The P&Q Interview: Gaurav Jain On Growing London’s New B-School

He’s the youngest to work in the family education dynasty, but Gaurav Jain doesn’t seem like he’s had a free ticket. The great-grandson of parliamentarian and business school founder SP Jain has a tall order: to grow the recently founded SP Jain London School of Management to rival its better-known sister campuses, the Mumbai flagship, and its more recent outposts in Dubai, Singapore and Sydney – established by his father.

In his four years as director of business development, Gaurav Jain has overseen growth at the Canary Wharf campus from an initial intake of 18 students – 13 international and five from the UK – to more than 200. By September, he expects their numbers to swell to 400. 

“It has been very quick growth, but I think we’re also very, very conscious of not growing too quickly and maintaining standards,” he tells Poets&Quants. “That’s really important to us.”

‘THERE WAS A LOT OF SKEPTICISM’

In a way, Jain parallels his institution: both are young, the new kid on the block in a country where top business schools tend to range in years from the age of an MBA student (30 to 36 for Oxford and Cambridge) to a professor on the cusp of retirement (51 to 61 in the case of Warwick and Durham). 

“There was a lot of skepticism with us being new, of course, but now we’ve had so many students that they’ve gone back and said, yeah, London is really a place that you need to at least study in for a partial time for your degree,” he says.

Having made a black coffee for his guest (he steers clear of the stuff), Jain adopts a serious, thoughtful expression. As his institution prepares for yet another growth spurt, he talks about sustainable growth, the value that SP Jain offer, and its reception in an already mature UK business education sector.

Poets&Quants: What have your biggest headaches been since starting in this role?

Gaurav Jain: It’s obviously morphed. There were different headaches at the beginning, different headaches now. Obviously back in 2022-23 having the regulators understand our model. Sometimes the UK can be a bit rigid, but I do have to be grateful to the regulators that they did actually understand the model. We did get fast tracked through some of the regulations, because I think they really saw the value for UK students to join our program.

There’s a few other new providers, and some of the rules are really unfair. This gives the legacy universities a massive advantage when they’re already advantaged by their brand name and other things. So just navigating that, working around that has been tricky.

I think some of the things that have been more tricky is actually sometimes getting international students to come to London. There’s very bad publicity about the UK in international media, it’s not safe, there’s no jobs, and I have to convince them that that’s not true.

We’ve actually seen faster growth in the UK market, where we didn’t have any brand, then some of the places we have a very strong brand, and obviously a lot of that is down to perceptions of the cities, and I think that has been obviously challenging to address some of those issues.

What are the some of the challenges in growing so quickly? 

We’ve also had to balance out scholarships vs full-paying students, so in the initial years we wanted some really top students, and these are students who are considering top UK universities like UCL, LSC, Imperial. We really see the value in getting really bright students on the course, because they build your brand, they really do standout things. In the initial years we’ve given generous scholarships to these students, and we continue to do so, but as we’re growing, those scholarships are getting more competitive. I think that balance has been tricky sometimes, but it’s yielded really good response.

We have very strict rules on who we admit, and while our entry requirement grades wise is not huge, it’s a BBB, which for a new university with no previous brand name, for them to choose us, we have to obviously stand out. 

How do you stand out – what’s unique about SP Jain? 

At the post graduate level, which is about one year taught and four-month internship at the end, you’re traveling every four months, so you start off in Singapore, you come to London, and then you graduate in Dubai.

On the undergraduate side, you do essentially four cities in four years, so you come to London, second semester you go to Singapore, you come back to London for your third semester, go to Dubai in your fourth semester, come back to London, and then you go to Sydney in your sixth semester.

That is why most of the students join us, and it really is about learning from the city as well, and we really take that into the heart of the student’s journey. When you’re in Singapore, for example, you do a regional immersion project, so with a local company, you sort of learn the culture of the way business is done in Singapore, Dubai, Sydney, and London, and I think that’s what differentiates our students. They go to Singapore, they do an internship, they go to Dubai, they do an internship, they go to Sydney, London, do an internship, suddenly their CV looks far more advanced than somebody who’s just maybe stayed in one location for the entire time. We’re seeing that also in the employment sort of stats, people want a global sort of minded employee rather than just somebody who’s had the same internship year after year.

How has recent turmoil in the Middle East affected your Dubai location and students? 

When the conflict broke out, we immediately told the students, you can come back to London and finish the rest of your term here. But they wanted to stay. According to them, they felt safe. it was obviously very scary when it happened, as you can imagine, having students out there, but we had very strong contingency plans to get them on the plane back to the UK and have them finish the rest of the course, so that academically they would not be behind in any sense. We made it mandatory for them to come back for the recent assessment week this May. 

