Business opportunities come in strange ways. For Ravi Raman, CEO and MD, RR Industries, a company that builds it parks, a client like the UK-based Thales group (which occupies his premises) presented one. The Thales group is a maker of defence and aviation equipment; it's also a major supplier of aircraft simulators, which is what attracted Raman. As the number of private airlines in the country mushrooms so will the shortfall in pilots-it is currently pegged at 300 and expected to hit 1,000 by 2009. What's more, those with commercial flying licences go abroad to be simulator-trained across aircraft types as there are no third party providers of this service yet in the country (a few airlines like Jet do have, or will have, simulators for their requirements).

Enter Rudradev Aviation, Raman's new company, which is planning a Rs 770 crore investment that would currently span the 320 and 330 and 380 versions of Airbus simulators and 737s and 777s of Boeing. "We can provide training to raw aspirants right from scratch and in two years make them pilots,'' says Raman. Holders of a commercial pilot licence can even opt for advanced training, which also involves surviving a crash-landing. The full-fledged training comes at Rs 28 lakh per person and would take 18 months. The courses are expected to begin from June 2007. From 2009 onwards, Raman expects to be in a position to train 1,000 pilots a year.

"As each simulator equipment costs Rs 90 crore airlines, particularly low-cost ones, which are under tremendous financial pressure are not inclined to invest in simulators,'' says David Davenport, Sales and Marketing Director, Thales. Agrees Jeh Wadia, Managing Director of GoAir: "Such an academy makes eminent sense for us for pilot training and sourcing."

Thales is arranging for a European bank credit for 85 per cent of the project requirement (which works out to Rs 625 crore) and the remaining would be in the form of equity and debt by Rudradev Aviation, and possibly private equity funding. The company also plans to look at helicopter-type training and purchase single-seater aircraft to help aspirants get commercial flying licences. After all, with just pure simulator training, one can only go as far as becoming a co-pilot; but what works in favour of Raman's business model is a law that mandates even regular pilots to compulsorily get simulator retraining every six months.

-Nitya Varadarajan

Bollywood and Beyond
A US iconic university looks to strengthen its Indian ties.

Jared L. Cohon

In October, Jared L. Cohon, President, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), an American Ivy League college renowned for its it courses, found himself in Mumbai talking to animation and film production houses to discuss collaboration possibilities on upcoming projects. While CMU may have been previously targeted by thousands of India engineering grads for its much-sought-after masters programmes, the roles are slowly getting reversed with Cohon and many other senior CMU staff aggressively stepping up the university's presence in the country. "We created a new facility-Entertainment Technology Centre-six years ago to foster collaboration between our College of Fine Arts and Department of Computer Science and develop the use of technology in games and movies. With Bollywood becoming an important centre for the use of technology in movie-making we hope to collaborate with some production houses here to invite some staff to the centre in Pittsburgh," says Cohon.

This partnership may just be the first step in a much more visible presence for CMU globally. While Bangalore and Delhi are both reportedly on CMU's radar for an India campus, Cohon won't get into specifics. Instead, he reveals that CMU will possibly focus on masters, PhD and possibly research programmes here in India. 'The US continues to have perhaps the best education system in the world, but other countries such as India and China are catching up," he adds.

-Rahul Sachitanand