Transforming Education: Phinma's Journey in Redefining Education to Empower Underserved Markets
Case Study Overview
PHINMA Corporation started its education business, PHINMA Education (PHINMA Ed), in 2004 by acquiring its first college. PHINMA Ed adopted a brownfield strategy as it was the most efficient route to deliver profit and impact at scale in a shorter time frame. In less than two decades, it had built a unique model that delivered quality education at affordable prices that helped create jobs for students from low-income households across the Philippines. By 2019, they had expanded into Indonesia by acquiring a college. In mid-2023, they had a total enrolment of 124,500 students across the Philippines and Indonesia.
The journey had not always been smooth sailing. A series of three shocks—the transition from K10 to K-12 in 2013, higher education made free in 2018, and the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020—forced PHINMA Ed out of their bricks-and-mortar ways and to implement a hybrid model of learning. At each juncture, they innovated and tweaked their business model to ensure impact and profit were delivered at scale, despite the shocks. With the successful navigation of these shocks, PHINMA Ed started experiencing exponential growth. This led to a fundamental shift in their growth ambition: to reach one million students across four to five countries in the next five to seven years.
They identified two vectors of growth: deepening their addressable market in the Philippines (for example, through customisable learning modules for working people) and international expansion to other countries in Southeast Asia. To capitalise on these vectors of growth, PHINMA Ed needed to revamp their operations to become more efficient at scale—without compromising on impact, profitability, and financial sustainability.
Teaching Objectives
- Learn how businesses can design and deliver high-quality services at affordable rates to serve lower-income populations using lean business principles.
- Understand how to establish the right operating model to scale a business while balancing profitability and impact.
- Understand how organisations can dynamically innovate their business model in response to changing external / macro circumstances, while keeping in line with their impact mission.
- Understand how to instil an “impact” culture and build the right teams, who are both mission- and values-aligned with the organisation.
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This case study was produced by the Centre for Impact Investing and Practices (CIIP), in collaboration with Artha Global. It is developed as a basis for class discussion. It is not intended to serve as an endorsement, source of primary data, or illustration of either effective or ineffective management. This case includes some copyrighted materials kindly shared by PHINMA Education for use as case exhibits. The authors gratefully acknowledge PHINMA Education's permission to use these within this case study.
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