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Q1 I wanted to start off our conversation with… a lot of people in marketing, take up brand marketing, FMCG marketing, financial services marketing. So how did you end up with education marketing?
Burzeen Bhathena
So well, education for me is much more than marketing. I am also a faculty… I also teach digital marketing has been my forte. I entered digital marketing way back in 2008 when digital was still growing. 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. Digital was seen more as like, you okay, fine. A brand like… Times of India is having newspaper, is having a Times Now channel. Okay, timesofindia.com is just another touch point where, which is there and that is how advertisers used to see. Of course, come to like, know, fast forward to 2025, everything has totally changed. Things took a bigger turn in 2015 when Jio came and actually commoditized internet, internet became cheaper than water. 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. And of course we have seen that come 2025 with quick commerce taking over. Not only water, can today order a snack, you can order whatever you want.
Now my foray into education happened almost nine years back when I started my career with NMIMS, one of India’s leading universities. I started with their distance learning and online learning programs. So we started with promotion of those programs first. We also introduced multiple programs during the almost one little over four years stint that I had with NMIMS distance learning. And in 2021, I shifted to the main university. It was a very different ballgame because it came to online, marketing had a very large impact because 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 1000 students or whatever you have got 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, there are lot of other bodies also which govern. So as a result whatever marketing we do, the idea is to increase the registration, increase the rejection rate, the higher the rejection rate you start getting better quality students and better quality students in turn translates into better quality internships and of course better quality placements with leading companies in India which in turn absolutely gets you to a better quality students in your next consecutive drive. I call this as the virtuous cycle of admissions and that’s something which I try to follow and I try to ensure that for different programs at different campuses. This was something which was very interesting to me. It looked like education is something which not many mainstream marketeers consider.
I remember the first time when I primarily came from the auto industry, worked with, had the fortune of being very close to being a part of the Volkswagen digital campaigns way back in 2014-16 when digital was not such a big thing. Also had a distinction of working for a little short stint with Fiat-Kleiser automobiles, now they are known as Stellantis in India. My shifting to education was actually viewed by a lot of people as, you know, maybe I’m tired of the corporate world or I don’t want to like, know, do much into this. But people don’t realize that education is a very high involvement product. 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, 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. 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 investment but still of course there are huge spends which happen over there but the third biggest investment that any person would make today is his education and earlier it used to be post-graduation whatever would happen that was an education. Today that starts at the undergraduate level itself. As a result, today brands must be able to communicate about what are their different offerings.
Also today the world is changing very fast. Initially when there was not for quality education where parents would actually want to send their sons / daughters their kids to foreign universities. 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 you can probably get a better quality education in India itself. Also, global scenario is also changing where foreign universities today are doing tie-ups with India. Seven years back, NMIMS had hardly a tie-up with around 8 to 10 universities globally. Today, am happy to say we have almost 60 plus partnerships with global universities across US, across Europe, specifically UK, France, Australia, and other countries. 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 and these are some very big marquee names which are offering this kind of MBA programs. Similarly, even for engineering programs, 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. And we have these programs not only in tech, but in different streams. 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. Mind you he actually goes to Virginia Tech it’s not that the faculty only comes from Virginia Tech over here for maybe around a month after this 12 and then goes away. It doesn’t happen that way and because they are going to Virginia Tech and this MSc program which is there because it comes as a STEM program, the students have an option to work officially in the US for three years, which is a very big thing because once they do that, they get the requisite work experience. probably then, of course, also it’s on the student how he grows and how he takes up the job market. But these are some of the things which have to be marketed. Yes, word of mouth in any industry, that’s true even in education also plays a very important role. that word of mouth also come when brands are actively sourcing and reaching out. So this is about what really attracts me to the education as an industry. And today I feel you have the PMO of the country, have every minister everywhere who are there on different, who are there on TV, who are there on print, who are there continuously on digital. So why not an education institution or a university for that matter?
Q2 Very interesting. So what do you think the education industry spends on marketing in your view in India? What could be the size of the marketing pie?
