Jobs are going high-profile and designations come as fancy as ‘Velocity engineer’, ‘Global engagement lead’ or ‘Utilisation lead’ these days. Inspiring awe amidst ordinary mortals. But what Suresh Namboothiri discovered during his sufficiently long stint in the corporate world was to the contrary.

A lack of knowledge of English came as a chink in the armour of the high-flying executive. “Mails from top honchos lacked the finesse one expects and had grammatical mistakes. Obviously, the juniors dared not correct their superiors and they in turn didn’t like to acknowledge they lacked in anything.”

So what has Suresh done? He has done what he wanted to do for long - follow his passions and create something really different and useful. A series of CDs that teach professionals English in a disarming manner!

Explaining, Suresh says, “We did a survey on why the language was not being studied and came to know that it was for many reasons. No one wants to learn in a regimental manner. When you are free there is no access to the material. Finally, most books and CDs are bulky. We have addressed all these grievances in our ‘passion-based’ package.”

Making use of the services of a psychiatrist, the team concluded that “in most cases women speak better English because they read Mills & Boons! So also boys who watched cricket and stored all the statistics in their brain.”
This meant that if one has interest in a subject, one picked up information pretty fast.

The next step was to make a broad classification of the populace, based on interests. This resulted in five topics: Movies, Science, Love & Romance, Kama Sutra and Success Secrets! Keeping these as the framework, the lessons were framed to teach the professional English.(These are not meant for children below 16 years.)

It took a whole of two years and 26 people working around the globe to complete the task. “We completely avoided academics as we did not want another Wren & Martin. It has been shown that most learning happens when there is an element of the unexpected and the informal. For instance, you will most probably remember what that teacher who came in to fill a free period talked about, rather than from the regular classes,” explains Suresh.

The CDs, each of them with 700 hours of learning, are customised. The software developed by the team analyses the learner’s level of English and presents the lessons in the best suited package. “Right in the early stage the weaknesses are addressed so that the learner develops confidence very fast. There is an automatic tracking of the progress,” he explains.

Not only does the user pick up English, he also adds up to his knowledge base on the subject. For instance, the CD that teaches English through Movies will give the person a fair idea about the process of movie making, says Suresh. The CD using Success Secrets gives tips on team building and time management, in the course of the lesson. “In the case of Kama Sutra, there is a mix of traditional and new, in that we refer to Vatsayana and to methods of safe sex.” Care has been taken to make it artistic rather than voyeuristic, he says. The CDs stress on how it is hardwork and perseverance that matters, not money.

With 128 units covering 495 lessons they cost Rs 1350. The stress is on quality, notes Suresh while pointing to the global nature of the team which had members from the UK, US, Singapore, India and Japan. The recording was done in LA. The total expenditure came to over Rs 50 lakh.

“It was real language engineering,” enthuses Suresh who is an engineer by qualification and has been COO with Tata group and was responsible for the conceptualising and sculpturing of the interiors of Tata Indica. “I used my automotive experience here with the CD.” He next plans CDs on the themes of football, cricket and Bush jokes and lies! Eventually he hopes to enter movie making. The CD is not yet available at bookstores. Purchases can be made online through the website www.espoirtech.com