Going forward, we’ve talked to the BBA year ones, who would in year two go to Dubai, and we’ve talked to prospective students as well. We’ll see if the situation deteriorates more, then we might cancel the Dubai opportunity and do another year in Singapore. Because we have so many campuses, we are very flexible.

How have other UK universities reacted to you? Are they starting to notice you more?

It’s interesting. We collaborate with other universities through sports competitions, debates, and student activities. Universities around Canary Wharf have generally been collaborative. At the same time, some traditional institutions are beginning to notice us. We hear comments like, “I guess London needs another business school.” But because we’re still relatively small – only around 100 new domestic students in a cohort – they probably don’t see us as a major competitive threat yet.

That said, we do think they’re paying attention to our model. A lot of universities are now expanding internationally or building partnerships abroad. We were one of the first to really develop this seamless multi-city structure. The difference is that our campuses operate under unified management, which allows us to adapt curriculum and programs quickly across all locations. Universities relying on partnerships often can’t move that fast because they don’t control the overseas institutions directly.

I don’t know if I’d say they’re bad-mouthing us, but there’s definitely a lot of copying happening because they recognize the demand for international experiences. Students increasingly want opportunities to study abroad and experience different countries.

How do you see your numbers growing in the next five years?

We’re certainly going to grow, but we want to grow mindfully while keeping the student body at a very high level. We see ourselves competing with some of the best universities in the country, and we’re not trying to become a mass-market university. There’s definitely a place for that, but everything we do is intentional. 

For example, our undergraduate students have 18 contact hours per week, whereas the standard is usually 12. A lot of UK academics told us that was unreasonable, but we felt the students needed it. We’ve also tried to be flexible with scheduling. For first-year students, we fit those hours into three full days on campus, which gives them time for part-time work or other commitments.

Of course, it would be easy to reduce contact hours or make courses easier, but we believe rigor matters. It’s been largely successful. Many international students have come here and secured company sponsorships, which is especially difficult right now because we don’t yet have post-study work rights. We’ll receive that next year. Even without that advantage, our rigor, professional readiness programs, and corporate relations have helped students transition smoothly into employment.

How many students are getting hired out of the undergraduate and postgraduate programs, respectively? And are they mostly getting hired in London, or elsewhere?

Our first BBA cohort is graduating this year, so they haven’t been fully placed yet, but many of them have already secured internships. Those internships are crucial because they often convert into full-time jobs. On the postgraduate side, we’ve already had several graduating cohorts because of our multi-city model. Some students wanted to go to Dubai, for example. Dubai markets itself very well as a city, the pay is strong, and there’s zero tax, so students are very attracted to it. Some cohorts have gone there and secured employment very quickly – often within three months of graduation.

It’s difficult to give exact percentages because many of our students come from family businesses and simply want to return home after graduating. Others continue into PhDs or other studies. But among students actively looking for jobs, the majority secure employment within three months.

We’ve also had multiple students sponsored from our first cohort. Out of 13 students, I believe six were sponsored, while others chose to return home. Many students from Asia want a UK education but ultimately prefer to work back in their home countries near family.

One thing we’re especially proud of is our alumni network. Our alumni community includes graduates from SP Jain Global campuses as well, so we now have around 120 alumni in the UK. It’s still small, but very close-knit and loyal. Alumni regularly help students secure internships and placements.

Can you tell me about your plans for the coming year – both for the London campus and for SP Jain more broadly? Any more campuses on the horizon?

Building new campuses is extremely difficult, so our focus right now is improving the product we already have. One major direction is integrating AI into every course. We already have AI-specific courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, but now we want AI embedded across marketing, finance, entrepreneurship, and other subjects.

Students need to know how to use AI tools effectively – how to enhance presentations, generate content, create videos, and use prompts properly. We work with students on understanding which AI tools work best for different tasks so they graduate with practical skills they can immediately apply.

We’re also developing new programs, including one focused on AI for business. Many companies want to use AI but don’t fully understand how to manage data, clean it, analyze it, or use it effectively for decision-making. That’s a skill gap we see globally.

We’re also launching a program in applied finance and wealth management. More broadly, we want to move into more specialized business areas while still maintaining strong generalist business degrees like the MBA.

Another important area is our industry advisory board. Members include former leaders from companies like KPMG, Santander, Genpact, and others. They constantly review our curriculum and tell us what employers actually want from graduates. Again and again, they emphasize soft skills – communication, adaptability, teamwork, and leadership. Technical skills can often be learned or increasingly assisted by AI, but companies still need people who can communicate ideas effectively and lead teams.

DON’T MISS SP JAIN: WE KNOW WHAT EMPLOYERS WANT. HERE’S HOW WE PLAN TO DELIVER IT

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