Burzeen Bhathena
So a lot of spends are happening specifically on digital to source the students, especially for online programs. Online is very heavy. And that way, I must say that these new age companies which were there, or the edtech platforms which came on, the edtech platforms really brought about a revolution. And they paved and they showed the traditional universities which existed for 4 decades, 5 decades…how important it is for them also to educate the people and inform them about the different programs that they offer. today there are brands which are spending 50, 75, even 100 crore plus. If I take a university as a whole, there are brands who are having budgets which are probably not same as FMCG or a banking or finance but maybe I can compare it with auto. I can assure you that the industry is really close to when it comes to spends of what are done by or players in the auto sector which are done by the players in the education sector. So that’s something which is definitely happening. The spends are like, you know, really good. We knew a couple of years back, one of the edtech companies when they had taken on new agencies, their annual budget was almost 100 crores. So spends are definitely there.
And because the way the media is fragmenting, that’s become one of the biggest challenges earlier. Like, you you could go on to Google you could go on to Facebook or rather Meta now and that’s about it. But today there is so much of fragmentation which is happening every day some new platform or the other which is coming every day. are new touch points which are coming in. There are new technologies which are happening. Programmatic advertising which is now actually getting a very big chunk which education usually used to shun away from. Education has now started looking at programmatic buying also very very seriously because that is also giving the that is also giving them registration that is also giving them quality students for sure so that respect like you know I can assure you that the brand spends and the spends will only increase as we go ahead because competition is going to increase. We’ve already seen, I think two days back, the Chief Minister Mr. Devendra Fadnavis announcing that there’ll be five foreign universities which are likely to set up campuses at Navi Mumbai.
So the competition is only going to go up. The pie of the students is not going to increase too much. So competition is going to go up, spends are going to go up. And the biggest thing is the AI is really revolutionizing the way the entire world is looking at everything but specifically advertising is really affecting really hard. All the players in the education sector have seen their cost per lead, cost per registrations all go up because there are not many clicks which are coming in. Earlier you ran an ad because there were like you so many clicks which were happening there was not so much of competition everybody was there but with Gemini coming in we have seen Gemini there is actually a zero click thing which is now the truth and the norm so can’t do much on that you have to live with it and the audience is also becoming smarter by the day 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. So those who are now typically in the bracket of say 40 to 45 and have a kid in 10th standard, 12th standard, they are extremely digitally savvy. They know how things are and they have also like, know, AI has also been a part of their life for quite some time.
Q3 Okay. So which means that you are talking about competition, you’re talking about, you know, several thousand crores of spend, given that there are so many universities. So it’s a fairly big marketing budget that seems to be going in into this sector, right? Okay. Given that, is this not an industry where I would say supply and demand, if you really look at it, you don’t need marketing, right? Because obviously, you know, every student wants to join a college. So therefore, you know, I would assume that, you know, they need a college. So therefore, is marketing needed at all?
Burzeen Bhathena
Yes, absolutely. The biggest reason is today all the brands are spreading themselves across the country. No longer it is there that know I am in MIMS in Mumbai. I am only going to remain in Mumbai. I need to spread 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 be bold and say the entire Maharashtra knows me but can I say the same thing if I open a campus say in a place like Bhubaneswar which I am going to do very shortly. Ahmedabad campus is going to be launched anytime. Am I known that very well in Ahmedabad? Am I known that very well in places which are around or am I known as the regional college. So I always follow the mantra which HSBC had, HSBC, the world’s local bank. So similarly, we want to also follow the same thing, where we become a regional player. Because the biggest challenge that happens is we are still known as a lot of new places that we go to. NMIMS is recognized as NMIMS from Mumbai. 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. 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 regional colleges or regional institutions which they have been doing since years. That is exactly where the role of marketing comes in.
