemini coming in, we have seen Gemini.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, there is uh actually a zero-click uh thing, which is now the now the truth and the norm.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: So can't do much on that, you have to live with it, and the audience is also becoming smarter by the day.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_02: Also, we have to realize that the parents 10 years back were not so digitally savvy, but today, even the parents who are coming in are extremely digitally savvy, they have grown with digital.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: So, those who are now typically in the bracket of say 40 to 45 and have a kid in 10 standard, 12th standard, they are extremely digitally savvy, they know how things are, and they have also like you know, AI has also been a part of their life for quite some time.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: So, which means that uh you are talking about competition, you're talking about you know several thousand crores of spend given that there are so many universities.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a fairly big marketing budget that seems to be going in into this sector, right?
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, absolutely.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: Uh given that uh is this not an industry where uh I would say uh supply and demand, if you really look at it, you don't need marketing, right?
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because obviously uh you know every student wants to join a college, so therefore, uh you know I would I would assume that uh you know they need a college, so therefore, is marketing needed at all?
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, absolutely.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: The biggest reason is today all the brands are spreading themselves across the country.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_02: No longer is it there that you know I am I'm NMIMS is in Mumbai, I'm only going to remain in Mumbai.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_02: Every I need to spread.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_02: So when I am spreading, but naturally, like you know, I might be known very well in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, or for that matter, I might even go uh be bold and say the entire Maharashtra knows me.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_02: But can I say the same thing if I open a campus, say in a place like Bhubneshwar, which I'm going to do very shortly?
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: My Mdabad campus is going to be launched anytime.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: Am I known that very well in Mdabad?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_02: Am I known that very well in places which are around, or am I known as the regional college?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I always follow the mantra which uh HSBC had HSBC, the world's local bank.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_02: So similarly, we want to like you know also follow the same thing where we become a regional player because see the biggest challenge that happens is we are still known as like you know, or a lot of new places that we go to.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: NMIMS is recognized as NMIMS from Mumbai.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_02: What my through marketing, what we need to change that perception is NMIMS from Mumbai in Mumbai, NMIMS from Bangalore in Bangalore, and NMIMS of Hyderabad in Hyderabad.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: We need to go local, we need to get the local favorability, or the challenge that will happen is locals will not prefer us, they will still want to go to their own uh regional colleges or regional institutions, which they have been doing since years.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_02: That is exactly where the role of marketing comes in.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: People must be made aware because when we launched the Navi Mumbai campus, also, although it was just Mumbai and Navi Mumbai, we felt that maybe you know Mumbai will have a very great rub off effect in Navi Mumbai.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_02: However, we are surprised to know that a lot of people, even in Navi Mumbai, were not aware that we are having a campus over there.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, so it is very important to ensure, and the thing is, people who didn't get it in Mumbai went to Navi Mumbai, and that's what you don't want.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: You want people from Navi Mumbai to go to Navi Mumbai, you want people from Bangalore to go to Bangalore, from Chandigar to go to Chandigarh campus.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, preference is always going to be because Mumbai we have been there for like you know last 43 years and counting.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: People for first preference would definitely be uh Mumbai, especially when it comes to MBA.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_02: But when it comes to undergraduate programs, engineering, pharmacy, commerce, you definitely want the locals to be actually like you know, doing and occupying more place over there or going and favoring those campuses rather than favoring the other campus for short.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: That's exactly where marketing comes in.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: You drive the student or the parent also right from the awareness stage, where like you know, you introduce and say that okay, you know, NMIMS is now as a campus in say indoor.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: NMIMS Indoor now offers these programs because in Mumbai we have 17 schools, other campuses we have much lesser number of schools because, but naturally, we are quite new, and there are certain programs which require uh uh approvals and all.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: So, that's the reason why it takes time to release launch these programs at those respective campuses.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_02: But This is what the role of marketing comes in.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: You need to create awareness about the campus first.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_02: Once that is established, you then need to start telling people what programs you are offering.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: Because a lot of people will, for example, will take NMIMS as only offering management, commerce, maybe arts and humanities program.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of people get surprised saying that, oh, you are offered engineering, oh, you have a pharma program, oh, you are offered school of sciences.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, we offer all of those also, and that is where the marketing push is required.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, it's like tomorrow, let's say I start a I already have a school of branding and advertising in Mumbai.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: I start the same school in Indore.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: That is where the marketing push is absolutely required.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: Which brings me to the complexity in uh education marketing is you have multiple stakeholders, right?
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: Say, for example, you have a student, uh, you have a parent, and the uh stakeholders are expectations are very different.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: So, given that, uh, how do you really build your marketing mix, the media mix?
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Can you give me some examples of how this is very different from other forms of marketing?
