The Learned Man!

UTI Ventures Exits Excelsoft, Earns 50 Times Its Investment!

In one of the biggest exits by a private equity firm in India, UTI Ventures has made 50 times its investment by selling its 35.5% stake in e-learning firm Excelsoft Technologies for Rs 125 crore to hedge fund DE Shaw.

UTI Ventures had invested Rs 2.5 crore in 2001 in the Mysore-based firm. Other firms reportedly in the fray for the UTI Ventures stake were Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Ventures, Cisco Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank and Softbank.

Read more here

TATA Interactive Systems At Full Steam

...“We believe that the order ranks among the largest single orders won by any e-learning developer in the world.”

Mumbai, India based e-Learning major TATA Interactive Systems is making it rain and how!

From a Newswire press release:

In the beginning of 2007, Tata Interactive Systems won a $3m order to design and develop e-learning solutions for an organisation in the Asia Pacific region.

Following in quick succession was an order valued at $7m, from the European region.

This record was then matched by an order of equivalent value, from a client in North America.

Sanjaya Sharma, TIS’s CEO, commented: “We believe that the order ranks among the largest single orders won by any e-learning developer in the world.”

“In any case, each of these three ‘record’ orders is probably greater than the annual turnover of all but a relative few of the world’s other e-learning development companies.

“And, of course, like any of the world’s leading performers, we’re looking forward to continuing to improve on our performance - and continually exceed our own records,” he said.

Instructional Design Resources

Instructional Theories
Instructional Design, Theory, & Research
Principles Of Online Design
Big Dog's ISD Page
Reference Guide for Instructional Design & Development
Who's Who in Instructional Technology
Dick and Carey's Systems Approach Model
Dick and Carey Model
e-learning for Development
Learning Theories
Learning Domains
Learning Concepts
Instructional Design Models
Instruction Theory for Kids
Blooms Taxonomy
How Children Learn
The Encyclopedia of Educational Technology
Martin Ryder from the University of Colorado at Denver has on this page returned a thread and linked back to all the sites that have linked to his resource on Instructional Design models. Explore this virtual treasure trove of links to additional Instructional Design resources, and practioners.
Kathy Sierra's Crash Course In Learning Theory (Good Stuff!) and click here for more expansion on her post.
Learning Objectives by Jennifer Yeh, Center for the Enhancement of Teaching, SFSU

Sequoia May Invest In Excelsoft

Known in the eLearning industry for its investments in companies such as Brainvisa and Tarang, Sequoia Capital continues to play the game. A recent article in Business Standard mentions Sequoia Capital to be looking at potential investments in Mysore based, Excelsoft.

From the article:

"Excelsoft is a six-year-old firm which provides a range of customised learner-centric learning systems, test and assessment systems, and desktop tools.

According to industry information, the company, which has a topline of around Rs 50 crore is expected to be valued in the range of Rs 350-400 crore for the stake sale. A deal is expected to be sealed by early-January 2008.

Industry sources further indicate that in addition to Sequoia and the Singapore fund, ICICI Venture is also in the fray to invest in this high-margin firm.

Estimates are that Excelsoft has a net profit of close to Rs 25 crore due to its business model of taking the product licensing route on which services and consulting add value and stickiness.

“Excelsoft has created intellectual property in the area of e-learning technologies and combines its strengths in software development, instructional design and e-learning content development to deliver e-learning solutions,” said an industry source.

Excelsoft presently employs around 500 people across Mysore, Hyderabad and New Delhi, and serves a marquee of clients from global educational publishers, universities and corporates.

A few of the clients of the firm are Pearson Education, Infosys Technologies, Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, Oxford University, World Bank, UNESCO besides a clutch of others. Excelsoft, off late, has been keenly focussing on the test and assessment platform which are key enablers for universities."