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. 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. 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. You want people from Navi Mumbai to go to Navi Mumbai. You want people from Bangalore to go to Bangalore, from Chandigarh to go to Chandigarh campus. Of course, preference is always going to be because Mumbai we have been there for like you know last 43 years and counting, people’S first preference would definitely be Mumbai especially when it comes to MBA 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 sure. That’s exactly where marketing comes in. You drive the student or the parent also right from the awareness stage where like you you introduce them say that okay you know NMIMS is now as a campus in say Indore. NMIMS Indore 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 approvals and all. So that’s the reason why it takes time to launch these programs at those respective campuses.
But this is what role of marketing comes in. You need to create awareness about the campus first. Once that is established, you then need to start telling people what programs you are offering. Because a lot of people, for example, will take NMIMS as only offering management, commerce, maybe arts and humanities program. A lot of people get surprised saying that, you are offering engineering, have a pharma program, offer school of sciences, yes we offer all of those also and that is where the marketing push is required. you know it’s like tomorrow let’s say I already have a school of branding and advertising in Mumbai, I start the same school in Indore, that is where the marketing push is absolutely required.
Q4 Okay, which brings me to the complexity in education marketing is your multiple stakeholders. Let’s say for example, you have a student, you have a parent and stakeholders’ expectations are very different. So given that, how do you really build your marketing mix, the media mix? Can you give me some examples of how this is very different from other forms of marketing?
Burzeen Bhathena
So one of the challenges which happens in education marketing and something which a lot of marketers don’t even realize that the complications which are there is one is when it comes to undergraduate programs. So there are three types of programs which are there. have typically your UG programs, your postgraduate programs and your doctoral programs. 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 who you are reaching out. He is only paying the fees so it’s very sorted. It’s a very it’s it’s pretty linear not much of a problem.
The Second is your postgraduate programs your MBA, MSc programs your any PG programs the challenges 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 they are borrowing money from friends and family so that is there so again customer consumer are two separate. But the biggest 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. 17 years means he is not like, know, even legally, he can’t even work and earn anywhere. This is where your customer and your consumer are totally separate. Your customer is your parent who is paying the fees, parent, grandparents, whoever it is there. And your consumer are your students. And what does the biggest challenge which happens is your consumer and customer are typically in absolutely different generations. Which is a very big thing. Now with Gen Alpha coming in, am sure our generation doesn’t even understand the kind of words and kind of languages that they use. And because we are marketeers, it becomes easy for us. So the marketing is very, different. 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 in the case of your customers, your customers who are paying the fees, but actually because they are like, you know, loosening their wallet for 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. They are not interested whether the institution that their kid is going has one of the best festivals or not.
So that’s one of the biggest challenges that happens. the communication and the communication differs a lot. You know, 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 kinds of things you portray. Whereas to the customer, you talk about like, you know, what are the, what are the what are the different curler opportunities? What are the things that his or her kid can do after… they complete their program. So it’s a very different thing. You talk about campus life to a customer, to a consumer because that is what he is looking at. Whereas 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. Whereas to a customer, you’re going to show safety aspects. You’re going to show that the kid is going to be safe in the campus. We are very clear. We have a zero tolerance policy towards any kind of abuse or substance. 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. that’s the so you know you need to tailor make or you need to customize your offerings to these two kind of groups or segments of customers for sure. Also another very important segment which happens are your people who are the influencers. When I say influencers, don’t mean the influencers on Instagram or Facebook or any other platform. I mean say friends, family, neighbors. There is very high possibility that my neighbor’s son or daughter is studying at my engineering college. They are definitely going to like, know, impress upon me that how good or bad the engineering is offered at the campus.
So these people automatically become my brand ambassadors. So I need to like, even reach out to them also by informing them through emailers, through WhatsApp messages, which is basically like, you know, 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? So marketing just doesn’t stop once the consumer is already inside the campus. know, typically it happens that a car buyer buys a vehicle…and that’s about it. There’s not much to do because he’s already got it. He’s your customer for the next three or four years. Maybe you talk to him about service or accessories or anything. But here it is very, very important to keep on nurturing even your customer and your consumer also. So we tend to do that also. We reach out on a regular basis, invite them for events, ensure that they are also in the know-how of what the…university is doing, who are coming, who not. So that’s the most important part about and this onus lies on the marketing department also very strongly.
