Pearson to ride on Digital India tide, plans big-ticket investments in R&D

NEW DELHI: Pearson Plc plans big-ticket investments in India in research and development riding on the government’s Digital India initiative, said Chief Executive John Fallon.

The education giant has identified three areas key to growth in India, he said. The first of these is to drive literacy and numeracy among rural and marginal communities to make them employable.

It also wants to enhance the capabilities of schools by introducing the best practices of high-performing institutions in the US, the UK, Singapore and elsewhere along with a framework that aids improvement. The third is to help Indian universities partner with international ones and link them up with local and global employers besides providing more online, blended learning programmes. About 65% of Pearson’s revenue currently comes from North America. With 2,500 people in India and a new centre of excellence in Chennai and another at Bengaluru, Fallon sees India as a hotbed for the company’s learning technologies.


Pearson is looking at a business model where schools are not only directly owned by the company but also franchised or licensed to other school chains. “We have demonstrated through our efficacy framework that it works and it’s benchmarked against global standards,” he said on a trip to India for the company’s first board meeting in the country. He said Pearson’s recent exits from The Financial Times and The Economist came about at a time of dramatic change in the business.

“It’s an inflection point in the sense that more and more people now access their journalism through social media rather than through newspapers or a news portal,” said Fallon.

Although The Financial Times had done a commendable job under Pearson by transiting from analog to digital and going global, it was time to reinvent journalism in the social media age, largely through smartphones and other handheld devices, he said.

He said that since 90% of Pearson’s business was geared to education, it was becoming difficult to focus on the 10% in journalism. Fallon said both the FT and The Economist have “responsible” ownership that respects independent journalism. The two brands will remain profitable under the new owners, yet “retain their iconic British status and rooted in London for many years to come,” he said.

The stake sales were part of a process that has been underway at Pearson in the last 15 years, he said.