Introduction and company overview

Oberoi International School (OIS) is an International school built and owned by Oberoi Realty. It
was started in 2008 and was one of the first schools to introduce the IB curriculum in Mumbai.
Now, there are two campuses which focus on the same mission - “fulfilling every child’s
educational and developmental needs in a safe and caring environment conducive to learning
and teaching.”

SWOT analysis

A SWOT is a strategic tool that organisations use to analyse themselves from the current
standpoint. It analyzes the internal strengths and weaknesses as well as the external threats and
opportunities of the organisation.

First, a strength of the company is that OIS had undergone managerial changes with the Head of
High School and Head of Operations. This allows the more experienced managers to create
necessary changes in strategic objectives that could drive new students in, which would result in
more revenue. However, a possible weakness is that OIS has a new campus in JVLR. This project
would result in a rising cost of production resulting in less profit at the end of the day.

An opportunity in the market could be the development in the mindset of parents in the city
which makes them more focused on well rounded education. This has been pushing many
parents to enrol their children in international schools such as OIS since they are more
considerate of college prospects. This is an opportunity as it allows OIS to expand their
customer base. On the other hand, a possible threat to OIS is the presence of other schools that
have a competitive advantage due to being older and well known. Due to this, OIS usually loses
many students in the transition between MYP and DP, since people choose to move to other
schools such as DAIS or ASB. For example, this year OIS lost around 20 students in the transition
from MYP5 to DP1, and only gained around 15 more in their place. Being able to retain
customers is crucial for a company to continue to grow.

STEEPLE analysis

A STEEPLE analysis is an acronym and a tool used to assess external opportunities and threats
of a business.

The S in STEEPLE stands for the external sociocultural factors that affect or may affect a
business. In OIS’s case, standard of living and economic conditions in the households of
populations are increasing, and with it so is the demand for quality education, especially an
international one. This will benefit OIS if they choose to do market penetration and focus on
marketing the JVLR campus better, as more people will realize that they can afford the
education and may take up OIS on its offer.
ANSOFF matrix

The establishment of a new campus in JVLR is considered market penetration since they are
selling the same product (IB curriculum education) to their existing market (parents of upper
class income). This is a minimal risk growth strategy since it allows them to slowly expand their
customer base while maintaining their original OGC campus. An advantage of market penetration
is that it is relatively cheaper, since the company does not have to spend money on a new
product/curriculum or on market research to expand into new markets. It is also the safest
strategy since it allows the company to play to their strengths. A disadvantage is that in market
penetration, the competition can be a larger obstacle in the company’s effort to gain market
dominance, which is the main goal.

Recommendation

Our recommendation after evaluating the current situation of the company as well as its current
growth strategy is that OIS should continue to focus on market penetration. Opening a new
campus takes a lot of money and resources, and it also takes a lot of time until it actually starts
turning profit. Since JVLR had only opened in 2017, it is still not as profitable as it could be. Since
OIS is currently focusing on internal growth, they should spend more time on the JVLR campus
before starting to expand more.

Another possible strategy for market penetration is marketing the school more in Mumbai. For
example, they could redesign the website, get featured on other publications and social media,
and also create incentives for students to publicize the school through large scale competitions
and service projects. For now, our suggestion is not to get into market development because that
is a riskier strategy.