Swami
So are you saying that when you open up admissions, there are campaigns running with this proposition targeted at parents or the customers, and there are campaigns running at the students, and therefore there’s a differentiated campaign running, and that’s really how it’s managed, is it?
Burzeen Bhathena
Yes!
Yes, have to because the thing is see parents 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 am an engineer but my son or daughter is interested in commerce. So interest targeting like you know really is a difficult thing. 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. We run separate campaigns itself because as I said the communication is different, the coms are different, the narratives are different. So we tend to do that for sure.
Q5 Okay, so if you have a hundred rupees, how would you spend in media? would you spend in print? Would you spend in digital? Would you spend in outdoor media? So how do you spend your mix of hundred rupees?
Burzeen Bhathena
So the major money goes online because as I said, know, the students, of course, students are absolutely digitally savvy. So that’s not a problem at all. 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. Print or we use majorly in regional languages and in regions where like, know, majorly in tier 2. I wouldn’t call them tier 2 cities because calling Indore tier 2 cities will be extremely injustice to that city. those kind of cities is where we still continue to use print. Print is majorly used for reaching out to parents, as I said to the influencers who are the neighbors or aunts, uncles, those kind of people who are there. So we do tend to use print. Outdoor we do not use NMIMS per say, it doesn’t use Outdoors to a very great extent.
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. So if I want to say 100 rupees how I divide I would say like you know almost 65 rupees goes to to digital almost around 15 to 20 would go into print, 5 would go into radio because we still believe that especially in smaller towns like Chandigarh, Indore radio really works and even in far east radio really works and the rest of it basically is between outdoors and other channels. When I say other channels like some regional TV publications…digital TV channels. That is where like, you know, we are also focusing.
Q6 Interesting that you know you’re looking at media mix as an educational institution, the mix is very very different and you’re talking of a media mix and spending the money in an optimized manner, very interesting. I’m coming to the challenge of I would say the professors and they are again a very important stakeholder unlike you know traditional brands sometimes if you look at the US universities the professors themselves are brands like you have a know you have Philip Kotler who’s actually Northwestern University and therefore he’s a brand by himself so how do you build preference and attract talent teaching talent to a university like yours.
Burzeen Bhathena
So one thing which attracts the most is basically like know research. So research is a very integral even if you look at the US institutions, they have a very high focus on research. All the faculty members are encouraged to keep on like you know doing research, file research papers and with top research journals and you know file patents especially when it comes to technical like engineering and that is exactly what like know NMMS has also been focusing upon. Our numbers when it comes to patents filing, filing of patents and filing of research papers has actually gone up quite significantly. Our focus has been on research. 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 show that and that is how you attract talent. Also one of the other ways is basically how we are portraying them in media. We want them to be seen as thought leaders. As a result we get a lot of authored articles created on diverse topics from commerce to economics to engineering to any other tech like AI.
So we do that and that is also 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 radio or on print, we ensure that like you know those are also we put it on Facebook or we put it on our LinkedIn and our own social media handles to ensure that everybody is able to view those and is and it makes a very good proposition because the incoming faculty members who are there they also want say 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 person had been on television it really makes a difference and that’s exactly what we are doing we are making our professors our thought leaders and they themselves become a very big attraction 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. So the faculty will play a very important role in pull-paste marketing, not only for pulling better faculty members or even pulling better students also. So it cuts both ways. And it also shows my faculty how advance and how modern they are. Last year also our faculty were giving their thoughts on 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 their particular domain but for the country as a whole. So that is what we are doing for pulling in the best talent in the field.
Q7 The other stakeholder in education is really the corporates, right? And there tends to be a halo around IAMs, IITs, maybe the next NITs. So how do you really do marketing to corporates? And what are the various forms of marketing that you adopt for getting corporates to come to your campus?
