Aiming to adopt Japanese-style driver education in India.
Towards making the society free of traffic accidents.

Q.Why did your company decide to take on interns? What did you aim to achieve?

SHOEI Driving School has made its mission statement to rid society of traffic accidents, and now has a total of 26 driving schools in Okayama, Tokyo, and 11 prefectures. A declining birthrate and waning interest in getting a driver's license among young people will unavoidably lead to a shrinking of business in Japan. This is why we have turned our attention to other countries, and especially India, which is primed for strong economic growth. India has many industries that have yet to be fully developed, and people drive on the left side of the road with the steering wheel on the right side of the car— just like in Japan. And, unfortunately, India has the highest traffic-related death rate. Given these circumstances in India, it occurred to us that we could utilize in India the knowledge and expertise we have so far gained in Japan. In preparation for bringing our business to India, we have now spent nearly two years on research and marketing. As the final step of preparations for making a full-fledged expansion into the Indian market, I signed up for this program as a means to get more in-depth information and news about India, and to find a person who could carry out this expansion.

Our intern plays a key role as a member of the business development team.
Final preparations for doing business in India have finally been completed.

Q.What kind of internship did you run? What difficulties did you face and how did you resolve them?

We split the entire course of our activities into three terms. For the first term (two weeks), I shared with our intern and employees the results of research conducted over nearly 2 years and discussed the current state of our business among all personnel. We then tasked her with researching new traffic regulations, studying subsidy programs offered by India's central government and local governments, and translating materials. For the second term (three weeks), after attending technical training and academic training offered by our company, she clarified how driver's education in Japan differs from that in India, especially with respect to soft skills. We plan to leverage the feedback and insights gained in the process to put together future training programs. Right around this time, we were glad to have a visit from a partner company in India. Because of our intern, the visit went smoothly and we were able to express our company's vision. In the third term (four weeks), we worked together to create a detailed business plan for our full-scale expansion.

The information our intern provided led to significant changes to our intended course!

Q.Comparing before and after the internship, what effects did it have on you, your employees, or your organization?

We made two kinds of achievements: those within the company and those related to bringing our business overseas. Until our intern came, our employees knew very little about doing business in India and we had little hope that such a thing would be possible for us. By observing Skype meetings with related institutions and by listening to the discussions the intern and I had almost every day, everyone else in the company came to know how serious we were about doing business in India. Our achievement with respect to bringing our business overseas was the illumination of a path forward for expanding overseas, which was made possible by the information our intern found for us. She brought us new information that was not discovered in any of the research we conducted prior to her coming. This information was a profound revelation — it felt like we were struck by lightning. It is no exaggeration to say that this information was crucial to making our final preparations to bring our business to India. That we were also able to meet person who would help us conduct this expansion was also a major achievement. We hope our intern will continue to be a part of our team as we develop our business in India.