[EDLING:1688] Teaching foreigners the Queen's language

[Francis M. Hult]

Moneycontrol India

http://news.moneycontrol.com/india/newsarticle/stocksnews.php?autono=224507

Teaching foreigners the Queen's language

Outsourcing has seen many avatars in India – from services to knowledge and 
there are some who are cashing in, on the business of languages. Cactus 
Communications is one such example. A Mumbai based firm, that has made its 
foray into the world of English editing and research-based educational 
services, under the brand names Editage & i-osmosis, and all this under the 
vision of one man. 

What started off as a freelance vocation for 27-year-old Abhishek Goel, four 
years ago in Japan, is now a full-fledged business operation, largely focused 
on the scientific community in Japan and now looking at  South-East Asia. The 
business started as a one-room home-office, now has 110 employees comprising 
teachers, journalists, doctors and other specialists. Cactus now has a 
clientele of 3,500 and has recently completed editing its 7,500th research 
paper. Editage and i-osmosis are now two distinct divisions under the Cactus 
umbrella.

But is this something he always wanted to do? Director of Business Development 
Cactus Communications, Abhishek Goel told CNBC-TV18, "I went to Japan on a 
student exchange programme, when I was with AIESEC. There, I wanted to do 
waste management so I met researchers at Universities in Tokyo and outside. I 
went back to India and struggled with waste management, as you would know that 
waste management in India is a dirty business - what with government 
intervention and the local mafia."

"I just didn't have the skills to deal with that sort of an audience then. So, 
I thought let me do something else, let me find something else that is 
exciting enough and that I would like doing. I came back to India and started 
this company that does English editing, focused on researches done in Japan 
and helping researchers publish internationally because Japan has a very 
vibrant research community, which everyone knows about."

But he got the idea for this business, when he saw that there was a gap in the 
market for this kind of work. He explains, " I met a professor at the 
University of Tokyo, which is undoubtedly Japan's largest university. I met 
him for waste management, at the end of a discussion he said, 'okay you speak 
English so why don't you edit my papers for me. I was scared, I said it was 
not a good idea because I have got a commerce background and your papers are 
going to be technical and scientific and there is no way I am going to be able 
to do it and I have stuff to do'."

"But he insisted. He said 'you will learn and you get to foster a bond with me 
and maybe I will help you sometime in future'. So, I said great, let's start. 
I came back and was doing this on the side, as I was exploring my waste 
management course. Gradually, I realised that there is a gap because this was 
the first meeting I had with the professor and he trusted me with his research 
papers. So, I said we are going to define his career, whether he gets a Nobel 
or not."

So, they started out small and kept costs low because he wanted to see if the 
business had any potential. He explains, "We said whatever we do, we need to 
do it in a sustainable fashion. We need to be sure, that there is a market 
before we get aggressive. We have heard horror stories of companies -  even 
larger corporations that had come in to Japan - and had exited because of 
either a cultural gap, some cultural misunderstanding or because they had 
underestimated the expenses."

"So, we started doing editing, and a year-and-half into editing, I have met 
clients here through interactions over e-mail as well as meetings. We realised 
we should do English education. Everyone has been doing English Education in 
China. There are some cases, where people are in the businesss of homework 
outsourcing in the US and things like that. But we said, let's do English 
education in Japan and let's do it in a way that has not been done before."

"It is an online model and it is focused on written English. English education 
in Japan, is a very big industry. Everyone focuses on conversational English 
because that has been the market need for a very long time. It is only in the 
past few years, that Japan has started to write (English), with the Japanese 
businesses going more international and Japanese businesses managers working 
overseas and a lot of foreign people working in Japan. So, they need to write 
more frequently in English."

In all now, he has three divisions. One, which looks after the English writing 
market in Japan, the English editing services and the transcription business. 
So, how does he see revenues coming in, from the three divisions?

"I think Editage - that is our English editing services, is still a flagship 
division and it is likely to be a flagship division for the next two years. 
But I see i-osmosis, that is our English education division zooming ahead 
because the demand for English education is much larger. Transcription is 
going to be a support service, where we do media and business transcription. 
We have also entered the Korean market. Korea has been a different experience 
from Japan altogether."

He feels Korea is going to be the next big opportunity, where editing is 
concerned. He's ambitious and says, "Our market in Japan is still very large, 
but in parallel, we  intend to go to Korea. It doesn't hurt us in terms of 
resources and things like that. We are growing aggressively in Japan, but we 
are also laying a foundation in Korea."

Another huge market is China, which he's not going to ignore. But for the time 
being he feels, i-osmosis - his educational service division - has more 
potential than editing because the research community in Japan and Korea is 
larger. 

With high flying dreams, Abhishek is now on the verge of opening an office in 
Tokyo - his prime market. So, while he is not fluent in Japanese, he sure can 
get by in the Land of the Rising Sun!