VC Funds Bet On e-Learning

From a recent report in Mint:

Online education and e-learning services emerged as the flavour of the season as venture capital firms struck three deals in this space in the last month—

• Mumbai-based Hurix Systems Pvt. Ltd received $5.1 million from Helion Venture Partners
• TutorVista.com, an online tutorials company started by serial entrepreneur K. Ganesh, received $2.5 million from Manipal Education Group
• Mumbai-based e-learning services company 24x7 Learning Solutions Pvt. Ltd received $4 million from Capital18, the venture capital arm of media group Network18. All three companies have had earlier rounds of funding.

Couldn't resist sharing a couple of Dilbert - VC Vijay comic strips!:

Carpe diem: A Good Time To Be An Instructional Designer!

Going by a quick glance at the ID section on www.elearningcareers.com it appears that TATA Interactive Systems, Lionbridge, & Accenture are all recruiting ID's and content developers at the same time! And many more companies recruiting from various other cities.

A good time indeed to be an ID!

Hurix Systems gets $5 mn from Helion

Mumbai-based e-learning and publishing services company Hurix Systems Pvt. Ltd has received second round funding of $5.1 million (Rs20.2 crore) from Bangalore-based venture capital firm Helion Venture Partners.

Kanwaljit Singh, managing director, Helion Venture Partners. Singh, along with Natarajan Ranganathan, CFO at Helion, will join Hurix’s board. Hurix had received funding of Rs5 crore at the inception stage from Kotak Mahindra Venture Capital Fund, the VC arm of Kotak Mahindra Finance Ltd.

More here.

Educomp Acquires Savvica

The acquisition of Savvica will add online community building capabilities to Educomp's content offerings.

Educomp Solutions, the online, interactive and multimedia education content and solutions provider announced on Wednesday that it had acquired a 70.05 per cent stake in Canadian online teaching solutions company Savvica.

Educomp offers solutions in pre-school learning management, K-12 schools, school management and online as well as offline tutoring.

Its specialised product range also includes learning leadership management solutions and Smart Class learning management modules for private schools and student centred e-tutoring products such as Mentoraide, Mathguru.com and Roots to Wings. Educomp had developed its offline learning and infrastructure management solutions on its own.

To add online solutions to its kitty, Educomp had previously acquired AsknLearn, a Singapore based e-learning content provider. It also took a 76 per cent stake in ThreeBrix E-Services, the owner of learninghour.com, an online and offline learning solutions provider focused at Indian students.

The acquisition of Savvica will add online community building capabilities to Educomp's repository of content across its various initiatives. Later this year, Educomp plans to launch a project to build online communities of instructors and learners based on geographical regions and subject matter, leveraging Savvica's skills.

The company doubled its revenues from Rs 55.5 crore to Rs 110.1 crore in FY07. Its operating margins have consistently expanded from around 45 per cent in FY06 to nearly 60 per cent at the end of the first quarter of FY08.

Educomp is expected to continue delivering its blockbuster performance in the next two years, as analysts expect its revenues to grow at a CAGR of 90 per cent over FY07-09.

The company's profitability is expected to expand even further, leading to an earnings growth of more than 90 per cent. The stock scaled a new high of Rs 3079 on September 20. At the current price, the stock trades at an expensive 86 times estimated FY08 earnings of Rs 35 and 43 times estimated FY09 earnings of Rs 43.

From: Business Standard

Game Based Learning At ICICI Bank

Mint recently carried an interesting article about ICICI Bank's new hires using game based learning developed by TATA Interactive Systems to come upto speed on processes like queue management, cheque clearing (operations), cheque payment across the counter, and savings accounts.

Read the full article here.

Free Web Conferencing Tool By Elluminate

E-learning technology provider Elluminate has rolled out the final release of its new, free Web conferencing system, vRoom. The company has also announced version 2.0 of its Blackboard Building Block extension for Elluminate Live!, a distance learning tool.

Elluminate's vRoom is a collaboration tool supporting up to three simultaneous users, including the moderator. It incorporates "most" of the technology of Elluminate Live!, according to the company, but is available for use free of charge. vRoom is essentially a virtual office, providing features like video and audio conferencing, instant messaging, application and desktop sharing, and interactive whiteboard capabilities.

vRoom is available now for free and supports Mac OS X, Windows, and other operating systems.