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: So, one of the challenges which happens in education marketing, and something which a lot of uh marketers don't even realize that the complications which are there is one is when it comes to undergraduate programs.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: So there are three types of programs which are there.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: You have typically your UG programs, your postgraduate programs, and your doctoral programs.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: Doctoral programs are the easiest for us because your consumer and customer are the same, so not much of a difficulty because you reach out to the person whom you are reaching out, he's only paying the fees, so it's very sorted, it's a very it's it's pretty linear, not much of a problem.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: The second is your postgraduate programs, your MBA, MSc programs, your uh any P PG programs.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: The challenge is like you know, where you will have like almost 30% of the audiences which are paying their own fees, but a large chunk is where the parents are still supplementing it, or like you know, the students are taking a loan, or uh you know, they are borrowing money from friends and family, so that is there.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_02: So, again, customer consumer are too separate.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_02: But the biggest uh challenge comes in undergraduate programs, these are typically students who are 17-year-olds to 19-year-olds, that's the range they are definitely not earned anything.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: 17 years means he's not like you know, even legally, he can't even work and earn anywhere.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_02: This is where your customer and your consumer are totally separate.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: Your customer is your your uh your uh parent who is paying the fees, parents, grandparents, whoever it is there, and your consumer are your students.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: And what the biggest challenge which happens is your consumer and customer are typically in absolutely different generations.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_02: Your uh yeah, which is a very big thing, you know.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_02: Now with uh Gen Alpha coming in, I'm sure our generation doesn't even understand the kind of words and the kind of languages that they use, and because we are in market, we are marketers, it becomes easy for us.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: So the marketing is very, very different.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas a consumer, a student, typically a 17-year-old to a 19-year-old, would like to know what are the different activities which are happening, what are the clubs and committees which are there, what are the kind of yes, these students are also very much interested in knowing what are the placements which are happening, what are the brands that are coming to the campus, but in that pecking order, which is like you know, still down, festivals, club committees still play a very important role.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_02: In the case of your customers, uh your customers who are paying the fees, but naturally because they are like you know losing their wallet, for big the biggest thing for them is to see what are the kind of placement opportunities which are there, what are the opportunities for going abroad and studying, what are the opportunities which are existing after the program is over, so they are more interested in that.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_02: They are not interested whether you know the uh institution that their kid is going has one of the best festivals or not.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: So that's one of the biggest challenges that happens.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: So the communication and the communication differs a lot, you know.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_02: To your consumer, you are talking more about how, like, you know, the kind of clubs and committees, and through these clubs and committees, like you know, how a lot of learning happens because clubs and committees are not only all about fun, but there's a lot of learning also which happens, so those kind of things you were portrayed.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas to the customer, you talk about like you know, what are the different colour opportunities, what are the things that uh his or her kid can do after they are they complete their program.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a very different thing.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: You talk about campus life to a customer, uh to a consumer, because that is what he is like you know looking at.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas to uh the same campus life will also differ because, in case of campus life, you show a vibrant campus life like sports facilities, like a playground, like a canteen.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas to a customer, you are going to show safety aspects, you're going to show that the kid is going to be safe in the campus.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_02: We are very clear we have a zero tolerance policy towards any kind of abuse or substance.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_02: So you know, we don't of course talk about it so openly, but those are the kind of things that a consumer and a customer will want.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the so you know you need to tailor make or you need to customize your uh offerings to these two kinds of groups or segments of uh customers for sure.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_02: Also, another very important segment which happens are your people who are the influencers.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: When I say influencers, I don't mean the influencers on Instagram or Facebook or any other platform.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_02: I mean say friends, family, neighbors.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: Your there is a very high possibility that my neighbor's uh son or daughter is studying at my engineering college, they are definitely going to like you know impress upon me that how good or bad uh the engineering is offered at the campus.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: So these people automatically become my brand ambassadors.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: So I need to like you know even reach out to them also by informing them through emailers, through WhatsApp messages, which is basically like you know, I because they are already my students about what is happening, about like you know how our institution is performing, how is it better than any institution?
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_02: So marketing just doesn't stop once the uh cus consumer is already inside the campus.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: You know, typically it happens that a car buyer buys a vehicle and that's about it.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_02: There's not much to do because he's already got it, he's all he's your customer for the next three or four years.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe you talk him up, you talk to him about service or accessories or anything.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_02: But here it is very, very important to keep on nurturing even your customer and your consumer, also.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_02: So we tend to do that also.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_02: We reach out on a regular basis, invite them for events, ensure that like you know, they are also in the know-how of what the university is doing, who are coming, who not.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the most important part about uh, and this onus lies on the marketing department uh also very strongly.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, are you saying that uh uh when you open up admissions, there are campaigns running with this proposition targeted at parents or the customers, and there are campaigns running uh at the students, and uh therefore there's a differentiated campaign running, and that's really how it's uh it's it's managed.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: Is it?
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, you have to because the thing is uh see parents uh targeting is a little bit of a challenge because you cannot be sure, like you know, parents targeting is not very as accurate as because I may be interested in engineering because I'm an engineer, but my son or daughter is interested in commerce, so interest targeting, like you know, really is a difficult thing.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_02: Age is also a little not very accurate, but yes, we do tend to like you know use other signals to tend to target to parents.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_02: We run separate campaigns itself because as I said, the communication is different, the comms are different, narratives are different, so we tend to do that for sure.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, okay.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: So if you have a hundred rupees, uh, how would you spend in media?
