Bringing a paradigm shift in Indian Higher Education

Founded in 2015, Sunstone Eduversity has a vision of creating industry-ready professionals with its unique pedagogy and technology-enabled education delivery.  It partners with existing colleges who have a well-equipped infrastructure to run and manage our management program by leveraging the use of modern-day technology and thus ensuring that the students are provided with the highest level of education quality across all our campuses. All the students are imparted with the desired skills that are in sync with the corporate environment and are given practical training on various corporate domains that exist in an organization.

The goal is to bring about a shift in the present higher education system by equipping the students with various skill sets so that they are readily absorbed by the recruiters. Till date, Sunstone Eduversity has a 100% placement record with over 200 different recruitment companies empanelled with us. It only works on a Pay after Placement model.

Here, Ashish Munjal, CEO and co-founder at Sunstone Eduversity, tells us more. Excerpts:

DQ: Give us an overview of Sunstone.

Ashish Munjal: Sunstone Eduversity (owned by Sunstone Education Tech. Pvt. Ltd.) an edtech startup is offering industry-ready MBA programs with Pay after Placement in Delhi-NCR, Bangalore, Indore, Jaipur and Chandigarh.

Sunstone’s unique Pay after Placement model is offered in partnership with several colleges and private universities. Sunstone works closely with corporates to develop industry ready specializations such as BFSI, Logistics, Sales Management, Digital Marketing and others.

The MBA programs at Sunstone are designed to equip the students with the required expertise to tackle everyday business problems and build competencies across industry verticals. On completion of the course and only after getting a job, the student is required to pay the course fee which is ten times the monthly salary.

Owing to this unique model, Sunstone has already received an overwhelming response from the students; this year Sunstone has selected 300 students from a total of 4,200 applications.

DQ: Why does India need a shift in the present higher education system, and how is Sunstone addressing the problem?

Ashish Munjal: With the growing number of new-age businesses and dynamic job profiles, the requirement of graduates with a high-level domain knowledge and core competencies is the need of the hour.

In India, there’s no mainstream education product solving for employability, which is the biggest pain point for a student. We realized that if a product is offering industry-oriented quality education with a focus on employability, it could change the way mainstream education is currently offered in this country.

We want to bring a paradigm shift in Indian Higher Education, where the onus of a student’s career lies with the college and not the student. Our vision is to be the de facto choice for students wanting quality job ready education and recruiters looking for industry ready graduates.

DQ: What is the market size for such institutions?

Ashish Munjal: In management alone, there are 4,000 MBA colleges in India. Barring the top 100 colleges, most colleges have poor placements, both in quantity and quality. Every year, 3 lakh students enrol for an MBA. At an average ticket size of 6 lakh, this is an 18,000 crore market that we are addressing.

DQ: How has been Sunstone's growth in the last one year?

Ashish Munjal: Sunstone has grown from a one city, one campus model with 60 students to 3 cities, 5 campuses and 300 students in one year (2019). The stark improvement in the number of students and campuses coming on-board are Sunstone’s proof of concept.

DQ: What are the key features and business model of Sunstone?

Ashish Munjal: The most differentiating feature of Sunstone is the “Pay After Placement” model. This not only ingrains trust in the minds of the students about their placement, it also ensures Maximum Return on Investment, since this fee is a proportion of the CTC received by the student in the job.

Sunstone also stands out from other B schools in its teaching pedagogy and the curriculum offered. With a special emphasis on making students Industry-Ready, Sunstone updates the curriculum every 6 months with inputs from corporates, catering to the ever-changing job market.

DQ: What are your future plans and expansion?

Ashish Munjal: Currently, Sunstone has five partner institutions in three cities with 300 students enrolled and is planning to partner with 10 more colleges. Sunstone is planning to achieve a 7x growth in student enrollments and add more than 2000 students across nine cities in 2020.