- Dave Nagel, "Elluminate Launches Free Web Conferencing Tool,"  T.H.E. Journal, 3/21/2007

Indecomm Global Services acquires Brainvisa Technologies

Pune based eLearning company, Brainvisa has been acquired. The consolidation juggernaut continues. Looks like Sequoia has attempted to give Brainvisa the platform it needs to unlock its potential and Indecomm gets to round out its service offering.

From the press release put out by Indecomm:

August 21, 2007, India - Indecomm Global Services (“Indecomm”), a leading international business process outsourcing and services firm, announced today that it has acquired Brainvisa Technologies Private Limited (“Brainvisa”), a leading global eLearning solutions company. This is the second acquisition done by Indecomm Global Services this year after it recently acquired US Recordings, a US-based leading provider of mortgage recording solutions.

Click here to read the press release.

Brainvisa To Merge With Indecomm Global Services?

The Learned Man! has been receiving news from its sources that Sequoia backed and Pune, India based eLearning company Brainvisa may be entering into a merger with Indecomm Global Services, also backed by Sequoia.

There has been a fair amount of speculation of late about Brainvisa and its potential suitors. While we await official news, feel free to write in to add to this story or offer corrections.

e-Learning Market To Hit $56B By 2010

With an already strong foothold in the enterprise sector, e-learning is advancing in K-12 and higher education teaching environments, according to San Jose, CA-based market researchers Global Industry Analysts, which project the global e-learning market to surpass $52.6 billion by 2010.

Already the 2007 U.S. e-learning market is $17.5 billion according to "eLearning: A Global Strategic Business Report," a new report recently published by Global Industry Analysts. Besides market size, the report covers market trends, challenges, forces driving the market, technologies, types of end users and profiles of e-learning usage broken down by geography.

While Europe and Japan lag on e-learning adoption compared to the United States (U.S. enterprise e-learning adoption accounts for 60 percent of the market, while Europe's accounts for 15 percent), overall usage of e-learning in Asia is expected to reach a compound annual growth rate of 25 percent to 30 percent through 2010, according to the firm. Worldwide that rate should hit between 15 percent and 30 percent, the report states.

The key driver for e-learning usage is attributed to an increased number of solutions and services. However, the report warns that a lack of interoperability standards could stifle e-learning's growth.

via: David Kopf, "e-Learning Market to hit $56B by 2010,"  T.H.E. Journal, 7/30/2007, http://www.thejournal.com/articles/21046

New ID Course In Affiliation With Philadelphia University

Given the shortage of ID courses in India it was only going to be a matter of time before entrepreneurs jumped into the fray to fill the void.

I recently received an email from Chandrashekhar, who is the founder of a start-up company, Tenable Learning Solutions Pvt Ltd, based out of Hyderabad.

In Chandra's own words:

"Not satisfied with the quality of Instructional Designers and e-learning available in the Indian market, we have tied  up with Philadelphia University to offer the first credible certificate course in Instruction Design in India. This is a total 5 month course (3 months curriculum + 2 months internship). Only 25 seats are available.  At the end of 5 months, all the prospective ID will be provided placements.

I will be sending you a detailed prospectus shortly. The delegation from PU will be in India this month from 15th to 17th and we are organizing press conferences in select Indian cities."

Chandra has also sent us the prospectus for this course which can be downloaded here .

KUBC Invests US$20 Million in Adayana Inc.

Kubera Cross-Border Fund Limited ("KUBC") (LSE: KUBC), an investment company traded on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange has acquired a significant minority interest in Adayana Inc. ("Adayana") for an equity investment of US$20 million

Adayana is a learning services outsourcing company headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, US with offshore development operations in Hyderabad, India.

Commenting on the new partnership, Rajiv Tandon, CEO of Adayana Inc., said, "We were looking for a partner that could help us grow direct sales in the US, Europe and emerging markets, identify and close acquisitions, assist in building a world-class Indian delivery operation and also help with our rapidly growing training outsourcing business serving the South Asian market. Kubera Partners, LLC’s ability to add value in a cross-border sense, uniquely qualifies them to help with businesses such as ours."