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: So, would you spend in print, would you spend in digital, would you spend in uh outdoor media?
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: So, how how do you spend your mix of hundred rupees?
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_02: So the major money goes on online because, as I said, you know, these students, of course, the students are absolutely digitally savvy, so that's not a problem at all.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_02: But now, because parents are also becoming a lot more digitally savvy, it is very important that, like, you know, we target the parents also on the digital platform.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_02: Print or we use majorly in regional languages and in regions where like you know, majorly in tier two, I wouldn't call them tier two cities because in calling indoor tier two city will be uh well uh will be well extremely injustice to that city.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_02: But uh those kind of cities is where we still continue to use print.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_02: Print is majorly used for reaching out to parents, as I said, to like you know, to the influencers uh who are neighbors or aunts, uncles, uh, those kind of like you know, people who are there.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_02: So we do tend to use print.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: Outdoor, we do not use NMIMS per se, doesn't use outdoors to a very great extent.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: We use it, but again, majorly in where our other campuses are, and we use it more just during registration or the during majorly of the admission process.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: So if I want to say 100 rupees, how I divide, I would say like you know, almost 65 rupees goes to digital, uh almost around 15 to 20 it would go into print, uh, five would go into radio because we still believe that you know, especially in smaller towns like Chandigar, Indoor, radio really works, and even in Far East, radio really works.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: The rest of it basically is between outdoors and other channels.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, when I say other channels, like you know, some regional uh TV publications, regional TV channels, that is where like you know we are also focusing.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting that uh you know you're looking at media mix as an educational institution, the mix is very, very uh different, and you are you're talking of a media mix and spending the money in an optimized manner.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: Very interesting.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I'm coming to uh the challenge of uh I would say the professors, and they are again a very important stakeholder, unlike uh you know traditional brands.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh sometimes if you look at the US universities, the professors themselves are brands, like you have a my uh you know you have uh Philip Kotler who is actually Northwestern University, and therefore uh uh he is a brand by himself.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: So, how do you build uh preference and attract uh talent, uh teaching talent to uh an university like yours?
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_02: So, one thing which attracts the most is basically like you know research.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: So, research is a very integral, even if you look at the US uh institutions, they have a very high focus on research.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_02: All the faculty members are encouraged to keep on like you know doing research, file research papers, and with top uh uh research journals uh and you know file patents, especially when it comes to technical like engineering, and that is exactly what like you know NMMS has also been focusing upon.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_02: Our uh numbers when it comes to patents filing, filing of patents and filing of research papers has actually gone up quite significantly.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: Our focus has been on research.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_02: Our vice chancellor himself has kept the research department under his very watchful eye to ensure and whatever professors are doing research, or like you know, we are actually putting that on our LinkedIn platform and showcasing that, and that is how you attract talent.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_02: Also, one of the other ways is basically how we are portraying them in media, we want them to be seen as thought leaders.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: As a result, we get a lot of authored articles created on diverse topics from commerce to economics to engineering to uh any other tech like AI.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_02: So we do that, and uh that is also the way our faculty members are seen in press and media, and the same thing whenever they cover an article or they have any kind of coverage on TV, on uh radio or on uh print, we ensure that, like you know, those are also we put it on Facebook, uh, we put it on our uh LinkedIn and our own social media handles to ensure that everybody is able to view those and is is and makes a very good proposition because the incoming faculty members who are there they also want.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_02: See, today everybody wants who doesn't like to be famous, who doesn't like to be recognized on the streets when I'm going down on the streets and somebody like you know points a finger at me and like you know says that hey, look, this is the person that like you know we watched a TV show about, or you know, oh this person had been on television, it really makes a difference, and that's exactly what we are doing.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_02: We are making our professors, our thought leaders, and they themselves become a very big attraction.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_02: We want so one of the biggest things that NMIMS has been doing is we want to go more and more away from push-based marketing to pull-based marketing.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so the and our faculty will play a very important role in pull-based marketing, not only for pulling better faculty members or even pulling better students, also.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_02: So it cuts both ways, okay, and it also shows my faculty how uh advanced and how modern they are.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_02: Last year, also our faculty were giving their thoughts on uh leading news and business channels about what they think about budget, how budget will change, and this is not only from the point of view of just the their particular domain, but for the country as a whole.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_02: That is what we are doing for pulling in the best talent in the field.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: Contraminds is a podcast dedicated to decoding people, minds, strategy, and culture.
• 36:58
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• 37:05
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• 37:09
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are interested in revisiting past episodes or taking a look at our show notes from this episode, please visit us at www.contraminds.com.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: And now back to the show.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: The other stakeholder in uh education is really the corporates, right?
