Big ticket university in UP to have 5 schools: Shiv Nadar

Excerpts from India Business Hour on CNBC-TV18 Watch the full show » RELATED NEWS Tribal project in Bengal lends a hand to education aims Why is education sector attracting money, experts find out

Shiv Nadar is better known as the Founder and Chairman of HCL , but education is what's top his mind right now. Nadar's second education venture, an ambitious multi-disciplinary university in Uttar Pradesh is fast reaching completion.

 

CNBC-TV18's Siddharth Zarabi caught up with Nadar on the sidelines of HCL's global summit and spoke to him about the Shiv Nadar University.

 

Here is a verbatim transcript of the exclusive interview with Shiv Nadar on CNBC-TV18. Also watch the accompanying video.

 

Q: Tell us more about the university in Uttar Pradesh?

 

A: A year and a half ago, the land was given to us. We bought it, everything what we do we make sure that the financial commitments are all ours. We bought the land, the construction is on way, it would be done by this fall and our objective is to start the courses next fall. So the university will have initially five schools which is engineering, business, communication, teaching and liberal arts.

Q: Can you share with us some of the investment details?

A: This is a very heavy big ticket school. The initial budget that we have allocated is USD 600 million. So far something close to USD 100 million has already been spent. Buying the land, developing the land and the school of engineering is nearing completion.

Q: From where you stand and look at things, how is overall climate looking to you in terms of the economic recovery, in terms of perhaps the outlook for the overall Indian IT sector, I know you don't want to talk about your company specifically, but give us some sense of where do you see things going forward from here?

A: Data is still tenuous but feeling, hope is high.

Q: Do you think Europe will lag the other developed economies in the recovery?

A: That is what they say, I don't know how much to believe in this because last year almost around the same time, when I was with some top UK brains, some of them projected that it could be as bad as ten years. So, still definitiveness is evading. It may take another six months.