Mr. Satish Reddy, an entrepreneur and Vice Chairman of Aditya Educational Institutions, Kakinada in India holds the view that Nigeria’s rich endowment notwithstanding, the country has a lot to gain from India. He spoke with Yetunde Oladeinde
Let’s talk about the areas that you are passionate about?
The world is talking about green energy and India is also part of this too. There is lot of scope about Liquefied Petroleum Gas, LPG. The Nigeria government is talking about using the LPG instead of using other gases. They want to make use of it in a big way. So we have found the natural resources in Nigeria and if we take the LPG to India it will help their economy and also help the Nigerian economy.
What will it take for an average Nigerian student to get admission into Aditya?
If you’re looking at a course like Engineering, what we are looking at is $5,000 per year for four years that is a total of $20,000. Apart from tuition fees, what we charge for food and accommodation is $2,000. Again in this $5,000 if students are coming with good grades, we give them scholarships of between 15-20% percent reductions. If they also make fantastic grades, we can give them up to about 30 percent scholarship reductions.
Why should I send my ward to Aditya and not any other school in India?
Aditya is located in Kakinada. The basic thing is if you want to come to India for studies you have to travel a lot of miles. Secondly, you want your child to concentrate on studies when he gets there. The good thing is that Kakinada is not a metro city; it’s a small city with basic amenities, we don’t have any night life, no night culture; when its dusk the town sleeps. So the students have no distraction from their studies. We have been in Kakinada for the past 32 years and everyone knows us. If a student has any problem even if it’s an accident on the road, if they see his ID card, they will call the principal, my father or me. We have access to the hospital and if we tell them he’s our student, they will treat him without asking for anything. This kind of response if you are in a big city like Abuja you can’t get it, but here in Aditya, you get it fast.
What is your selling point?
The first thing is discipline. Because that’s the motto of what my father started. So I and my younger brother are going ahead with it. What we believe in is that with discipline, everything will go well. That’s what we train students on, it will make them better, and they’ll produce good results and go places in the future.
What kind of courses does your university offer?
We offer in simple terms, the kindergarten and A’ levels. Three years programmes like B.Sc. in Sciences, Management and four years in Engineering, Pharmacy, Masters and PhD programmes.
What is your main focus for coming to Nigeria?
Initially when I came to Nigeria for the first time, my main focus was on education. We wanted to recruit students to study in our organisation back in India. I’ve been studying a lot of opportunities for the first two years and about 200 students have come to our schools. The Patrick Fernandez Foundation has been doing well in charity and this made me to come down to Nigeria to meet with parents and students who are making plans to come to Aditya to study. In Enugu, we got some parcels of land to start an ICT centre in the future, maybe in the next coming year or two. As things go on well we want to empower Nigerian youths to make sure they are in the right jobs once they complete their education. As you know India is known as an ICT hub but it is gradually moving to Africa and in fact Nigeria.
Also I met a couple of petroleum companies who are ready to sponsor some students. In the last academic year we had over 50 students from Nigeria in various departments like Engineering, ICT and Management. There is a lot of prospect in the petroleum and electrical sector in Nigeria. So based on that idea, I have started to register two companies, one is by the name, Infigo and the other is Solice. The Infigo is an energy company basically in the oil and gas and power sector because in India, there is need for LPG, so we can export some to India from Nigeria.
The power sector is also booming like never before and we thought we could contribute our expertise in that area too. Solice Company will only be looking at the educational sector in Africa and in Nigeria.
We will like to set up ICT centres in all parts of Nigeria and we are looking at empowering more Nigerian youths. These are the ways our companies help to bring benefits to the local communities. If things work out well with all the support, we can recreate what people have benefitted back in India’s educational system. We will set up India kind of schools here in Nigeria because we understand from parents and students that they have value and respect for the Indian school, especially as we have lots of migrants from India to Nigeria.
I’m looking at the capital city in Abuja. I need to check the capacity of my faculty coming here and the cost of the training. Once we get started, I want to touch other areas. But first, I have to talk with the Ministry of Education and my partner, because he is also looking at education through his charity works, especially in the rural areas where we can establish ICT centres, starting from Abuja then we can reach out to all parts of Nigeria probably in the next four-five years. We are going to have at least between five-six school chains in Nigeria.
