How Nishant Saxena set up Elements Akademia to assure placements to jobless MBAs

The two worlds of academia and business are never at par with each other. And it's the yawning gap between the two that Nishant Saxena , CEO of Elements Akademia, sought to bridge back in 2006. Today, he has a scalable embedded model, both offline and online, to assure placements to a wide swathe of MBAs, who would otherwise go jobless or get measly salaries. Background check: Armed with an engineering degree from REC-Trichy and an MBA from IIM-Lucknow, Allahabad boy Nishant Saxena sought his fortune in the corporate sector with P&G where he was the chief architect of the multinational FMCG giant's acquisition of Gillette in India. Saxena eventually moved to Singapore in a regional M&A role, but remained involved with the academic world, rendering part-time training to students from his alma mater IIM-Lucknow as well as National University, Singapore. Driving force: An academician at heart, Saxena wanted to bridge the glaring gap between theory and practice, academic discipline and industrial requirement. "The gap was painful for anyone in the industry who was associated with teaching," he says. Sowing the seeds: Saxena wanted to teach profitably, as he believed he was creating value for society, which would eventually come back to him through the 'invisible hand'. So while working for P&G in Singapore, he convinced a group of 15, including a host of fellow students from IIM-Lucknow and regional presidents of Kellogg's India, Sara Lee, Reckitt Benkiser, among others, to pump in money for a venture to bridge the gap between academia and industrial requirement. It enabled him to raise $0.5 million for his 2006 venture, Elements Akademia. Dream run: He started with a bang, expanding to five offices across five cities in North India with 85% of his 600-odd students placed in six months. Convincing act: The staff at Elements had to go around spreading the word that university education alone wouldn't suffice in the job market. With hiring partnerships with a dozen companies, such as Max New York Life, Genpact, Kotak Bank, Reliance Retail, among others, Saxena & Co worked alongside the corporates to design effective curriculum. That was key to placements. Business philosophy: Two basic beliefs formed the core of the business. The first was that university education doesn't prepare one for jobs. Second, the focus was largely on Tier-II students. "When I went to Lucknow University in 2007, it had 30,000 students and only 25 got placed from campus...our model ensured job-worthiness to the rest," says Saxena. Down syndrome: As jobs dried up in the downturn of 2008, growth started tapering off for the first-time entrepreneur. As losses mounted, Saxena's wife commented that he looked 5-6 years older. Somehow, he kept afloat by increasing Elements' exposure to corporate training across a wide swathe of companies, including J&J, Nestle, KPMG, Cadbury and Amway, among others.