But today, students in city schools are belting out a different tune — “We do need education”. Because, and quite literally, teachers will “leave those kids alone”.

A lot of freedom from traditional academic mores is being envisaged by a coterie of former students of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and the Indian Institutes of Technology. Their endeavours are the latest addition to the growing strength of Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO) in the UT.

After getting his management degree from IIM-A, Vishal Sood did what most bright alumni of this institute do. He went on to work in singapore on a well-paying job in merchant banking. “After two years, I got bored. A group of like-minded young managers from India thought that we should be entrepreneurs of our own. As the Indian economy was booming, opportunities unknown were presenting themselves,” he said.

The group zeroed in on Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) for educational institutes. Simply speaking, it provides a system for a school, college or an university that can unify all data and process it into the computer.

The concomitant advantages of unifying processes like admissions, enquiry, fee management, exams, HR management, teacher evaluation, parent-teacher interactions etc are immense. A parent can track if his ward is attending classes by simply logging on to the computer at home. He can track the grades and teacher’s assessment of his child. Even fees can be paid online. On the other hand, a student might not have to feign attention in a boring class. He can log on to the system from home and listen and relisten a lecture. He can submit his homework and track examination schedules without even visiting the campus. “This is of vital significance, specially in universities. A lot of institutes in the region have hired our services. These include DAV school, Sector 15, Khalsa College Taran Taran, Holy Heart Group of School in Amritsar and even Punjab Technical University. We are also providing limited service to Annamalai University,” Sood said. The company is called PhiSoft consulting and has its office in Sector-44, Chandigarh. At present, it employs 30 people and intends to increase the workforce to 200 soon. It will also shift to the IT park.