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and there tends to be a high halo around IAMs, IITs, uh maybe the next uh NITs.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: So, uh, how do you really uh do marketing to corporates and uh what are the various forms of marketing that you adopt for getting corporates to come to your campus?
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_02: So one of the biggest challenges that education has been facing for many years, and it's not only now, but like you know, is basically whatever you are taught in the classroom is either different or it is not the or basically like you know, it is not exactly what the corporate wants.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of corporates today want trained people coming from the institution, they do not have the bandwidth in terms of time, money, or energy to take the student, you know, and that is something very clearly that we have seen where I do not want to name anyone or name any corporate, where those people have said that, like you know, up to 85% of the engineers which are coming from uh the numerous engineering schools and colleges across India are not employable, and one of the major reasons that this statement is coming, and to some extent I agree because the curriculum is not updated, the changes which or what the industry wants that is not taught in the classrooms, and that is one of the biggest things that NMIM has recognized many ages back, and a reason and that is where, like you know, we have corporates actually coming and helping us design our curriculum.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_02: We have something called as board of studies, where the board is comprised of faculty members, experts from the industry, and these experts are generally the CXOs of their company, CEOs, CFOs, uh CMOs who come and who actually give their point of view on how we should design the next program.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_02: How, like you know, what are the new things that you should incorporate, and this is exactly the edge that our students get, where they are learning things which the corporates want, and that makes life easy for the student, for the faculty, and for the university as a whole, and for the corporate, it becomes an absolute talent pool which it can hire and put on the field immediately rather than train them for six months, one year.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_02: After six months, like you know, somebody may get fully trained and go off to a competitor, he may like you know, leave, or after six months, the corporate may realize that no, this person is not trainable.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_02: That is also a very big challenge which a lot of corporates face.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: Now, that is something where, because of our very close association with corporates, we ensure that our curriculum is up to date, our curriculum is teaching what the corporates want.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_02: We, of course, also have a quite a few programs which are in association with the corporates itself.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_02: We run a program in association with TCS, we run a program in association with Bosch, we run a program in association with uh LT Mind Tree.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, the corporates itself are coming to the campus and they are getting a ready-made trained pool of students who they can put onto the job in a much much faster way.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_02: Rather than like you know, they're learning and coming to the corporate, getting it trained for six months and then getting onto the job.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_02: Here they can come because they have been like you know learning about what the how the corporate works for those one year, two years, three years that they are with us.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's the very big advantage that that is having.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: So, as a marketer of the university, uh you do a fairly large reach out program to corporates.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: Is it so?
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: Is it something as a part of event marketing you spend some money?
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: And would you actually do those kinds of things also?
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_02: So, uh more than marketing, I would say like you know, we have a full-fledged dedicated placement department.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_02: The placement department also like you know reaches out to these corporates on one-on-one basis because, yes, marketing, we can we are continuously putting things on social media.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_02: We like you know, do send out emailers, but the this placement department and marketing, in fact, marketing and placement department and NMIMS are absolute bad partners, quite literally sitting next to each other and working uh very closely.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_02: So we ensure that the right message is reached out to not only through our social handles, but on one-on-one basis also the placement team keeps on sending it out to them.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, uh the whole education industry itself is getting disrupted because of ATEC, right?
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so given that uh that ad tech is disrupting, how is your marketing methods changed from probably what was done five years back to what is being done today?
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because as a student, uh you know, I can actually do online programs.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I don't need to have a degree, I can go and join any uh you know company, and then I can have uh uh you know MOOCs uh where I can qualify myself.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a massive disruption that's happening.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: So, how is it affecting the marketing that you're doing?
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I'll uh go back a little and like you know, I'll dip into my teaching experience over here because I like you know, so one of the things that I used to always tell my students is that see, uh, especially as far as digital marketing goes, there are a ton of videos on YouTube which you can go and access and you can learn whatever you want.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_02: But the biggest thing is what where I come in is I'll tell you what videos to watch and what videos not to watch.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_02: Because the thing is, if you really want to learn, there are 20 resources which are there.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_02: I'll tell you to go to those five resources only where you will come to know everything.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have to go through that 20 because there's always a possibility that you know, see, we all know it came to engineering, there were like you know, 10 books uh per subject which was there, and you know, eight subjects you you couldn't sort of possibly go through each and every book, but you all your faculty always guided you that you know you need to go through this book maybe 10 times.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh uh, you take one book and read it 10 times instead of like you know reading 10 books one time, which is one of the most important things.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_02: So that is one of the biggest things which happens in case of online.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_02: There is a lot of yes, there are a lot of things which are today available online.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: But the the biggest thing that happens in a full fledged or in a classroom, one is exchange of ideas and thoughts.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, there's a lot of theory out there, there are a lot of examples that are given, but there is no exchange of thoughts which happens through traditional programs.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: That's one of the biggest things.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_02: Also, networking today is very, very important, which a brick and mortar will be able to provide in a much better way as compared to any online programs.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, through online programs, also you can connect with students, you can connect with your faculty.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_02: Uh LinkedIn provides a platform where you can connect with a lot of professionals and discuss and like you know talk about your issues.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: But still, I would say you know, your offline is the important part.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the and those are some of the benefits that you need to portray through your through the uh marketing campaigns that we do.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, in fact, like we have so it is similarly that it's similar like retail.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_02: You could go today and buy everything uh online, there's not a problem at all.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_02: But has does that mean that all your shops or all your retailers have shut down?
