School of life

Then an uppercut. “Don’t tell me what I’m doing right. That’s my job. Tell me what I’m doing wrong.”

Followed by a thunderous left hook. “If you can find $1m in my account, anywhere, keep it. It’s yours.”

It’s only at the very end of our two-hour session at his villa in Jumeirah, walking distance from the Burj Al Arab, that he finally tells me what really matters to him. “You know one of the main reasons why people move to Dubai? It’s because of the quality of education. That’s why we could build GEMS into a global brand out of city like Dubai. No other place in the world can do that.”

No offer of a $1m if I can find such a city, but welcome to the complex, riveting and fascinating world of Sunny Varkey, the man who created a global education empire from scratch which is valued at anywhere between $6 to $10bn. Under his leadership, GEMS Education has grown to become the largest non-governmental operator of private K-12 schools in the world, teaching 140,000 students from 175 countries. Nobody does it bigger. Nobody does it better.

All this has helped him pursue his passion for philanthropy, quite literally changing thousands of young lives for the better. His Varkey Foundation established the $1m Global Teacher Prize, widely recognised as the most prestigious prize in education. The Global Education and Skills Forum, which he founded nine years ago to promote educational philanthropy, is better known as the Davos of education.

A UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador, Varkey has signed up to The Giving Pledge, which will see half of his wealth go to charity. Along the way, the Pope, US presidents, prime ministers and celebrities have become admirers and friends. Oh, and there is the small matter of his schools: GEMS now owns and operates over 60 schools in the MENA region alone, plus schools in Asia, Europe and North America.

It goes without saying that the 65-year-old would probably do a decent job if he actually stepped into the ring, thanks to a relentless fitness regime. He has shown, throughout his life, a remarkable ability to take the knocks, dust himself off the canvas and roll again.

“Do I feel pressure? One hundred percent. One hundred percent. It’s a privilege and a pressure. At the end of the day, we change people’s lives, we change communities. For me, I mean, it’s a huge responsibility. Parents depend on their children. The worst thing a school can do is have an unqualified or wrong teacher in front of a classroom. We don’t tolerate that. If you have a bad teacher in a class, you are actually playing with those students’ lives. I feel that every day. We just don’t compromise,” he says.

Family history

Compromise is not a word that is likely to appear in any of the Varkey family’s vocabulary. Born in Kerala in India, his father KS Varkey and mother Mariamma, were Syrian Christians when they moved the family – and a two-year-old Sunny – to Dubai in 1959.

His father worked at the British Bank of the Middle East, and both parents taught English to local Arabs. By the age of just four, he was back in Kerala to attend boarding school, and by the age of seven was already beginning his entrepreneurial journey by selling fruits on the side of a road.

He returned to Dubai in 1970, by which time his parents had already capitalised on the soaring demand for English education from Indian expatriates, and opened what they called “Our Own English High School.”

Varkey himself followed his family’s footsteps and took over the school in 1980. “It had about 350 kids and was in a very old part of Dubai called Bastakiya. We were charging around AED100 a month in fees,” he says.

By then, Varkey had already a trading company, a maintenance company, was a part owner of the Dubai Plaza Hotel and even made a foray into the healthcare business (to which he would return later).

But all were dropped or put on the sidelines. With the oil boom fuelling Dubai’s sudden growth, and the resulting influx of thousands of expats, the schools business was becoming big business. Indian, Pakistani and British schools were opened, different curriculums, different models and different price points introduced to the market.

“We set a new minimum bar. We created beautiful schools, so if anyone wanted to enter into education, they had to reach that level. We upped the game,” he says.

Soon, Varkey was running a network of schools across the Arab world, before officially establishing GEMS Education in 2000. Within four years, he had expanded into the UK and India, followed by Kenya, Uganda, Egypt, Jordan, Europe and even the US.

By 2007, as the first ever iPhone was launched, Varkey had already created the Apple of education. “It’s how can we find solutions to a problem, how can we make a positive impact. I have always believed that education is key to fixing so many of the world’s greatest problems: Violence, poverty and health. It all starts with education.

“We are probably the oldest for-profit education company in the world. I said ‘listen, if healthcare can be for profit, why not education?’ In 1975, Dubai Petroleum used to send 25,000 dirhams to the schools because running a school was all charity. I used to send it back. I said we are a for profit company I don’t take donations,” he says.

Varkey’s model was to create price points in fees between $40,000 a year and $2,000 a year. Or as he says: “When you enter a plane, you can choose to turn left or right, depending what seat you paid for. But both seats will get you to the same place, and safely.”