Click here for the complete story.

Brainvisa Sold?

eLearning blogger Amit Kapur, through his blog, speculates that Pune, India based and Sequoia Capital funded, mid-sized eLearning player Brainvisa may be in the process of being acquired.

If this is true, then we would see further consolidation of the industry in India. Maximize Learning, another Pune based player was recently snapped up by Aptara (erstwhile Techbooks).

Mid-sized eLearning players who have not been able to scale will find themselves easy prey for larger BPO's, content transformation companies who wish to add to their offerings and grow inorganically.

Please feel free to shed more light on the Brainvisa deal by writing in to us at:

Moodle!

Results of the eLearning Guild's LMS Survey:

(For this report, LMS market share ratings were based on data from more than 2,300 respondents and satisfaction ratings were based on data from more than 1,200 respondents. In addition, the guild surveyed over 930 e-Learning professionals who represented more than 840 different organizations to definitively show just what the state of the industry is when it comes to Learning Management Systems.)

• The cost per learner to acquire, configure, and customize an LMS for large corporations ranges from $15.11 to $57.02.
• Skillsoft enjoys greatest overall satisfaction in large corporations with a large number of learners impacted (greater than 5,000 employees and learners).
• 29.58% of survey respondents plan to upgrade their LMS and 10.69% plan to abandon their current LMS and move to a different vendor.
• Moodle (yes, Moodle) enjoys both the largest market share and satisfaction in smaller corporations with a smaller number of learners impacted (fewer than 5,000 employees and learners).
• 11% of survey respondents indicate that they have not received a return on investment from their investment in a Learning Management System.
• SumTotal is the market share leader in large corporations with a large number of learners impacted (greater than 5,000 employees and learners).
• 21% of survey respondents use more than one LMS.
• SAP and KnowledgeImpact enjoy the largest percent of users that report a good return on investment.

Also see:
Kineo's view
Open Source LMS Comparison

Are e-Learning Employees Humans?

Asim Chowdhury continues to enlighten and regale us with his somewhat caustic style of writing. His articles, I am sure, have managed to stike a chord with loads of eLearning folks and even if they haven't you wont be left without a smile! Asim probably would make the perfect 'union leader' in an eLearning company.

Sample these:

Of Project Managers And Staged Shows
The 8 Hour Shift That Never Is
Are e-Learning Employees Getting A Raw Deal?

NIIT Bullish On eLearning

India's NIIT Ltd. (500304.BY) is planning to invest between INR250 million and INR400 million on expanding its infrastructure over the next two years ending March 31, 2009, the company's chief executive officer said.

"This year we invested about INR600 million on new infrastructure. But this year was a major renewal year with new partnerships requiring massive investments in infrastructure," Vijay K. Thadani told Dow Jones Newswires in a recent interview.

Part of this year's revenue will come from NIIT's acquisition of Element K, a U.S.-based provider of learning software, in August, 2006, said Thadani.

The acquisition has already added to the earnings per share in the very first quarter from October to December, he said. " We will have only seven months of their revenues (for the current fiscal year)."

He expects Element K to contribute about $57 million-$58 million to NIIT's total revenue in the current fiscal year.

The company's total revenue grew 20% on year to INR3.47 billion for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2006, from INR2.89 billion in fiscal 2005, according to data on the Bombay Stock Exchange website.

Thadani expects NIIT's operating profit to "expand faster than the growth in revenue, maybe a couple of percentage points" in the current fiscal year.

He expects the main growth drivers to be the expanding knowledge economy in India and the rise in the outsourcing of training courses by developed economies.

"The growth of the knowledge economy is causing other new service sectors to come up, apart from IT," he said.

He added that the growth in the outsourcing of training courses is "beginning to gain a momentum which is akin to that of the software services and the BPO industry that we saw earlier."