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: No, that's not the case.
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, the online have actually now come to offline.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_02: We have seen a lot of even in education brands, ed tech companies which started purely online, they actually started having tuition classes.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to name the brand, but we know that like you know, they actually went offline, so that's definitely going to happen.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_02: Our case is opposite, we actually are offline, we go to online, so that's going to happen, and yes, there is always a challenge of measuring how many people have seen on you online and like you know are getting converted offline, but today, uh, because of tech and because of uh your uh so many tools which are there, which integrate so seamlessly with your CRM, you can actually track the entire user's journey and figure out how uh where he came from and what all kind of touch points that he has gone and how your digital marketing actually works.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_02: That's one of the biggest blessings I would say of attribution modeling, which uh to a digital marketer can actually show that you know that was a disadvantage.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh that in print you gave an ad, you never knew whether that person actually saw your ad or you were told by someone, or you know, how he got and he filled up with digital, you can track everything, and that's one of the biggest advantages which is there.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_02: But I can assure you that, like, you know, uh India is a very touch and feel country, so uh we definitely want to like you know, even when we are buying insurance, we may still want to buy online.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_02: We we we do buy online insurance.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_02: I myself buy, but we would still want to talk to somebody at the call center, we would still like you know, talk to our friends, family, figure out whether that particular brand is good or not.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's something which is applicable for the education sector also for sure.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, as a marketing uh head of uh say an institution like NMIMS, do you use marketing tools, marketing platforms, and do you invest in these kinds of uh tools and platforms to do marketing?
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_02: It is like buying a hoarding and like you know not lighting it up.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_02: You may have the hoarding, you may have like you know, you may feel that your ad is visible, but if you are not going to light it, you if you're it's going to I'm using a well different analogy because today hoardings are also all converting to digital screens, but without that light, which is you know equivalent to your tools, your uh attribution modeling tools or your tools, because to see today on social media, also a lot of students go and talk and vent out their uh right from students to people who are applicing, like you know, it could be whatever difficulty they are facing in registering or difficulty in whatever way, they actually prefer to go onto social media and talk about it.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_02: If you do not have a tool which is able to like you know track all your negative comments or any of those, you're always going to shoot in the dark, you're never going to solve his or her problems.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the reason why today tools play a very important part.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_02: Also, if you want to send out what bulk WhatsApp messages, bulk emailers, uh it's just not about like you know sending out those emailers and not doing anything.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_02: It today it's important to track today, like you know, the digital marketing, your actual work starts after you have started your campaign or after like you know your campaign goes live.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_02: I used to always uh tell my teams even a decade back that when it came to TV print radio, once your ad was out, well you couldn't do much.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_02: It was like you know, just just seeing whether the logs were there or just ensuring that your uh ad came in and maybe tracking and uh seeing because medium was expensive, so maybe two, three days you would track how many calls you got or how many footfalls you got at your store or you at your campus or at your university.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_02: As in case of digital, because the the campaigns are there and you sustain them for months together.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_02: You can actually even track that somebody who had visited your website, say in Jan, is actually ended up converting in April, and without uh relevant tools, attribution modeling, uh you it's not possible to do.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_02: You you must know, and of course, you need a very strong and a robust uh CRM to begin with.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because without the C without the So NMIM, NMIMS has got CRM platforms, absolutely campaign, Martech platforms, and all that is it?
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, absolutely.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_02: We've like, you know, in fact, got dashboards where our leadership team, our faculty members, they see everything what is happening in real time.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_01: What are you saying?
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, like you know, see, and it's not only for admissions, it's like you know, if I want to see how many books are there in my library at say my Shirpur campus, I can very easily see, I can just go to the dashboard and I can see that.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_02: I don't have to pick up the call on the library and ask him that you know how many books are there.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_02: If I want to, like, you know, my library catalog is totally digitized.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_02: So if I want to know, let's say a particular book may be not available in say indoor, but maybe available in Mumbai, maybe available anywhere else.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_02: So, in that respect, like you know, we've digitized everything.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, so it's no longer where, so it it is actually more of a digital transformation than digital only being used by marketing.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_02: So the entire thing is digitized.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_02: HR is totally also digitized because typically that's what not doesn't happen much in an education institution, but NMMS has always ensured that like you know, we are the uh leaders in that respect, and we have totally digitized everything.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, our entire admission process, right from filling up the lead form to registering to document verification, everything is uh digital.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_01: So it's always is it almost like buying insurance?
