Public servants are notoriously underpaid and sometimes even unpaid for long periods in many countries across the world. Not in Brazil, though, where those who work for the government have stability in the service established by the Federal Constitution and are frequently paid more than their private sector counterparts. As a result, many Brazilian graduates fresh out of college don’t think twice before applying for an entrance examination known as “Concurso Publico,” or “Public Contest,” through which candidates for public office are selected to be hired.  It is such a competitive process — just last year some 12 million Brazilians applied for 120,000 public service vacancies — that an entire industry offering everything from books to preparatory courses has formed to attend them.  Jose Janguie Bezerra Diniz (PHOTO: Armando Artoni/Courtesy of Ser Educacional)  But few people have profited as much from that as Jose Janguie Bezerra Diniz, the founder and principal shareholder of Ser Educacional, a Brazilian education company. Founded in 1994 in Recife, northeastern Brazil, Ser Educacional started its activities by providing courses that prepared students who were seeking public-servant opportunities. In 2003, the company began to offer undergraduate, graduate and technical education to mid-and lower-income students, and it now operates several campuses under the brand names of Faculdade Mauricio de Nassau and Faculdade Joaquim Nabuco.  Janguie Diniz’ opponents say the rise of his company from a small preparatory school in Recife, one of Brazil’s most violent cities, to a titan of the education industry in just two decades has suspicious origins, but he doesn’t seem to mind the critics. “I don’t really care about that sort of thing,” he told FORBES by phone. “I always knew there were only two ways to get rich: either by winning the lottery or by studying a lot.”  He chose the second way. Born into a family of seven siblings in Santana dos Garrotes, a small town in Paraiba, one of Brazil’s poorest states, Janguie Diniz moved with his family to another small town in the richer Mato Grosso do Sul state, in central-western Brazil, when he was eight years old. As soon as they settled in, he founded his first “business” — a shoeshine box he used to bootblack the village’s aldermen.  “But it didn’t last long,” Janguie Diniz recalls. “I soon found out that my buddies selling mandarins were having bigger profits. So I joined them.” Unfortunately for Jangue Diniz, the fresh fruit business is seasonal, so he had to try other jobs, like selling popsicles. When he was fourteen, his semi-literate parents decided to move once again, this time to Brazil’s Rondonia state, in the far western corner of the country where the Amazon basin meets the Bolivian border.  “They asked me if I wanted to come with them, but I would have to work in a farm and would not be able to finish my studies. I didn’t want to be a farmer, so I kissed them goodbye and I headed to Recife all by myself, to look for a job and a bed,” Janguie Diniz said. Thanks to his typing skills — he paid for a dactylographic course with the proceeds from his early business endeavors — and a distant uncle based in Recife he had never met, he got both.  Education has always played a vital role in Janguie Diniz’ life. He graduated from law school in 1987. He also holds a master’s degree and a doctorate in law, all from the Federal University of Pernambuco, an institution founded in 1946 as the first university in the north and northeastern regions of Brazil.  Fluent in English and French, Janguie Diniz calls himself an autodidact and he likes to be addressed as a “professor.” But he is a true entrepreneur, as he makes clear when explaining the secret to his growing education empire, which is to fulfill Brazil’s new emerging classes’ appetite for studying through a corporate governance lens. “We provide education to people, but ours is ultimately a business,” he said.  For now, it seems to be working. Ser Educacional went public last October, selling $281.5 million of stock in an initial public offering. Half the proceeds of the share sale were destined to fund the company’s expansion plans, while the other half was cashed out by shareholders, including New York-based private equity firm Cartesian Capital Group LLC, which held an 11.3% stake in Ser Educacional before last year’s IPO.  Ser Educacional reported sales of $70.4 million in the first quarter, up 44% from the same period last year. The number of students enrolled reached 113,000, a 51% jump over the previous year. Of those, 64% received scholarships and student loans from the government. Thanks to his 70% stake in the company, whose shares have surged in recent weeks, his net worth is estimated by FORBES at $1.1 billion.  About 14.3% of Brazilians aged 18 to 24 study at university, up from 13% in 2012, and the government says it wants to bring that figure up to 33% by 2020. Brazil already has an $11 billion-a-year education industry that has grown at a double-digit rate in recent years due to a tight job market demanding a skilled labor force with better technical knowledge, stronger analytical abilities and foreign language proficiency. Janguie Diniz believes he is the right person to address those issues.  “Our plan is to consolidate the education sector in the north and northeastern regions of Brazil, and then branch out to other states. We have to, as our competitors [from the south] are already coming here. We have a small debt and the means to do that,” he said.  Janguie Diniz’ push for growth and better results has already caught the eyes of some political leaders in Brazil, who have seen in him the perfect man to get voters’ attention. But politics aren’t on his radar, at least for now. “I’ve been invited to run for public office, but I feel like I can contribute more to Brazil as an entrepreneur. I’m friends with [presidential candidate] Eduardo Campos, but I don’t intend to donate money to his campaign or to any of the other candidates. I believe the smaller the state, the more responsible and democratic it tends to be. I work and study 15 hours a day on my business, and my goal is education, not politics,” he said.  For someone who shined the shoes of bureaucrats as a boy, Janguie Diniz knows there’s no need to do that again.
Jose Janguie Bezerra Diniz invested most of his money and time into education. Thanks to that, he is now a billionaire.