Atul Temurnikar Vice-president & trustee, GIEF

He moulds minds. “The Indian diaspora needed an Indian form of education, with higher standards and Indian values. That’s why we are here,” says Atul Temurnikar, vice-president and trustee, chairman (administrative board), Global Indian Education Foundation (GIEF). The man with the impish grin and an easy charm decided to make a difference where it mattered the most. He opened schools.

GIEF, a non-profit foundation headquartered in Singapore, is a pioneer in bringing Indian education to Southeast Asia. Its aim is to serve the educational needs of Indian expatriates around the world. Apart from India, the organisation is present in Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand with 10 schools and over 14,500 students. It will be spreading its wings to the UK, China, Holland and the US.

In addition to kindergarten to Grade 12, GIEF provides undergraduate and postgraduate education, and is in the process of setting up and managing the Singapore campus of the prestigious Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIM-B).

Nothing in Temurnikar’s childhood prepared him for his future life. He studied at the St Joseph’s Convent till Std VIII and later completed his high school and junior college from Somalwar School in Nagpur. Says he: “My school was known for producing the highest number of merit students in Std X and Std XII in the Maharashtra state board exams.”

Temurnikar has the fondest memories of his childhood. “The most important thing I remember has to do with my maths teacher, R.R. Shukla. He taught us the importance of trust in an unusual manner. After every exam, he used to ask us to play the role of examiner for someone else’s answer paper. He would trust the examining students so much that he wrote whatever marks were told to him in the mark-list without a glance at the answer paper.”

He hasn’t been in education all his life. He worked at IBM Singapore as country manager for the e-business and retail segments. And oversaw the merger of Lotus and IBM at the country level.

The idea of opening a school, however, arose from a personal problem. Unlike in West Asia, there was not a single Indian school in Singapore or anywhere in the Asia Pacific. “While many Indians had relocated to countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, Japan and Thailand, they all had problems sending their children to local schools. In Singapore, I experienced schooling incompatibilities in the case of my son. I felt that if he went to an Indian school, he would have developed in a much better way in all respects,” says Temurnikar. So he decided to start an Indian school in Singapore. With its success, he extended the concept to Malaysia, Thailand, Japan and New Zealand, and India as well.

It has been a learning experience for Temurnikar too. He applied his earlier experiences to this effort. “I learnt about teamwork. We used to have a lot of team-based sports and games at our convent school. And we won many matches by playing as a team. And we realised the challenges of running a team and discovered just why interpersonal relationships were so important.”

The GIEF formula for success was also very simple. “We always kept the community needs above professional needs. GIEF offered education at less than $200 per month when other schools were charging $1,000 per month. Critics said that the school’s business model would not work and even questioned our lack of experience in school management.” But nothing could stop them.

Temurnikar attributes his success to the Infosys mantra: under-promise and over-deliver. That led to the school being very successful. They gave a very international version of Indian education and that was more than what people had expected in the first place.

So what does Temurnikar do when he’s not educating other people’s children? Says he, “I meditate if I find it has become too stressful, or just go to a beach and relax in the fresh air and the sound of water. Another way in which I unwind is by playing with my son and daughter.”

These are just pit stops; the best thing about Temurnikar is that he is always eyeing the next mountain. His sole aim in life is to keep increasing the value of education so that he can keep nurturing future global leaders. He certainly gives the lie to the old adage “He who can, does; he who cannot, teaches.”

Based on a conversation with Shibani Chattopadhyay in Calcutta