Lovely Professional University: Success Story and Journey – Lovely Professional University (LPU), spread across 600 acres of land, is amongst one of the most premium universities in not only Punjab but entire India. The university has more than 150 societies wherein students can enrol on the basis of their interests and passions.

However, the success that LPU is now enjoying didn’t come over night. Although an interesting one, the story of the founders is a typical rags-to-riches journey. In this article, we will take a detailed look at the success and journey of Lovely Professional University and its founders.

Table of Contents:

• Starting from a sweets shop
• The Lovely Group business timeline
• The vision of educating the masses
• Lovely Professional University infrastructure
• Make Dreams come true with LPUNEST
• The rise of the third generation of the Mittal family
• The Lovely Group completes 60 years of successful operation
• The future of Lovely Professional University
• Conclusion

Starting from a sweets shop

Baldev Raj Mittal was a military contractor in Rajasthan. Owing to his profession, the entire family had to move with the regiment, every two years. To secure the future of his children, Baldev Raj Mittal decided to open a sweet shop in the Jalandhar Cantonment area in the year 1961. His eldest son, Ramesh Mittal dropped out of Class 11 to help his father in the business.

Despite tough competition, Baldev’s “Lovely Sweets”, a small 10X10 shop, was a hit. The shop changed two locations before becoming the city’s largest sweet shop in 1986. Today, they are enjoying a monopoly in the field and have expanded their business into a number of sectors, such as education, packaged food, greeting cards, automobile dealership, eggless baking, etc.

Baldev Raj Mittal, however, passed away in 2004. The business has been since taken care of by his sons and grandsons.

Chitkara’s Success Journey and Business Case Study – When Ashok Chitkara was running his small coaching institute in Chandigarh, little did he know how big an education icon he would become in the future. He prides himself as one of the few real “education entrepreneurs” in a time when only businessmen are running the education sector.

In this post, we will take a look at the journey of Ashok Chitkara and his wife Madhu Chitkara – who are best known for founding Chitkara University and Schools – and how the duo overcame all obstacles and problems that life threw upon them.

Table of Contents

• Beginning
• Teaching at Punjab University
• Laying the foundation of Chitkara Educational Trust
• Mr. Chitkara’s dream to become an entrepreneur
• Strict rules at the University
• The expansion and renovation projects
• The future of Chitkara University

Beginning

Born in the year 1975 and originally hailing from Delhi’s Ashok Vihar, Ashok Chitkara narrated in an interview that he missed the last date to apply for a master’s degree in education (M. Ed) at Delhi University. So he came over to Chandigarh and completed his Masters in Education in 1977.

He went on to complete his doctorate and wrote his thesis on “queuing theory”. He first met his wife and “partner in business” Madhu during his B. Ed days. Post his doctorate, he began teaching students at his home for a fee as low as INR 100 a year.

Teaching at Punjab University

Ashok Chitkara was the star of Punjab University’s mathematics department from 1986 to 1998, by when he had become a well-known maths tutor, achieving the milestone of sending as many as 40 students to IIT each year. This is indeed a record in itself as at the time there was no other coaching institute in Chandigarh with such good results and figures. Apart from the IITs, his students swept most of the seats at Punjab Engineering College (PEC).

He spent 12 hours a day teaching at the University and 4 hours a day coaching students at his training institute, which he shut down in 2008 to lay complete focus on Chitkara Institute of Engineering and Technology (CIET), Rajpura and Chitkara University, Himachal Pradesh.

Laying the Foundation of Chitkara Educational Trust

The Chitkara Educational Trust was established in the year 1998 with the aim of revolutionizing the way engineering and technology is taught at colleges. Through this education trust, Mr. And Mrs. Chitkara laid the foundation of CIET (now Chitkara University Punjab) in 2002, Chitkara University Baddi (2009) and two Chitkara International Schools – one each in Chandigarh and Panchkula.

• Chitkara University Punjab
• Chitkara University Himachal
• Chitkara International School – Chandigarh | Panchkula

The Chitkara campus in Rajpura, Punjab was affiliated with Punjab Technical University (PTU) until 2010. The year 2011 marked the first year of the Punjab campus as an independent university.