Varkey’s pursuit of perfection and choice in education has been never ending. His Varkey Group had also been highly successful in healthcare, founding Welcare in 1984 – which then launched a series of hospitals and clinics, including the City Hospital in Oud Metha. He exited the industry in 2012 by selling the operation to Mediclinic International, allowing him to focus solely on education and philanthropy.

Not that it has always been a smooth ride. Google the name Varkey and there is no shortage of appears on power lists and rich lists. The tag “billionaire” is often attached to his name, and critics suggest he is profiting from education.

“People think I have money. I see all these rich lists. Well, you know what? If you can find $1m in my account, anywhere, keep it, it’s yours. Shake me upside down, you won’t get much. I’m not into money. We have always been education first, even today. I believe that you came into this world with nothing, and you go back with nothing. It was always about growing a business,” he says.

But does the criticism bother him? “It does a bit especially when it’s from people who do not know you. I’m not into social media so I don’t get involved in these things. You can’t punish somebody for being successful after working hard and honestly. If you have come up the hard way, why is that wrong?”

For all his success in the education business, Varkey’s tone of voice only really changes when he starts talking about philanthropy. If building GEMS was his passion, helping others is his pride.

“We are good citizens, that’s what we are and that’s important. You have to do your bit, whatever you can. I’ve always believed that, my parents always believed that and my children believe that,” he says, adding: “Our philosophy is that good giving “pinches”, meaning that the sacrifice you make has to be felt, else, the act remains just another financial transaction in our lives.”

The Varkey Foundation was created 12 years ago as an umbrella organisation to house his various charitable initiatives. The guiding principle is simple: for every single child enrolled at a GEMS school, another 100 impoverished children around the world must be positively impacted.

Apart from building schools, classrooms and learning centres, there have been several ongoing initiatives, teacher training programmes and advocacy campaigns. In 2011, $1m was pledged with UNSECO to help train 10,000 school principals in India, Ghana and Kenya.

His Teacher Training Programme, which was set up in 2014, aims to train 250,000 teachers in under-served communities.

“I think it comes down to values,” he says, adding: “In education, value systems are very important. Values that are there which I grew up with. When you pray, you are taught to be humble. Every religion has the same meaning, in a sense, to be humble and a good person.”

Religion is clearly a huge driving force in everything he does today. His great grandfather started a church in India, and soon after Sunny was born, he fell extremely sick and nearly died. “My family made a vow then, that if I lived, they would make me a priest,” he says.
He didn’t become a priest, but says he still prays up to seven times a day.

“You can put many zeros as you like, but it has no value. It’s about putting a one in front of them. One is God. I say God a lot. I’ve seen a lot of people say ‘Thank God.’ I really want to publicly say my testimonies. I want to tell this to the world, that if you are a good human being, if you have faith in God, things will work out for you.”

Things have worked out pretty well for Varkey, but he is far from finished. If anything, he is just getting started. He admits he is looking into something new, education and technology related, but won’t give away too much.

He explains: “When you have been in the business for 63 years and have access to so many experts globally, you are able to think and do something new and different. We are on it. All I can tell you is this. When you look at someone’s CV how much importance do you give to what school they went to? None is the answer. That needs to change, and we are working on something very special, very big and very disruptive.”

Varkey has already totally transformed the world of education once. Will his new idea do it again?

“Yes… I’ve created a legacy and we want to continue to do innovative things in the industry. But I’m not going to give away what I know or what is going to happen in the future.”

Friends in high places

Nobody can argue that Varkey has lived an incredibly rewarding and fulfilling life. His walls are lined with pictures of the great and the good, alongside Varkey. The Pope. Bill Clinton. Tony Blair. Sir Elton John. Sir Edward Heath. John Major. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum.

There are few world leaders or global celebrities that Varkey hasn’t met, and in most cases, become close to. He stops for a moment staring at a picture of him with Sheikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, UAE Minister of Tolerance and Coexistence and says that he has been one of his closest friends and mentors and has always stood by his side through thick and thin.

His memoirs are certain to be a best-seller, and he says he plans to put pen to paper someday. It will be some read. Fame, fortune, power. Varkey has all three, and effuses strength, determination and leadership qualities throughout our meeting.

But as the interview ends, he tells me of an interesting statistic. GEMS has around 450,000 alumni over the years, estimated to have average earnings of $40,000 a year. Measured across the last 40 years, after Varkey took over, that amounts to a contribution of around $1 trillion to the global economy.

It is unlikely that any single person in the education sector, past present or future, will beat those numbers.