Thiruvananthapuram: A village boy, who used to collect lime shells for his father’s business in Kerala’s Alappuzha four decades ago, today is the Managing Director and CEO of Melbourne-based Health Careers International (HCI) Group.
In the last 15 years, Bijo Kunnumpurath has helped about 20,000 nursing graduates, which includes the first set of Indian nurses whom he groomed in the Australian soil, find a lucrative career in the field.
Looking back, he says while studying in the Cherthala Junior Technical School and Carmel Polytechnic in Alleppey, he was an earnest, hard working teenager who kept a piggy bank to collect money for a discounted student bus pass as he did not wish to trouble his parents.
His parent’s noticed his grit and determination, when young Bijo refused a job offer from Indian Air Force in the late eighties.
Instead, he chose to try his luck in New Delhi, which was quite challenging as he had to struggle with Hindi.
Worse, there was not many acceptable jobs for a mechanical engineering diploma holder.
“After two months of struggle, I finally took up a job as a construction supervisor in on a salary of Rs 900 per month. And started working at the site, from 8 a.m to 10 p.m,” recalls Bijo.
Bijo claims that his true epiphany moment came when he met Shali, a nursing student in Delhi. They got married in 1993, when she was a nurse in Oman, while he was working in Malaysia, managing the boiler erection works in a power plant.
“I have been an ardent reader of motivational books and desperately so, during the dark era of job-hunting. What touched me was a piece of wisdom from Zig Ziglar’s book “See you at the Top”. It goes like this: ‘You will get all you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want.’ This motto inspired me to think of being a job-generator”, says Bijo.
It was his wife Shali’s profession that gave him access to the supply-demand network of nurses, aspirant nurses and healthcare institutions. The family was in Malaysia for about nine years.
“In 2003, I got an order from Austin Health to recruit 20 registered nurses. After the success of this first project, I planned to migrate to Australia. And that was a turning point, where an engineer turned into nursing recruiter”, said Bijo proudly.
In 2004, Bijo migrated to Melbourne where from a nurse recruiter he set up a nurse training institute Health Careers International Pty Limited (HCIG).
“Australia offers a certain foothold for even those who take the business plunge, without the capital. What the stakeholders look for is mainly the earnestness of purpose. That’s how, I, who could afford to pay only the stamp duty for the land purchase for the college, got the banking support for the nursing college,” says Bijo.
Robyn Allison, an established name in nurse training, lent him a helping hand. With her huge expertise and his hard work, his business grew and in 2007 he set up the IHNA (Institute of Health and Nursing Australia). A new campus has been added in Perth and the Heidelberg Campus enhanced with more facilities.
“As part of value-addition in the higher education segment, I have set up MWT Technology Pvt Ltd, a new IT division in India for developing online educational resources. Recently, I’ve assumed full ownership of MWT,” he says.
“In tune with the growth in nurse recruitment and training, staff strength has grown from the one-man army in 2004 to a battery of 250 people. After the slump in the Covid era, we have so far fought off the severe pressure for retrenchment, remembering that the pressures that the individual employees feel are probably higher,” he added.
This does not mean that there is any fall in demand for nurses. On the contrary, IHM counts on the projection that Australia alone will need 1,00,000 more nurses by 2030, especially as the recruitment has suffered in the pandemic years.
“We have launched a six months course – Graduate Certificate in Advanced Nursing, in view of the new protocols in place since 2020,” he says. “This will help the nurses to get through the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency’s (APHPRA) Objective Structured Registered Clinical Examination easily.”
Technology and skilling are rapidly changing the scope of nursing and healthcare, worldwide. It is in this area, that Bijo dreams of returning the compliment to his home state in India. He has brought and developed 8 acres of land in Kottayam in Kerala for setting up MWT Global SkillsPark. This would be in four verticals – technology, healthcare, hospitality and also agri- veterinary services.
“The concept is that the Centre would be able to train youth for globally valid qualifications, at remarkably trimmed costs,” added Bijo.
Bijo, at 55, appears not yet done and is pursuing a Ph.D in corporate governance in Tertiary Educational Sector at Swinburne University as he believes that new learning is needed to lighten up others’ lives.
(IANS)