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, it is more than that, and I'll tell you, I'm very happy to say that we are the first university which this year conducted AI assisted personal interviews for our MBA program.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: My god.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the we are the first.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and this was a proper, proper AI base.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, like you know, other brands have used AI where there were just maybe one or two questions which were pre-fed into the system, the system would ask, and your uh your uh whatever the studentslash candidate or other whatever the candidate replied that was recorded, and that's about it.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_02: Our AI implementation went much much further.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_02: The candidate's uh SOP and CV were uploaded to the AI tool before he or she came in.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_02: The candidate would sit and and the questions the AI would ask were based on the SOP and were based on the CV.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_02: So you did not have very generic questions.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_02: You didn't we were actually testing the person's knowledge and the depth of his knowledge rather than testing the ignorance, which unfortunately tends to happen in a lot of personal interviews.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_02: Because I may be I may be from an engineering background, let's say my interviewer is from the commerce background, there will be a the very different thought process.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas in AI, in because we are using AI, all these issues and these are absolutely normalized.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_02: The best part is of more than 14,000 candidates took this AI-based uh interviews in Mumbai campus.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_02: We took feedback from a lot of students, everybody uh said that this was a fantastic thing, and I'm very sure that even leading institutions will very slowly move their personal interview process and make it AI-based.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_01: So, when I talk of a marketing department in a say an automotive or in an FMCG or in a retail, you typically have product managers, you have brand managers, you have digital marketing teams, uh, you have advertising teams.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_01: So, in an education institution like yours, how is your marketing team uh you know built?
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, do you really have these kinds of people with uh specific uh roles, designations?
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: So, can you walk me through how does a marketing department in an educational institution look like?
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_02: So uh typically would be you know, you ten years back if I would take uh even NMIMS also, uh marketers were more the marketing team was more focused on print and you know reaching out to through majorly through print, some of the were online also, but in the last five years, you know, uh especially after the pandemic which happened, it has been a sea of change.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_02: We have specialists in the marketing team.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_02: Marketing team is also divided upon verticals, so you have a performance marketing vertical, you have a PR vertical.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_02: When I say PR, it is organic, inorganic, both.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_02: You have a vertical which focuses on social media, you have a vertical which focuses on uh your uh data data analytics.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_02: So each specialized vertical is even present at NMIMS.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_02: Also, I have a team of performance marketing managers, I have a team of uh performance marketing, I have a team of PR, I have a data analytics team, I have a team which like you know focuses on content because that is also a very important thing in today's time and age.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_02: So those are the different teams, and each team contains a spec, each team is made up of specialist.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, there are managers who are like you know, oh, I ensure that they are more of generalist, and they not only like you know do about uh PR or social media, but they do the entire gamut, so that is something which is the typical structure which is there, so it is more of a specialization-based structure, each team working in tandem with each other because what social media is doing, PR has to understand performance marketing will like you know also need to know.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_02: You cannot have teams working in silos.
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_02: Typically, earlier, your uh PR team would not know what was happening on social media, your social media would not know what performance marketing does.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_02: Today, I ensure that all my teams talk to each other.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like when a PR when a call is happening with my PR agency, my performance marketing team is also sitting in that call.
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_02: Although, like you know, they might not have any relevance, but they need to know and understand what is happening in PR.
• 55:50
  SPEAKER_02: What is the kind of content that is going out?
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_02: Very important because typically performance marketing people are very focused, they are like you know, they work in a very narrow space where uh their life just revolves around impressions, clicks, registrations, leads.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_02: That's the only that's majorly where their life revolves.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_02: But then those uh days are gone.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_02: Today, even a performance marketing person must know what the brand is doing on social, what the brand is doing on uh when it comes to like you know content.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_02: What are the like you know, SEO also definitely plays in a very important part?
• 56:24
  SPEAKER_02: So it's like although they might be specialized in one, but they definitely must be aware of all the other things also.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, how large would the marketing team be in an institution like US?
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_02: So uh we have a almost a 25-member team where a large chunk of the team sits in uh in the central campus, which is in Mumbai, but there are at least two to three people which sit out of each campus because India is a very uh diverse country, the and you know, uh habits, consumption patterns, uh, consumer behavior differs every hundred kilometers, and in large cities like Mumbai, possibly it differs every two kilometers.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_02: The way somebody might be thinking in and approaching in Bandra will definitely not be the same, maybe even in Santa Cruz or maybe even in Ville Parli.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, even in large cities like Mumbai, Delhi, uh typically a South Bombay person will be having a very different thought process, habits, consumer behavior patterns.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_02: So, what we've done is we have created these specialized teams around the campuses also, which are like you know, uh, and it's and these teams also do a lot of outreach programs because outreach is also a very important part of education where you need to like you know go to schools, to colleges, and uh educate the the faculty, the principal, the counselors who are at these schools to about the programs, about the different kinds of uh things that we offer and the you know the uh about the university as a whole.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a it's a centrally decentralized process, as I say.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_01: Beautiful.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_01: So uh so you're saying you guys do outreach programs to schools and things like that to feed and actually nurture the uh future students.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, absolutely.
