KHOZEM MERCHANT: There is a large and growing requirement in this country for skills, for education, for vocational skills, and that is what is really exciting about the Pearson Group in India. Our business ambitions here are largely focused on education. It’s a massive opportunity, it’s an opportunity that goes straight to the heart of what’s happening in India. In January this year, Pearson set up a Pearson India entity.

This is, essentially, a corporate head office for our India operating companies, and the facilitating agency for our new business ambitions in this country. The ambition is to establish a large and significant education services company in this country. It’s a mature market. Pearson Education, for example, is a well established brand in the higher education segment. The future for Pearson Education is looking to build beyond higher education and move more aggressively in to schools, and that’s not just with books in the traditional physical form, it’s looking to adopt a more multimedia approach. It’s expanding its sales force to reach a much wider segment of schools, and it’s producing products that is more relevant for many more layers within the schools.

SARVESH SHRIVASTAVA: Pearson VUE India delivers computer based examinations. This is a transformational change, and our vision is to lead this change.

KHOZEM MERCHANT: At the moment, it’s a logistical nightmare for any teaching institute to arrange, assemble and manage the exam procedure. Pearson VUE’s arrival will try and take the heartache out of that, and we’re very excited by the opportunity.

SARVESH SHRIVASTAVA: The future looks very promising, because if you take only academic admissions, our estimate is that there are about 8 million examinations which are conducted. Nearly all of them currently are in pencil and paper format. And through this transformation which through computer based testing, that throws up a large market for us to go after.

KHOZEM MERCHANT: Edexcel is the newest of the Pearson companies to set up base in India. It’s our awarding business, and it also has great ambitions for this country. It has a clear plan to roll out its services for certification, for a curriculum formulation and for teaching aids. That is a very large opportunity, particularly in the area of vocational trades. It has, for example, a very well established presence in the airline industry. The provision of services and certification is a great education service that Edexcel wants to be completely on top of.

MIKE BRYAN: It’s a very interesting market, it’s a burgeoning market, and a very exciting place to be in. It’s Penguin’s 20th year, and what a year it has been. Our sales are up 22%, we’ve won every literary award going, and we’ve peppered the bestseller list left, right and centre. Penguin India is the biggest company in the trade market. We have all the great major authors in India, and that’s a fantastic position to be in.

GURCHARAN DAS: It’s an honour to be published by Penguin. And now many other choices are available, but I would not change. It’s a wonderful relationship. I mean, they’re very supportive, they’re nourishing, and the best thing I can say about being published by Penguin is to be able to walk in almost any store and find my books. Now if an author can say that I think that’s saying quite a lot too.

MIKE BRYAN: One of the interesting things I think about the market is that the demographic is moving towards the young. Penguin has a massive strength in children’s books, in DK, in Ladybird, in Puffin, and that has got to come to the fore as the population gets younger. The other thing, of course, is that we’re publishing in more local languages, so that’s another big growth area for us. One of the exciting things that we’ve done this year is to turn a real problem on its head. Piracy is a real problem here in India. At the traffic lights people are ripping off our books left right and centre. And, of course, they only rip off bestsellers. We published a book called ‘You Are Here’, by Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, so as part of our promotion we decided we would have ‘You Are Here’ sold at the traffic lights.

APARNA SHARMA: India market is really it’s about education, it’s about self-help, so those are the areas we’re trying to look to see where DK could contribute to, you know, increasing the sales of products that Penguin and Pearson bring out in to the market. DK India started out 10 years ago as packagers. We’ve come a long way from that where we’ve really been able to hone our skills, we’ve been able to value add to what we do.

JAMES LAMONT: The FT has got a great franchise in India. More and more Indian business people are accessing the paper online, and that’s where we’re putting more and more of our efforts and investment. The FT.com its new look is something that Indian readers are excited by. I think particularly the leap in to video seems to give FT a great edge, and I think this will be a wonderful gateway for Indian readers in to what the FT and Pearson offers across the board.

VICKI KRAJEWSKI: I came over to India as part of the New Directions programme, which is a programme that sponsors short term work assignments and international placements. Pearson wanted to have better connections between their businesses. I think that there are certain commonalities that - that Pearson employees share. The people that I work with are excited about what they do. They think what they do is important work. They’re tremendously talented people, and I see all those same qualities in my co-workers at home. I’m so grateful that Pearson does something like this. It’s one of the things that makes Pearson a great place to work.

KHOZEM MERCHANT: I don’t think there’s any doubt today that probably the most strategic issue for Indian companies is how to get the most ably qualified workforce. That’s why an organisation like Pearson, with its very wide and deep reservoir of expertise in vocational training, in education services is absolutely the right kind of organisation to be in India. We have a fantastic opportunity to match our very wide capabilities with the immediate and larger requirements of the Indian economy.