Language
You can read the magazine in one of the following languages
6-min read
Bookmark now
Copy Link
Ryan Pinto vividly recalls the exact moment he decided to join his parents’ endeavor of serving the needs of the nation through education.
“I was just about to leave for university and I was traveling with my mother through the old Bombay [Mumbai] airport,” he tells The CEO Magazine.
“A grown man came running. He greeted my mother and she responded with his name, asking questions about his life and his siblings. Upon hearing that, he fell to his knees and had tears in his eyes.
“He couldn’t believe she remembered him, that she knew which school he had attended and which year he had graduated. That was when I realized that we aren’t just running schools, we are building relationships.”
“We own and operate all of our schools, which is a key differentiator from our competitors.”
Founded in 1976 by his father, Dr Augustine F Pinto, the Ryan Group began with a clear goal: to provide affordable, high-quality English-medium education in India.
In its current iteration, the Group boasts more than 150 schools across 18 states in India, with over 250,000 students and 18,000 teachers.
Ryan Group has also recently expanded to include offshore campuses, with the introduction of four schools in the United Arab Emirates.
“Our international growth is something that I have personally led and I still continue to oversee,” explains Pinto, who has been CEO for the past 16 years.
“We have also launched a new brand under the group, which is the Ryan International Academy. We also have seven global schools that follow the International Baccalaureate and the Cambridge program.
“Over the past five years, we’ve launched about 24 new campuses, keeping in mind that there were two years during the COVID-19 pandemic when we couldn’t have any new schools.”
Yet while this development and expansion are key strategies to add another hundred schools to the Group’s portfolio over the next decade, according to Pinto, it must be done the right way.
“We are accelerating our growth, we are accelerating our reach, but we don’t want to grow for growth’s sake,” he emphasizes.
“We don’t have any external investors; we’re not chasing any mandated revenue targets. We are not commercially driven. We own and operate all of our schools, which is a key differentiator from our competitors.
“Our whole model is to ensure that there is sustainability and continuous reinvestment into new projects to carry forward that vision of imparting quality education, democratizing access and affordability.”
In order to ensure a standard of the highest quality across each of its schools and thus maintaining its reputation as the best in the business, Ryan Group has to attract talented teachers. However, as Pinto explains, this is no easy feat.
“This is the biggest challenge because education over the years has gone down as a priority in terms of a career pathway,” he reveals.
“Young people don’t aspire to be a good teacher or to go into education as an attractive career opportunity. So there is a lack, a huge gap in the job sector.”
“We’ve been very conscious about staying true to being a positive contributor to society.”
But once the Group is able to demonstrate the immense benefits of this profession, there has never been an issue with staff retention at Ryan Group.
“The biggest recognition that I felt I got was from some of our most senior leaders, principals and heads of schools who have worked with us for 25 or 30 years plus,” Pinto says.
“Some of them think they would have retired because they’ve reached that age, but they’re still working very passionately because they love what they do. This was their first job, their only job, and this is their home.”
In turn, by equipping staff and students with the necessary tools and skills to properly tackle the advent of AI and developing technological innovations, Ryan Group is allowing both groups to truly flourish.
“The number one thing that I’m currently focusing on is AI adaptation and seeing how we include AI into our ongoing tech initiatives,” Pinto explains.
“We like to use relevant technologies that we feel are going to contribute in a positive manner for our students.”
“Social and moral values are integral to our curriculum.”
As well as an obvious focus on academic excellence, where “the results speak for themselves,” Pinto says, Ryan Group also follows a framework called KASSM – knowledge, attitude, skills, social and moral values – that underpins everything it does.
“Knowledge is not just the academic part of it but also being globally aware,” he points out. “Attitude is about building upon the personality and the character of that individual child, becoming more confident and self-aware, and the best version of themselves. Skills are about equipping the child with the tools needed for success.
“Social and moral values are integral to our curriculum because at the end of the day, we want our children to be good human beings contributing positively to the society that they’re in.”
Given that Ryan Group’s objective is to benefit the entire community around the schools, it makes sense that philanthropy is such a big part of its philosophy.
“We’ve been very conscious about staying true to being a positive contributor to society,” Pinto says. “We always encourage our children to be good, responsible citizens. Over the past couple of years, we’ve been able to do some great social initiatives.”
As well as setting a Guinness World Record for charitable clothing donations, in 2024 Ryan Group won the World’s Best School Prize for environmental action. Children from the Ryan Group schools also participated in COP28, winning first place in the Oxford University program.
“In 2015, there was a trending ‘ALS Ice Bucket Challenge’ across the globe,” he recalls. “We started the Food Bucket Challenge, mobilizing over 750 kilograms of food, which we distributed to more than 200 non-governmental organizations across the country.
“So we were able to take a global trend among young people and make it more relevant or contextualize it for India.”
“This is a divine calling for us and we recognize the deep responsibility we have.”
Ultimately, Pinto wants to impart to the students a deep sense of social awareness, reminding them not to lose sight of the greater good in favor of individual growth.
“Within all of the high-powered, high-octane kind of aspirations that our young people have, we should never forget about being a helping hand to others,” he says. “I would encourage all of us to think about how we contribute to help those less fortunate than us.”
As for the next chapter of the Group’s evolution, Pinto is incredibly optimistic about not just its capacity for ongoing success – and its ability to change the fabric of society – but also for India as a whole.
“We truly believe that India is at the cusp of great economic growth and social uplift,” he reveals. “We are the largest young population ever in the history of mankind. We are the largest middle class.
“We believe that we are greatly positioned to play a vital role in supporting the vision of the country’s growth, because education is the greatest tool to give anybody for social growth and upliftment and to equip them for the future.”
Pinto enthuses that for those that at Ryan Group – be it the students, staff or teachers – the path ahead is undeniably bright.
“This is a divine calling for us and we recognize the deep responsibility we have,” he says. “We are in it for the long haul – we’ve already been here for 50 years and hopefully we’ll be here for another 500 years.”
RELATED ARTICLES 
Home
Podcasts
Covers
Be Featured
Community