Burzeen Bhathena
Yes. 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 this or basically like you know it is not exactly what the corporate wants. 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 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 NMIMS 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.
We have 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 companies, CEOs, CFOs, CMOs who come and who actually give their point of view on how we should design the next program. How like, you 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 6 months, 1 year after 6 months somebody might get fully trained and go off to a competitor he may leave or after 6 months the corporate might realize that no this person is not trainable.
That is also a very big challenge which a lot of corporates face. 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. We of course also have quite a few programs which are in association with the corporates itself.
We run a program in association with TCS. We run a program in association with Bosch. We run a program in association with L &T, Mindtree. So, 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 rather than like you know they’re learning and coming to the corporate getting trained for six months and then getting on to the job here they can come because they have been like you know learning about how the corporate works for those one year, two years, three years that they are with us that’s the very big advantage that that is having.
Swami
So as a marketer of the university, you do a fairly large reach out program to corporate, it? So is it something as a part of even marketing, you spend some money and would you actually do those kinds of things also?
Burzeen Bhathena
So more than marketing, we have a dedicated placement department. The placement department also reaches out to these corporates on a one-on-one basis. Yes, we are continuously putting things on social media. We do send out emailers. this placement department and marketing department at NMIMS are absolute best partners. Quite literally sitting next to each other and working very closely. 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.
Q8 Okay, the whole education industry itself is getting disrupted because of EdTech, right? So given that EdTech is disrupting, how is your marketing methods changed from probably what was done five years back to what is being done today? Because as a student, you know, I can actually do online programs. I don’t need to have a degree. I can go and join any company and then I can have MOOCs where I can qualify myself. So there’s a massive disruption that’s happening. So how is it affecting the marketing that you are doing?
Burzeen Bhathena
So I’ll 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 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 but the biggest thing is what where I come in is I tell you what videos to watch and what videos not to watch.
Because the thing is if you really want to learn, there are 20 resources which are there. I’ll tell you to go to those 5 resources only where you will come to know everything. You don’t have to go through that 20. Because there’s always a possibility that, you see, we all know when it came to engineering, there were like, you know, 10 books per subject which was there and you know, 8 subjects. You couldn’t sort of possibly go through each and every book. But your faculty always guided you that you know, you need to go through this book maybe 10 times.
You take one book and read it ten times instead of reading ten books one time which is one of the most important things. That is one of the biggest things which happens in case of online. There are a lot of things which are available online today. The biggest thing that happens in a full-fledged or in a classroom, one is exchange of ideas and thoughts. Yes, there’s a lot of theory out there, a lot of examples that are given. But there is no exchange of thoughts which happens through traditional programs. That’s one of the biggest things.
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. Of course through online programs also you can connect with students, can connect with your faculty, LinkedIn provides a platform where you can connect with a lot of professionals and discuss and like you know talk about your issues. But still I would say you know your offline is the important part and those are some of the benefits that you need to portray through your through the marketing campaigns that we do. you know, in fact, like we have, so it is similarly, that is similar like retail. You could go today and buy everything online. There’s not a problem at all. But does that mean that all your shops or all your retailers are shut down? No, that’s not the case. In fact, the online have actually now come to offline. We have seen a lot of even in education brands, ed tech companies, we started purely online. They actually started having tuition classes. I don’t want to name the brand, but we know that they actually went offline.
So that’s definitely going to happen. 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 you online and like, you know, are getting converted offline. But today because of tech and because of your 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 where he came from and what all kind of touch points that he has gone and how your digital marketing actually works. That’s one of the biggest blessing I would say of attribution modeling, which to a digital marketeer can actually show that you know that was a disadvantage that in print you gave an ad you never knew whether that person actually saw your ad or he was told by someone or you know how he got and we filled up with digital you can track everything and that’s one of the biggest advantage which is there but I can assure you that like you know India is a very touch and feel country so we definitely want to like you know even when we are buying insurance we may still want to buy online we do buy online insurance 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 that’s something which is applicable for the education sector also for sure.
