Sowing the Seeds of Success

Stansfield Group's Kannappan Chettiar tells EUGENE LOW howhis path to success was riddled with failure and what he hopes to teach students at the school’s new Centre for Entrepreneurship

To Kannappan Chettiar, chairman and chief learning officer of The Stansfield Group, failure is not something to be feared. Instead, it should be regarded as an intermediate step towards success. And it’s not just an outlook that Mr. Chettiar, 40, mouths glibly. He speaks of his philosophy as one who has personally tasted the bitterness before enjoying the sweetness of success. In 1990, the opportunity for Mr. Chettiar to get into the private education business knocked. Having been awarded a government tender for the former Middle Road Hospital, he got down to transforming the building into a school. Borrowing money from his father and friends, Mr. Chettiar bought the Singapore Institute of Commerce (SIC). His plan was to turn it into a private school for University of London law degrees and diplomas. “SIC soon became the biggest private law school in Singapore in 1992. Unfortunately, things did not work out between me and the investors, so I decided to leave,” recalled Mr. Chettiar. But soon after he left SIC, he realized that he did not have enough money to provide for his family.

“I left SIC with nothing. I was unemployed and had no money. All I had was an idea, and no one wanted to back me,” he said. He needed to do something, and fast. Mr. Chettiar decided to re-enter the private education business this time with his own funds. His vision was to create the top business school in Singapore, he told The Business Times in a recent interview. “At first, it was hard to raise the necessary funds to start the business,” said Mr. Chettiar. But he persevered and managed to obtain a $20,000 loan from Citibank. “I found a place in Serangoon Central, which was being occupied by the then Bishan-Serangoon Town Council. They were giving up one of the floors. I tendered for it because of the low rental. That was how I got started,” Mr. Chettiar said. Full circle: That, in a nutshell, is how Stansfield School of Business was established. Since then, Mr. Chettiar has not looked back. In fact, his Stansfield Group has done so well that it was able to acquire SIC in 1998. Mr. Chettiar had come full circle. The Stansfield Group, which now comprises the Stansfield School of Business, St. James English School, SIC, Winfield Hall of Residence, and the Centre for Entrepreneurship, has managed to maintain annual growth of at least 25 percent every year since 1993.

Mr. Chettiar expects growth to accelerate to around 35 percent over the next few years. Last year, Stansfield Group—which has a total of around 8,500 students enrolled in its schools—posted revenues of $8 million. It has also been ranked number 32 in this year’s list of Enterprise 50 companies. But Mr. Chettiar doesn’t take his success for granted. “Life is a struggle. Most entrepreneurs go through a struggle,” he observed. “Unless you're very lucky, everyone goes through this point known as failure. Failure is an intermediate point before success. It is where the greatest learning happens, what I call true learning.” He added: “At the point of failure, many people don’t realize that success is just a step away. So they retrace their steps, go backwards, and give up everything.” This is a key lesson that he hopes to impart to students at Stansfield Group’s new Centre for Entrepreneurship. For Mr. Chettiar, learning about being an entrepreneur is not just about learning the nuts and bolts of setting up a business. More importantly, it involves a change in the individual’s perception of and reaction to failure. Challenge: “The challenge is to create in our students a mindset that does not mind failing. We try to inculcate the attitude that failure is the last point before you succeed,” said Mr. Chettiar. He acknowledges that this is no easy task: “All of us are conditioned to become risk-averse. True entrepreneurs are those who have unconditioned themselves. I call them contrarians. If this is correct, the only way to teach entrepreneurship is to uncondition people. It is a rigorous process because it is not an easy thing to uncondition human behavior,” Mr. Chettiar is not one who will shrink from a challenge. Alongside with the government's plan to boost Singapore's education industry, the future looks bright for the Stansfield Group. In September, the education workgroup of the Economic Review Committee (ERC) subcommittee on service industries said Singapore’s education industry can be an engine of economic growth.

The industry workgroup suggested expanding the country’s education services to attract 150,000 foreign students and 100,000 executive trainees in 10 years. It has also recommended that a pool of some 40 top-notch private commercial and specialty schools be built up here. Thanks to its investments over the past few years, the Stansfield Group is well prepared to capitalize on the future growth of Singapore's education industry. Said Mr. Chettiar: “We are the only private education provider that has the government's plans to boost Singapore built up the entire infrastructure to bring students in from overseas. This is our key advantage. When foreign students come here, we can provide them with accommodation at our hostel, the Winfield Hall of Residence.” However, it takes more than physical infrastructure alone to guarantee success. It requires total commitment from the staff of the Stansfield Group as well, something Mr. Chettiar recognizes. “We have to hold nothing back. If we go all out for our customers, not worrying about dollars and cents, we will succeed. If we go all out, we will never lose. Once we gain our customers’ loyalty, we will have nothing to worry about,” he said. “But when you try to be budget-conscious, you sometimes shortchange the customer. Instead, the question we should ask ourselves as providers of education is: 'What would I, as a student, want?'"