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_02: It is very necessary.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_02: We in fact invite a lot of students to visit our campuses also, especially when it comes to tech.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of parents students are interested in seeing whether is my kid going to like you know work on the machine which is like you know there in the market.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_02: I'm very proud to say that like you know, we have uh pharma labs uh where we actually manufacture the drugs on a much smaller scale, and that manufacturing process is right from raw materials to the end product, which is actually capsule packaging and everything, also.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_02: So we have machines which will actually package that capsule.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, these are mini uh factories by themselves, I can say, and uh, we also have labs where the students are working on the very on a scale-down machines.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_02: Well, this is a typical, very typical US concept where uh you know uh colleges and institutions have actually had even a mini nuclear reactor on the campus, of course.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_02: In India, that is going to be like a little far away, but we we do tend to have that.
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_02: So our labs are industry ready labs.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, we call them as industry 4.0 ready labs where we provide and make the student work on those machines which they are going to work on in the industry.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_02: So, for example, 3D printers, laser cutting machines, these are all there at our campuses, which are there, and we do from time to time invite the uh people from the press and media to actually experience it and then you know inform the others also.
• 1:00:03
  SPEAKER_02: So we do that from time to time at across all our campuses.
• 1:00:11
  SPEAKER_01: So if you look at your uh overall investment in education, uh there's a large bit of money in a person's life which is invested at the time of graduation and post-graduation or whatever that you call.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_01: But as the world is changing, the need for lifelong learning is there.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_01: And therefore, some of the students who graduate from NMIMS or institutions like yours can be lifelong learners, and therefore, there's a high uh what I call as the customer lifetime value of these students.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_01: So, is there a program that you run and do you look at share of earning over the lifetime of the student and do you do programs like that?
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I I agree with you.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, like you know, if I take my parent body, which is SVKM, Sri Virja Pale, Kelavani Mandal, it runs.
• 1:01:06
  SPEAKER_02: We always say that, like you know, we are there from KG to PG.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_02: We have got schools, uh we have got uh like you know, we've got schools, we've got colleges.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_02: So you have like you know, CNM school, you have uh your JV Parek school in Mumbai.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_02: This same schools are there, uh CBSC school is there, for example, say in Dulia.
• 1:01:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh in Hyderabad, we have a CB, we have also a CBSC school in Hyderabad.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_02: So these we have not tracking still the entire customer lifetime value, right, from the school till the uh post-graduation level.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_02: But that's something because the CRM systems are a little different still.
• 1:01:48
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, schools do not have a full-fledged CRM system the way a university will have.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_02: But yes, that is something which is our aim, and that's something which, when it came comes to digital transformation, the next uh stage of digital transformation, that's exactly what we want to do.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_01: We want to track the life of a student right from KG to PG, and that's what after PG because typically they go and you know uh spend in uh say uh course era and things like that.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_01: So you actually can earn a revenue uh even after PG and when they are working.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_01: So therefore, uh, so how do you really look at so uh so today your revenue?
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, do you look at the lifetime value of the student until post-graduation or graduation, or do you also say, okay, what percentage of my revenue should come after the student starts working and what share do I get?
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh well, we are coming to that.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's not something which, like, you know, I can say that we are already doing.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_02: We are coming to that.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_02: We really want to do that, we really want to see because see after one point in time, a student will like or uh the candidate will actually would want to prefer to uh do a refresher program or maybe a part-time program or an online program rather than leave his job and do a full-time program.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_02: So that's something which we are already doing, but we are not tracking completely, but uh we are getting there.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_02: We are definitely like you know, we want to do that because that is very, very important for us to also understand that there is a lot of reskilling which tends to happen, and we've we've seen that a student who would have done his MBA 20 years back from NMIMS enroll in executive education program in NMIMS itself after 20 years because he has to uh reskill uh he has to like you know upskill himself because that is very important.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_02: So we do tend to get that.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_02: We've not uh completely uh done the integration, but yes, we are getting there for sure.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, uh SVKM per se as a parent is now like you know, even coming up with a medical college and a hospital.
• 1:03:59
  SPEAKER_02: So I always like you know say that we are now doing backward integration where you could be born at a SVKM hospital, do your education in a SVKM school, uh even you know, take up a uh university, and you know, so the entire uh your first 25 years of life are with SVKM itself, fixed.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_01: Very nice, very nice.
• 1:04:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm coming to the last section of our uh conversation, which is really a set of uh rapid fire questions.
• 1:04:32
  SPEAKER_02: Sure.
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so my first question to you is uh what does success mean to you?
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's basically like you know helping people find in in terms of marketing and uh thing, I would say helping find the per helping find the student and the parent the right program uh at the right time because see today uh education is again the cost is definitely there, but one of the biggest things in case of a student is his time.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_02: For example, law programs.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_02: I always like you know, whoever comes to me and says that I want to do law or I want to pursue law as a career option, I always tell them please understand that this is not an investment of just five years, it's an investment for the next 35 to 40 years, and one of the biggest things I consider as a success is ensuring that the student is able to like you know pursue that program as he completes that program and finds a career in it.