The two university campuses offer undergraduate courses in numerous fields such as mechanical engineering, computer science engineering, electronics engineering, civil engineering, B.Sc Pharmacy, mass communication, architecture, hospitality, business administration, optometry, etc.

Mr. Chitkara’s dream to become an entrepreneur

Ashok Chitkara always had a burning desire to be an entrepreneur. In an interview he stated that he quit his thriving coaching business to focus on his entrepreneurial ventures. He often pondered upon the question that if he can teach at a university, why can’t he open up his own?

Although the semester fee may seem high when it comes to Chitkara University, Ashok says that he is not doing it for the sake of minting money. He says, “Unlike other colleges, we do not charge any capitation fees and have surrendered our management quota as well. We believe in the motto “honesty is the best policy” and we are not here to make money.”

Strict rules at the University

In one of the interviews, Ashok Chitkara said, with a smile on his face, that the students refer to the university’s director of administration as the “superintendent of the Chitkara jail”. This is because of many reasons such as the option for parents to check their ward’s daily attendance; no provision for students to leave before 4:20 PM (the regular dispersal time), no bunking, no kind of ragging, early curfew for girls’ hostels, CCTV cameras in all classes, labs and hostel corridors.

The expansion and renovation projects

Although University campuses keep undergoing slow renovation, Chitkara University has been expanding at a very steady rate. The administration has added many modern-day facilities, more blocks, hostels, labs and sports arenas to its campus, especially the Punjab one which now looks completely different as it used to 5 years ago. Chitkara University is among a handful of institutions offering a 4-year full time program in Optometry.

The future of Chitkara University

The way Chitkara University and schools have been making progress, it seems that this is just a start. In July of 2020, Chitkara University launched a 4-year bachelor of software engineering program in collaboration with Deakin University, Australia. It will facilitate Indian students to study two years of Deakin University’s licensed course curriculum at Chitkara University before they move for the remaining two years on-shore at Deakin University in Australia.

The university has been maintaining a 100% placement record for the last few years. Many reputed national and international firms visit the campuses each year to pick skilled graduates. Ashok Chitkara has handed over the baton to his son Mohit Chitkara to look over the future and growth of the Chitkara University and School network. He is presently serving as the vice-president of the Chitkara Educational Trust.

We hope that you got to know a good deal about the University and the founders via this post. Keep checking out our blog to stay updated with the marketing case studies of many renowned companies.

happy reading 🙂

Elon Musk Success Story and Case Study – Elon Musk has become a household name, gaining even more global recognition when he surpassed Jeff Bezos as the richest man in the world – although briefly – with a net worth of $185 billion in January 2021. The founder of Tesla and SpaceX, Musk moved to the top of the richest men list after a huge increase in Tesla’s share price, resulting in the company hitting a market value of $700bn.

In this post, we will take a detailed look at the life and business success of one of the most revered entrepreneurs of the modern time.

Table of Contents:

• Early Life and Family Background
• Higher Education
• Humble Beginnings
• SpaceX
• Starlink – Internet through Satellites
• Tesla
• Elon Musk Work Ethics
• The Bottom Line

Early life and Family Background

Born to an engineer father and a model mother in Pretoria in 1971, Elon Reeve Musk was the oldest of three siblings. His sister Tosca Musk is an award-winning filmmaker and his brother Kimbal is a venture capitalist and an environmentalist.

Post the divorce of his parents, Elon musk stayed primarily with his father. At school, Musk became a ‘hot’ target of bullies; as a result, he refrained from interacting with others and spent the majority of his time reading, especially comic books. Time and again, in many interviews, Musk has said that he doesn’t want his kids to undergo the same adversities that he did.

By the age of 10, Musk had developed an interest in programming – thanks to his home computer, a Commodore VIC – 20. In the years that followed, Musk created a space-invader themed video game named ‘Blaster’, which he sold for $500 to a popular magazine at the time, named PC and Office Technology.

Higher Education

At 17, Musk immigrated to Canada to avoid serving in the South African military. He later obtained the citizenship of Canada through his mother. In Canada, Musk enrolled in Queen’s University in Kingston, where he met his former wife, Justine. The couple had 5 kids together – twins and triplets – before filing for divorce in 2008.

