Ratnesh Kumar Jha is the Delhi-based managing director (South Asia) of Cambridge University Press India Pvt. Ltd (CUP). An alumnus of JNU and Delhi universities and the Kellogg School of Management, USA, Jha began his professional career with Citibank, USA, and served with GE Capital, Reliance Telecom, Vodafone and Educomp Solutions (2010-2013) prior to signing up with CUP.

Newspeg. CUP and its Chennai-based division, Cambridge English Language Assessment, organised the second edition of the Cambridge English South Asia Partnership Summit on February 23-24 in New Delhi in partnership with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce of India (FICCI). The objective of the summit: provide a platform to discuss the future of education and the skill-sets required to excel.

CUP history. CUP is an affiliate of the top-ranked University of Cambridge, UK (estb.1209), engaged in the business of publishing academic textbooks, monographs, journals and education material for schools. Since it began its South Asia operations in 2006, CUP has established an excellent reputation for publishing high quality K-12 English, maths, science and social sciences textbooks prescribed by over 10,000 schools affiliated with CISCE, CBSE, CIE, IBO and state examination boards. Currently, the company has 53,000 titles in print, and produces 4 million academic texts and supplementary reading books per year.

Direct talk. “High-quality content is the USP of our textbooks written by accomplished authors from the South Asian region. All content is approved by a syndicate of Cambridge University — routinely ranked among the best universities of the world. We want to support learning in India and therefore we have also ventured into digital learning and higher education resources,” says Ratnesh Kumar Jha.

Last year, Cambridge University Press India entered into a partnership with Vidyanta Skills Institute, Gurgaon (Haryana), a National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) partner, to develop content for vocational education and training (VET) programmes. Under the partnership agreement, CUP and Vidyanta Skills will develop content for nursing schools and VET students in state government secondary schools. “This content and training will be delivered digitally and/or in hybrid mode,” says Ratnesh Kumar Jha.

Future plans. At present only 18 percent of CUP content is offered in digital mode. This percentage is likely to rise significantly with a number of digital products/solutions from communications and teacher development to English language learning services set for launch.

“India has the world’s largest student population. Therefore, CUP which has been at the forefront of school textbooks publishing for over a century, now wants to extend its outreach to train and skill students through the digital medium. Our goal is to transform into a multimedia and multi-platform learning solutions provider which will have a positive impact on K-12 and higher education,” says Ratnesh Kumar Jha.

Autar Nehru (Delhi)