in terms of a professional shift he has taken a uturn from distribution of tobacco products to being an educationist it has been a leap in opposite direction the biggest reason sunil raisoni had for taking up reins of an engineering college more than a decade back was that he could pay tribute to his father who had expired just a fortnight before he got this proposal that he could name it after his late father was reason enough for him to take up the challenge and though the initial days were tough he persisted and surmounted troubles today education has become a passion and he hopes to start a stateoftheart research and development unit in the city with malaysian collaboration raisoni says he is not comfortable being called education baron what gives him joy is the fact he is making a qualitative contribution to the society excerpts from an interview q your group has grown and developed over last decade how would you term the business environment in this region a considering that we are not politicians and have still grown so well i would say the environment is conducive to growth i was in tobacco business where i enjoyed a monopoly of sorts running a college was a different affair there were many problems initially which i took time to sort out i travelled abroad to study different models and also took 18 member team of my faculty to singapore from where we borrowed the concept of smart cards for students i also invited shiv khera to motivate my staff had i not pulled through then i would have certainly lost out but with the right vision and efforts we could become the youngest college to get an aicte accreditation within six years of inception when i took over there were just 1220 students today there are 26000 students across our 19 campuses throughout the state q the number of professional colleges in the region has grown in absence of industry placement in jobs is very low a thats an issue persistent is the only big it industry here they can take up a maximum of 50 to 100 students the number of engineering seats here is 20000 even in streams of management and law there are few jobs being generated here there is tremendous room for growth because with setting up of a single big industry at least 50 allied units open up that create employment opportunities q what is required to make nagpur an education hub on the lines of pune a pune has many big national and multinational players that provide good breaks to fresh graduates the city has become a brand in terms of education and employment opportunities if an automobile cluster is established in nagpur too like nashik this could happen here also two or three auto manufacturers can change the entire game here we also have to consider there is a political will to promote and develop pune the same is required