J C Chaudhry, founder, Aakash Educa­tional Services Limited (AESL), a Delhi-headquartered medicine and engineering coaching institute, had an unlikely dream come true a few months back—a meeting with his cinematic super­hero Amitabh Bachchan. That the meeting happened on the sets of his immensely popu­lar television quiz show Kaun Banega Crore­pati (KBC) was the proverbial icing on the cake. “That he would get to meet Mr Bach­chan played a big part in the final decision making,” laughs Aakash Chaudhry, J C Chaudhry’s son, and the architect of this ambitious promotional coup. 

After all, it’s not every day that a mid-size coaching institute running 75 centres across India is able to enlist a media platform as high-voltage as KBC for its brand visibility to become the sponsoring knowledge partner for its sixth season that aired from September 2012 to January 2013. Sample the numbers. According to Television Audience Measure­ment (TAM) data, the sixth season of the show was watched by over 29 million viewers across the country in just its opening week. In fact, the bumper 6.1 TRP (Target Rating Point) of KBC’s first episode gave it the biggest launch for an Indian television show in 2012 (almost double the numbers of Satyamev Jay­ate’s opening episode in June last year). 

Beyond the numbers, the brand positioning was spot on for AESL since the show’s theme this season was “the power of knowledge” or more specifically, sirf gyaan hi aapko aapka haq dila sakta hai (only knowledge can get you your right). More than even that though, it’s the perfect alignment with the company’s current business objectives that made this mega campaign such a master stroke of brand promotion. 

Founded in 1998 by J C Chaudhry, a botany teacher, the Rs240-crore coaching company has around 60,000 students enrolled in its classroom programmes, and another 15,000 in its distant learning programmes. Over the past five years, the com­pany has been on a high-growth trajectory (growing 40-50 per cent year on year, the management claims) as it expands both the num­ber of centres and its offerings. For instance, in July 2012, they launched iTutor, a specially-designed tablet that comes pre-loaded with AESL’s entire curricu­lum. Plus, priced at Rs15,000-Rs25,000, it costs less than a third of the classroom programme. 

“We want to reach the masses, go to the tier 2, 3 and 4 centres, and give people access to the content we have managed to develop in these years. We can’t be everywhere where there is demand for people to be engineers and doctors. More than 19 lakh students are still out of the reach of the quality we’re offering,” says Aakash Chaudhry, who since he joined the company in 2006 has been the driving force behind many such initiatives. 

Also, starting from 2013, there will be a common National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) for 100 per cent seats of almost all medical colleges in the country. Unlike last year, when different states held their own medical exams, there would now be a uniform pattern and syllabus for pre-medical exams the country over. The move has thrown up new markets for a player like AESL. Because the NEET will be largely based on the curric­ulum of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), AESL which has grown out of Delhi where the CBSE system has been prevalent, has a clear advantage over regional coaching institutes, say in Karnataka or Tamil Nadu, that earlier followed the state syllabus. “A key reason we went ahead with KBC this year was because the medical entrance exam has become a single exam. With the uniform medical exam, our expansion makes sense. We needed to begin reaching the south and west of India where we aren’t very strong,” Aakash Chaudhry elaborates. “We had a couple of approaches in front of us—we could have done lots of print ads left, right and centre, or we could hook on to a national level media platform. We opted for a media platform where we could get a lot of brand recognition and recall.” 

More than 19 lakh students are still out of the reach of the quality we’re offering."- Aakash Chaudhry

He hopes the campaign will give them the immediate fillip their current expansion demands and supplement their on-ground sales force of more than 200 people who frequent schools and attend career counselling seminars to talk directly with students. As it is, a bulk of AESL’s new centres is being set up primarily in the south, and in areas where they haven’t been present before. In 2012, for example, the company opened three centres in Kerala, three in Bangalore, two in Hyderabad, and one each in Ahmedabad and Vadodara. "Of the approaches in front of us—we could have done lots of print ads left, right and centre, or we could hook on to a national level media platform. We opted for a media platform where we could get a lot of brand recognition and recall.”