Japan: Teaching foreigners the Queen's language

[Harold F. Schiffman]

>>From Moneycontrol.com

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!

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