Musk earned a Bachelor of Science in Physics and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Wharton School. He was 24 when he started attending Stanford University for a Ph.D. in applied Physics. However, he abandoned the doctorate program after just 2 days and began chasing his entrepreneurial dreams.

Humble Beginnings

With $28,000 in his pocket and the support of his brother Kimbal, Elon Musk started a web software company named Zip 2, which was aimed at helping newspapers develop online city guides. Compaq’s Alta Vista search engine, however, acquired Zip 2 for roughly $340 million in 1999.

Elon Musk used the money received from this deal to launch another website X (.com) with the intention of shaping the future of banking. X was later merged with another company named Confinity and the resulting company came to be known as PayPal. Reportedly, Elon Musk was fired over a dispute to switch PayPal’s servers. When EBay purchased PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002, Musk made $160 million from the deal.

SpaceX

There was no stopping for Musk at this point. With the wealth acquired from the PayPal deal, Musk began to work on his space exploration technologies project. Musk intended to send payloads and humans to Mars; for this, he attempted to purchase refurbished Russian ballistic missiles. However, they were proving to be very expensive and Musk was finding it hard to deal with Russian officials. So he came up with his own spacecraft design and manufacturing company and named it SpaceX. Notably, Space X’s Falcon 1 failed to reach the orbit thrice and made it in the fourth attempt.

When SpaceX was hard on cash in 2008, NASA awarded a $1.6 billion contract to the former to fly supplies to the International Space Station (ISS), a program now referred to as Commercial Resupply Services.

Besides Flying to Mars, another important goal for SpaceX is reusability. Over 50 SpaceX boosters have flown back to Earth, some of which have already been refurbished for upcoming flights. Elon Musk is of the belief that reusability will considerably bring down the cost of flying to the orbit – whether it is people or cargo. Notably, a typical Falcon 9 launch costs $50-$60 million, which is quite cheaper as 

compared to similar space vehicles in its category.

Starlink – Internet through Satellites

SpaceX is now aiming to bring high-speed internet to users globally, through a constellation of low-orbit satellites. With this innovative approach, Musk is building the revenue streams necessary to fund his dream to create a vehicle capable of going to Mars. That vehicle, reportedly known as ‘Starship’, is a massive rocket in prototype form at SpaceX’s remote facility in Texas.

Tesla

Another feather in Elon Musk’s cap is of course Electric car and solar energy company Tesla. The company was co-founded by engineers Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Notably, Musk played a significant role in designing the first electric car: Roadster. In 2007, Eberhard was ousted from the company following a string of disagreements. The same year Musk seized management control and became the CEO and Product Architect of Tesla Motors. Under Musk, Tesla has indeed become one of the most reputed car brands.

Besides cars, Tesla also maintains a strong presence in the solar energy sector. Tesla acquired a clean energy services company named SolarCity, which was founded in the year 2006. It manufactures two rechargeable solar batteries, used for stationary energy storage purposes.

In spite of heavy fluctuations on the Wall Street, Tesla usually crosses the $100 billion valuation mark.

Elon Musk Work Ethics

In many interviews, Musk has emphasized the need to make the best out his every waking hour. His relentless work ethic includes working 80-120 hours each week and focusing all energy and efforts to accomplish the task even if the odds are heavily out of his favour. One of his quotes sums up his work ethics very well:

“Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week. This improves the chances of success. If others are putting in 40 hour workweeks and you’re putting in 100 hour workweeks, then even if you’re doing the same thing, you know you would achieve it in just 4 months what it takes them a year to accomplish.”

The Bottom Line

Elon Musk’s life has been quite an eventful one. From being bullied at school to becoming the world’s richest man at one point in time. On the other hand, he has been quite a controversial figure, often stirring up storms on twitter. Nevertheless,

he is courageous and a visionary who is always on the lookout of emerging technologies that can shape the future and make our lives better. His early interests in reading, science fiction, philosophy and comic books are quite evident from his sense of idealism and concern with the human progress. All of us can learn something from this real-life “Iron Man”.