Linking Education And Sports With Economy

Harshavardhan Reddy, chairman of HVR Group, is looking to grow in the field of education and sports. He says his group has a unique business model which brings the world’s top brands on a single platform and offers unlimited opportunities to start-ups and business prospectors. In an e-mail interaction with BW Businessworld, Reddy speaks about his company, expansion plans and how they are assisting in government projects.

What is the core business the company is engaged in and what's its secondary business?
Education is the core business of the group. We focus on using artificial intelligence for teaching online, apart from our brick and motor education which focuses on skills, vocational, and regular education. We have diversified into e-commerce and sports.

The HVR Group is strongly community-focused and incorporates a blend of education and learning sports and physical development, and digital engagement as the highway to nation building and economic stability.

HVR’s second focus is on sports. The company seeks to spread the popularity of sports among wider cross-section of youth with a stress of transforming such sporting passion into profession.

The HVR Group follows a model that links the passion for sports to economic independence. The more it spreads to match the zeal among committed sports persons, the better it is for the country that boasts of more latent talent than discovered talent. The third important area is creation of the world’s largest e-commerce platform that promises to spur entrepreneurship and economic growth. This e-commerce plank seeks to grow in to the largest aggregator of global brands and incubator of start-ups to transform the endeavour in a $100 billion dollar club.

How has the group grown since starting its business and what is your market projection in the years to come?
We have been able to maintain an average growth of 70% each year and we are looking at reaching sales of $1 billion by Sept 2017.

How is the group helping startups? How many startups have benefited till now?
For startups we are an incubator, providing end-to-end solutions right from shaping ideas into sustainable business model, creating and developing their brand, and everything required for marketing and growth of business to reach profitability, sustainability of the business till we help them go public (IPO). We are targeting 600 startups of which close to 100 are on the terms of finalization agreement.

What is the road ahead? Your future expansion plans?
In the education sector we are focusing on entering villages in various sectors of education like skills, vocational, primary and secondary education, and adult education. We are focusing on reaching out to 40 crore Indians by 2018.

In the e-commerce sector we are looking at signing up 600 startups and incubate them. As an aggregator we are targeting our business model reach the $100 billion valuation by 2018.

For sports we are looking at having 25 types of games in the Olympic sector and another 25 types of games between non-Olympic, village and luxury sports. We are targeting to reach and enrol about 10 crore Indians by March 2017.

How are you assisting government through you innovative ideas?
We have several PPP (public private partnership) models with various state governments and the central government in the areas of skill, vocation and content development. We are also using our AI technology to reach out to students where infrastructure is an issue. We are working on innovative ways of reaching out to backward areas to have knowledge reach in the most effective way at the lowest/affordable cost.