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_02: That's what is the biggest and the best success that I can get.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_02: And a student succeeds in life for a faculty or for like you know in education, a student's success is the best success that we can get.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_01: Very nice.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what would be your advice to an 18 year old or a seventeen year old in a university today?
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_02: Choose your program very very carefully.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_02: As I said, it's very important to ensure that whatever program you are taking, you do not realize after two, three years that this is not I'm not cut out for this particular field.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_02: I need to do something else.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_02: Also, please understand that one of the most important things is specializations which used to happen postgraduate or even later on today are happening at undergraduate levels itself.
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_02: No longer it is just plain vanilla BCOM.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_02: Today you have BBA programs with specializations.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_02: Your BBA in finance, your BBA in marketing, your BBA in general management.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_02: So it is very, very important that your undergraduate level itself you choose the right program and ensure that you want to make a career in it.
• 1:06:47
  SPEAKER_02: Because that is what is going to shape you in future.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_02: Those days are gone when typically you would like you know take up a commerce or an arts or any science field, you would do your MBA and then like you know you would join your career.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_02: Today it starts right from after your 12th standard itself.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_01: So, what are the resources that you lean on to to enhance your knowledge?
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_02: So uh believe it or not, like you know, social media, although a lot of people say it leads to a lot of waste of time, and like you know, people it's happy people you become habituated, you are scrolling, you waste a lot of hours over there.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_02: I'll say it depends on what content you consume.
• 1:07:28
  SPEAKER_02: If even on a platform like Instagram, you start following, like, you know, a lot of handles which give you information uh about like you know about your uh what is happening in the world of AI, what is happening in the world of how you can use AI, how you can use certain websites to do a lot of your work.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_02: If you follow that, this is exactly what the algorithm will like you know automatically start giving you.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_02: So LinkedIn is there.
• 1:07:52
  SPEAKER_02: LinkedIn is a very, very beautiful resource, which unfortunately not many people tend to go to and use it on a daily basis.
• 1:08:00
  SPEAKER_02: I like you know use LinkedIn as my uh it's it's become more like how you typically pick up a newspaper in the morning to read all your content and like you know get to know about the world.
• 1:08:11
  SPEAKER_02: Today, like you know, I actually go onto LinkedIn and see what all other people are talking about, what people are talking about in their industry.
• 1:08:18
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of cross-learning also, which happens.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_02: It is no longer that what is happening in FMCG, what a marketer is doing in FMCG, you can't be you can't implement the same thing in education, you can do that also because at the end of the day, your consumer is always going to be there, and it is more upon how you are reaching out to that consumer, and what is the kind of message that you are giving to that consumer becomes the most important part.
• 1:08:42
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what is one piece of advice that you got in your career which you carry in your mind and head even today?
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_02: So, the best thing that I learned in marketing is you are never sure what will work.
• 1:09:05
  SPEAKER_02: You can do all your research, you can do all your possibilities, but what may click, especially in online, and it could be just uh you know, it could be just one uh one success total also, which is good enough to catapult you to a very different level.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_02: So always learn to take risks.
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_02: Do not be afraid of taking risk.
• 1:09:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um do not sort of like you know, judge the book by its cover.
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_02: If something didn't work for you last time, it may not it do not be worried that it will not work the next time.
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_02: Again, contrarily, all the converse is also true that what worked for you just now may not always work for you.
• 1:09:45
  SPEAKER_02: So you know you have to be ready to accept that fact and of course embrace technology.
• 1:09:52
  SPEAKER_02: If you don't embrace technology, if you don't embrace what is happening, the latest things in the market, you are going to be left behind, and that is true because a marketeer today is bringing the the entire organization in with the latest tech.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_02: So if the marketing team doesn't adopt it, the possibility is that your HR, your admissions, and your other teams will be even slower in adopting that technology.
• 1:10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, uh, thanks, Bazin.
• 1:10:18
  SPEAKER_01: It was a fantastic conversation.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_01: It was eye-opening for me personally that an educational institution spends so much on marketing, focuses on so many stakeholders that you have to influence and nudge them uh to get into your university.
• 1:10:37
  SPEAKER_01: The technology that you invest, the marketing teams that you have, the approach that you take to marketing.
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh these were quite eye-opening because we normally tend to look at marketers from the corporates, but uh looks like uh education institutions are becoming sophisticated marketing machines.
• 1:10:57
  SPEAKER_01: And uh thanks for sharing your experience.
• 1:11:00
  SPEAKER_01: It was lovely having a conversation with you.
• 1:11:02
  SPEAKER_02: Absolute pleasure.
• 1:11:03
  SPEAKER_02: Pleasure is mine.
• 1:11:08
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening to this episode.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_01: For selected links and detailed show notes, visit www.contraminds.com.
• 1:11:17
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• 1:11:28
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• 1:11:41
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for listening and stay safe.