Time for Triumph

Relocating from Bombay to Secunderabad and setting up an educational institute was a leap of faith for Manek Daruvala. His determination paid off and now his brainchild T.I.M.E. Triumphant Institute of Management Education functions in 116 cities and towns. With 89 franchisees, T.I.M.E. trains over 1,70,000 students annually and has prepared over 20 lakh for international, national and state level examinations, says Daruvala.

Manek and Kerban Daruvala: taking T.I.M.E. forward

"We train for a large variety of courses. Our flagship course is still CAT (Common Admission Test), the course we started with. We also train for other MBA (Masters of Business Administration) entrance exams. We coach students for GATE (Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering), the entrance exam for post-graduate engineering courses. We train for Bank PO (Probationary Officer) exams and Staff Service Commission (SSC) exams. We offer coaching for IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) and other engineering entrance exams and for NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test), the medical entrance exam. We also offer coaching for exams for studying abroad like GRE (Graduate Record Examinations) and GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test). T.I.M.E. provides tuitions and IIT Foundation Courses for school children. The subjects we need to teach vary from quantitative ability and reading comprehension for CAT to physics and botany for NEET. Since we are into such a wide array of courses, the subjects we need to teach is a very long list.”
Daruvala’s typical work day is about 10 hours and a large part of it is spent meeting people. "I am a bit of a workaholic and I often work a fair bit from home too. I now see my role as that of guiding and motivating people to perform their roles more efficiently and to help them move in the direction of the organization’s objectives. I need to deal with not only our employees but also our franchisees. I also handle the finance, HR (human resources), legal and advertising functions for the organization.
"As the organization has grown, I have ended up doing more and more administrative functions, something I don’t enjoy, but which are critical to the success of the organization. Sadly, I have also stopped teaching.”

T.I.M.E. center in Jaipur

"We grew slowly and conservatively. For the first few years, we (co-venturer Pillutla Viswanath and I) were the only teachers in our Institute – teaching all the topics that were needed to be covered. Fortunately, we were well accepted by our early lot of students and we grew on their excellent word-of-mouth recommendations. We developed all the early courseware ourselves based on our understanding of the exams. Once we developed some momentum and gained in confidence, we started expanding by adding courses and by appointing franchisees to take T.I.M.E. across the country. We had developed a team and could rely on our teammates to do a good job. From 2000 onwards, we started adding about eight to 10 new centers every year.”
It was quite a challenge to relocate from Bombay to Secunderabad. Daruvala says, "We had absolutely no family or friends in Secunderabad and had to set up our social circle from scratch. Language was also an issue as neither of us knew a word of Telugu. It was particularly difficult for (his wife) Kerban as she was alone at home in the early days. But Hyderabad has a wonderfully warm culture and we settled in pretty well after a while. Today we feel so comfortable here that I’m sure we wouldn’t want to move for anything in the world.”
Kerban is a psychology graduate from Bombay University and was working with Lions Club International in Bombay before moving with him to Hyderabad. She works in a different office of T.I.M.E. in Secunderabad and she is responsible for training their counselling team. She also makes all the counselling notes for most of the courses. But for Manek, her key role is that of go-to person. "Whenever I am in doubt over some fundamental issue, she can be relied upon to give frank and clear advice — a completely different perspective on many an occasion.”
Brought up in Deolali, a military cantonment near Nasik in Maharashtra, Daruvala was an only child and had a traditional Parsi upbringing where values and customs were concerned. "My mother taught me all our regular prayers, and the language spoken at home was primarily Gujarati. I grew up eating and enjoy Parsi cuisine immensely and, to this day, I prefer home-cooked Parsi food to most of the delicacies available in good restaurants. In my childhood most of my friends were cosmopolitan and I did not have too many Parsi friends. At an early age, I learnt to interact with people from across a wide spectrum of communities. This stood me in very good stead because I moved to a hostel in Fergusson College, Poona right after my 10th standard and had to live a life very different from what I was used to at home.”

Daruvala graduated with a BSc degree in chemistry from Bombay University (BU) and then went on to do his post graduation in management from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) at Ahmedabad. He was a National Talent Scholarship holder from the first year of junior college until the end of his postgraduation. He is also a rank holder in physics from BU.
"After my stint at IIM-A, I was placed with Godrej and Boyce Manufacturing Company Limited at their marketing headquarters in Vikhroli, Bombay in April 1987. Here, I was fortunate to be assigned a number of varied tasks which helped me tremendously in the early development of my professional skills. In about four years, I was branch manager of their Bombay branch for their appliances division - in charge of both sales and service. I had enjoyed a very steep learning curve and owe a huge debt of gratitude to Godrej for the opportunities it provided me and the learning I managed during my five years there.
"Despite all this there was always a strong urge to do more – and to be one’s own boss. I took a risk and plunged into entrepreneurship. Honestly, the possibility and consequences of failure were never given too much thought. "Joi laisu (we’ll deal with it)” was the approach!
"I teamed up with Viswanath, my friend and ex room-mate in Godrej. Viswanath is also an alumnus of IIM-A — two years my senior. We needed a low investment project because we were very low on funds. I was still paying off my education loans! We hit upon the idea of starting a CAT coaching institute, training students for admission into the prestigious IIMs. Both of us were fond of and passionate about teaching and it was an area where we had a good understanding of what needed to be done. We decided to call our venture T.I.M.E.”
It was a big gamble. Daruvala says, "I had just got married in 1991 and here I was, in 1992, planning to quit a fabulous job with a company flat in Bombay and all this with very little in the kitty. People thought I was crazy. Fortunately, Kerban, her family, and my parents supported me to the hilt. They encouraged me to go for it and never let a negative thought cross my mind. I can never forget that my much-needed first motor bike could only be purchased because Kerban gave up her entire provident fund corpus for it.”
Daruvala is an avid sports enthusiast and he tells us how he relaxes after a long day at work. "I spend a lot of my spare time watching cricket, tennis, Formula 1, soccer and what not. I am more than happy curling up on the sofa on a Sunday evening watching (tennis champion Roger) Federer play (Rafael) Nadal or Sunrisers Hyderabad (cricket team) take on Delhi Daredevils. I also read a lot — I like to stay abreast of all the latest happenings in politics, economics and international affairs. Most of my reading these days tends to be non-fiction — quite a turnaround from my school days when I used to devour novels.”
Daruvala lists his future plans. "We have quite a few expansion plans lined up. Over the last few years we have started a pre-school chain under the name T.I.M.E. Kids. We now run over 250 pre-schools in about 10 states in India. It has been a completely different organizational experience.
"Personally, I am trying to figure out ways by which I would be able to give back to society in a meaningful way. I would like to contribute my mite towards educating the children of the poor. But, I believe that one needs to do charity intelligently — such that the impact of what you do is disproportionately high in terms of the benefits that accrue.
"There is still so much that needs to be done to improve the state of education in our country that I am sure I will be able find a niche where I will be able to make a meaningful contribution to the underprivileged.”
Daruvala says, "There is indeed so much to be proud about (Zoroastrianism). The basic tenets of our religion — good thoughts, good words, good deeds — are so simple yet so powerful. If only more people followed them. As a community, we Parsis would need to make a serious and conscious effort to stem the decline in our numbers. I do recognize that this is a long-term project and will take some doing but then a journey of a thousand miles will have to start with a single step.
"I remain optimistic about the future of our community. We have weathered many a serious storm in the past and we will weather this one too. But it won’t happen on its own — we will have to make it happen.”