Q9 So as a marketing head of say an institution like NIMS, do you use marketing tools, marketing platforms, and do you invest in these kinds of tools and platforms to do marketing?
Burzeen Bhathena
Absolutely absolutely it is like buying a hoarding and like you know not lighting it up 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 if you going to of course I am using a very different analogy because today hoardings are also converting to digital screens but you know without
without that light which is equivalent to your tools, your attribution modeling tools or your tools because see today on social media also lot of students go and talk and went out their students to people who are applying it could be whatever difficulty they are facing in registering or difficulty in whatever way they actually prefer to go on to social media and talk about it. 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 so that’s the reason why today tools play a very important part also if you want to send out bulk WhatsApp messages, bulk emailers, it’s just not about sending out those emailers and not doing anything. Today it’s important to track, today digital marketing, your actual work starts after you started your campaign or after like you know your campaign goes live. I used to always 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. It was like, you know, just just seeing whether the logs were there or just ensuring that your ad came in and maybe tracking and 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 at your campus or at your university.
As in case of digital because the campaigns are there and you sustain them for months together you can actually even track that somebody who had visited your website say in Jan has actually ended up converting in April and without relevant tools, attribution modeling it’s not possible to do you must know and of course you need a very strong and a robust CRM to begin with because without the CRM.
Swami
So NMIMS has got CRM platforms, marketing campaign, Martech platforms and all that is it.
Burzeen Bhathena
Absolutely. Absolutely. We’ve got dashboards where our leadership team, our faculty members, see everything what is happening in real time. Yes.
Swami
What are you saying? Okay.
Burzeen Bhathena
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 Shirkur campus I can very easily see I can just go to the dashboard and I can see that I don’t have to pick up the call on the library and ask him that you know how many books are there if I want to like you know my library catalog is totally digitized. So if I want to know let’s say a particular book maybe not available in say Indore but maybe available in Mumbai maybe available in So in that respect, we have digitized everything.
So it’s no longer where, it is actually more of a digital transformation than digital only being used by marketing. the entire thing is digitized. HR is totally also digitized because typically that’s what doesn’t happen much in an education institution. But NMIMS always ensure that like, we are the leaders in that respect and we have totally digitized everything. In fact, our entire admission process right from filling of the lead form, to registering, to document verification, everything is digital.
Swami
So it’s almost like, is it almost like buying insurance?
Burzeen Bhathena
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.
So that’s the, we are the first, and this was a proper proper AI based. 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, your… whatever the replied that was recorded and that supported. Our AI implementation went much much further. The candidates SOP and CV were uploaded to the AI tool before he or she came in. The candidate would sit and the… questions the AI would ask were based on the SOP and were based on the CV. So you did not have very generic questions. 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 because I may be from an engineering background. Let’s say my interview is from the commerce background. There will be a very different thought process. Whereas in AI, because we are using AI, all these issues and these are absolutely normalized. The best part is more than 14,000 candidates took this AI based interviews in Mumbai campus. 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.
Q10 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, have digital marketing teams, you have advertising teams. So in a education institution like yours, how is your marketing team built? So do you really have these kinds of people with specific…roles, designations. So can you walk me through how does a marketing department in an educational institution look like?
Burzeen Bhathena
So typically, 10 years back if I would take even NMIMS also, the marketing team was more focused on print and reaching out to print, some of them were online also. In the last five years, know, especially after the pandemic which happened, it has been a sea of change. We have specialists in the marketing team. Marketing team is also divided upon verticals. So you have a performance marketing vertical, you have a PR vertical. When I say PR, is organic, inorganic both. You have a vertical which focuses on social media. You have a vertical which focuses on
your data analytics. So each specialized vertical is even present at NMIMS also. I have a team of performance marketing managers. I have a team of performance marketing. I have a team of PR. I have a data analytics team. I have a team which focuses on content because that is also a very important thing in today’s time and age. So those are the different teams and each team is made of specialists.
Of course there are managers who are like, you I ensure that they are more of generalist and they not only like, you know, do about 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, you cannot have teams working in silos. Typically earlier your PR team would not know what was happening on social media. Your social media would not know what performance marketing does. Today I ensure that all my teams talk to each other.
Like when a call is happening with my PR agency, my performance marketing team is also sitting in that call. Although they might not have any relevance, but they need to know and understand what is happening in PR. What is the kind of content that is going on? Very important because typically performance marketing people are very focused. They work in a very narrow space where their life just revolves around impressions, registrations, leads. That’s the only, that’s majorly where… their life revolves but then those days are gone. Today even a performance marketing person must know what the brand is doing on social, what the brand is doing on when it comes to like you know content, are the like you know SEO also definitely plays a very important part. So it’s like although they may be specialized in one but they definitely must be aware of all the other things also.
Swami
So how large is your team?
Burzeen Bhathena
So we have almost a 25 member team where a large chunk of the team sits in the central campus, is in Mumbai. But there are at least two to three people which sit out of each campus because India is a very diverse country and you know, habits, consumption patterns, consumer behavior, differs every 100 kilometers. And in large cities like Mumbai, possibly it differs every two kilometers.
The way somebody might be thinking and approaching in Bandra will definitely not be same maybe even in Santa Cruz or maybe even in Vile Parle. Even in large cities like Mumbai, Delhi, typically a South Bombay person will be having a very different thought process, habits, consumer behaviour patterns. So what we have done is we have created these specialized teams around the campuses also which are like you know 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 educate the faculty, the principal, the counselors who are at the schools about the programs, about the different kinds of things that we offer and you know about the university as a whole. So it’s a centrally decentralized process as I say.
Swami
Beautiful. you’re saying you guys do outreach programs to schools and things like that to seed and actually nurture the future students.
Burzeen Bhathena
Yes, absolutely it is very necessary. We invite a lot of students to visit our campuses also. Especially when it comes to tech, a lot of parents, students are interested in seeing whether, is my kid going to work on the machine which is there in the market. I am very proud to say that we have Pharma Labs 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. So we have machines which will actually package that capsule. So you know these are mini factories by themselves I can say and we also have labs where the students are working on the very on a scale down machines.
This is a very typical US concept where colleges and institutions have actually had even a mini nuclear reactor on the campus. Of course in India that is going to be like a little far away. But we do tend to have that. So our labs are industry ready labs. 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. 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 people from the press and media to actually experience it and then inform the others also. So we do that from time to time across all our campuses.
Q11 So if you look at your overall investment in education, 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. But as the world is changing, the need for lifelong learning is there. And therefore, some of the students, who graduate from NMIMS or institutions like yours can be lifelong learners and therefore there’s a high, what I call as a customer lifetime value of these students. 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?
Burzeen Bhathena
I agree with you. fact, if I take my parent body which is SVKM Sri Vijayapalaya Kelavani Mandal, it runs, we always say that we are there from KG to PG. We have got schools, we have got… like you we’ve got schools. We’ve got colleges. So you have like, know, CNM school you have Your JV Parekh school in Mumbai. These same schools are there CBSE school is there for example say in Dulia In Hyderabad, have a CBSE school in Hyderabad. So these we have not tracking still the entire customer lifetime value right from the school till the post graduation level, but that’s something because the CRM systems are little different still. Schools do not have a full fledged CRM system the way a university will have. But yes, that is something which is our aim and that’s something which when it comes to digital transformation, the next stage of digital transformation, that’s exactly what we want to do. We want to track the life of a student right from KG to PG and that’s something which is very important.
Swami
But what after PG because typically they go on, you know, spend in say, core zero and things. So you actually can earn a revenue even after PG and when they are working. Therefore, so how do you really look at, so today your revenue, 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?
Burzeen Bhathena
Yes. Well, we are coming to that. It’s not something which like you I can say that we are already doing. We are coming to that. We really want to do that. We really want to see because see after one point in time a student will like or the candidate will actually would want to prefer to 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. So that’s something which we are already doing, but we are not tracking completely, but we are getting there. We definitely like, you we want to do that because that is very, very important for us to also understand that there’s a lot of reskilling which tends to happen. And we’ve seen that a student who would have done is MBA 20 years back from NMIMS, enrolls in executive education program in NMIMS itself after 20 years because he has to upskill himself because that is very important. So we do tend to get that. We have not completely done the integration, but yes, we are getting there for sure. In fact, SVKM per se as a parent is now like you know even coming up with a medical college and a hospital. 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, even you know take up a university and you know so the entire your first 25 years of life are with SVKM itself fixed.
Q12 Very nice, very nice. So I’m coming to the last section of our conversation, which is really a set of rapid fire questions. So my first question to you is, what does success mean to you?
Burzeen Bhathena
It’s basically like, you know, helping people in terms of marketing and thing, would say helping find the student and the parent the right program at the right time because see today education is again the cost is definitely there but one of the biggest things in case of a student is his time. For example, law programs… 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. That’s what is the biggest and the best success that I can get and student succeeds in life for a faculty or for like you know in education a student success is the best success that we can get.
Q13 Very nice. What would be your advice to an 18 year old or a 17 year old in a university today?
Burzeen Bhathena
Choose your program very very carefully. As I said, it’s very important to ensure that whatever program you are taking, you do not realize after 2-3 years that this is not, I am not cut out for this particular field, I need to do something else. Also please understand that one of the most important thing is specializations which used to happen post-graduate or even later on, today are happening at undergraduate levels itself. No longer… it is just plain vanilla BCom. Today you have BBA programs with specializations. You have BBA in Finance, have BBA in Marketing, you have BBA in General Management. 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. Because that is what is going to shape you in future. Those days are gone when typically you would like you know take up a commerce or arts or any science field. You would do your MBA and then like you would join your earlier. Today it starts right from after your 12th standard itself.
Q14 So what are the resources that you lean on to enhance your knowledge?
Burzeen Bhathena
So believe it or not, social media, although a lot of people say it leads to lot of waste of time and people become habituated, you are scrolling, you waste a lot of hours over there. I’ll say it depends on what content you consume. If even on a platform like Instagram, you start following a lot of handles which give you information about 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. If you follow that, this is exactly what the algorithm will automatically start giving you. So LinkedIn is there. LinkedIn is a very, very beautiful resource, which unfortunately not many people tend to go to and use it on a daily basis. I like to use LinkedIn as my… It’s become more like how you typically pick up a newspaper in the morning to read all your content and get to know about the world. Today, I actually go on… to LinkedIn and see what all other people are talking about, what people are talking about in their industry. There’s a lot of cross learning also which happens. It is no longer that what is happening in FMCG, what a marketer is doing in FMCG, 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.
Q15 Okay. What is one piece of advice that you got in your career which you carry in your mind and head even today?
Burzeen Bhathena
So the best thing that I learnt in marketing is you are never sure what will work. You can do all your research, can do all your possibilities but what may click especially in online.
And it could be just one success story also which is good enough to catapult you to a very different level. So always learn to take risks. Do not be afraid of taking risks.
Do not judge the book by its cover. If something didn’t work for you last time, do not be worried that it will not work the next time. Again, the converse is also true that what worked for you just now may not always work for you. So you have to be ready to accept that fact and of course embrace technology.
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 entire organization in with the latest tech. So if the marketing team doesn’t adopt it, possibility is that your HR, your admissions and your other teams will be even slower in adopting that technology.
CLOSING
Swami
Thanks, thanks, Burzeen. It was a fantastic conversation. 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 to get into your university, the technology that you invest, the marketing teams that you have, the approach that you take to marketing.
These are quite eye-opening because we normally tend to look at marketers from the corporates, but looks like education institutions are becoming sophisticated marketing machines. And thanks for sharing your experience. It was lovely having a conversation with you.
Burzeen Bhathena
Absolute pleasure. Pleasure is mine.
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