In the coming fiscal year starting April 1, NIIT will look to expand in three areas - banking and financial services, retail and in general, the services industry, Thadani said.

"We will also look to grow inorganically as well if we don't have the competence in one area," he said, without elaborating.

(By Romit Guha | Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES)

Sify Reports Big eLearning Wins

SIFY Reports U.S. GAAP Results for the year and fourth Quarter ended 31st March 2007

International Business:

Sify continued its thrust in expanding its international business, led by two lines of service; Remote Infrastructure Management and Corporate eLearning Services. Both lines of business are seeing excellent customer traction and several important wins in the last quarter:

-- Sify has been chosen by a California based market research company focused on the wireless space to remotely manage their IT infrastructure

-- Sify has been chosen by a global consumer products company headquartered in UK to remotely manage their server infrastructure. Sify will be delivering these services from its global management center in Chennai

-- Sify has been selected as the preferred eLearning services partner by one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies, for whom Sify is already providing eLearning content development as well as remote infrastructure support for their learning technology platforms. Sify expects this engagement to scale to $3-4 Million per year in the next 12-18 months

-- Sify has been awarded substantial repeat orders from a global leader in computer software, to provide eLearning courseware for several of their current and forthcoming products. This relationship is expected to yield $3-4 Million in revenues in 2007-08

-- Sify has been chosen as the learning services provider by a global leader in aero energy to provide a range of learning services including learning strategy design and content development. Sify has already completed the design phase and will now be developing a range of eLearning courses over the next 2 years, valued at over $3.0 Million.

As part of its international expansion, Sify has opened new sales offices in London and Dubai. This is in addition to its two existing offices in California and New Jersey, USA.

Open Source LMS Comparison

Starting a new post to capture resources providing comparison, information on Open Source LMS:

Course Management Systems Comparison - By Edutools
2006: The Year Of Moodle - From Epic
Open Source For Learning - Harold Jarche

RSS In Plain English

Click To Play

There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don't. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don't know where to start.

From - commoncraft

Through Their Eyes: India Based Training Suppliers Are Leading The Global Sourcing Charge

You can count on us to bring you the latest insights and moves from within the Indian content development industry.

From time to time though, its always a good idea, to see how this industry is being perceived by western media. Check out this story by Paul Harris for a Training & Development newsletter on the Indian eLearning Industry. (Pages 16-18).

In Paul's words: "And while Indian firms are clearly not the only offshore providers of such knowledge-based services, their prominence is unmatched."

Careless Whispers Redux

Before you continue reading you might want to check out the wikipedia entry on Gossip!

We have been hearing persistent rumours of a Pune based eLearning vendor (who has been burning up the PR lines with spiel on their authoring products) in talks to be bought out....if anyone knows more feel free to mail in....and please do mention "Gossip" in the subject line. :)

UPDATE: We hear that the company in question has indeed been bought out by a BPO. We estimate the deal size to be in the region of $25 Mn. Nothing official has been put out by any of the parties concerned yet.

Size Does Matter

Check out recent interviews, from Digital Learning, with Hurix CEO Subrat Mohanty and Brainvisa CEO Supam Maheshwari.

The thing about these CEO interviews is the predictability of answers provided. This may also have to do with the kind of questions asked. Everybody ends up plugging their company or a product, dishing out top level gyaan and vague numbers on the size of the markets. I hope we get to see some real interviews this year!

The only question however, where I felt these gentlemen came close to speaking their hearts was the one on critical roadblocks. Here are the responses for that one.

Q: What have been the critical roadblocks for you ?

Supam Maheshwari, CEO-Brainvisa: "Building deeper, integrated partnership with clients take enormous amounts of time in the industry. Our most critical and the biggest road block has been to try to reduce this time-frame. We can work with a client on any spoke of this wheel to begin with, and would like to transition it towards completing all spokes of this wheel and meet our objective of building a long term partnership."

Subrat Mohanty, CEO-Hurix: "Size. Very often we think and act like a company more than ten times our size. As a result, we end up competing against much larger entities both for business as well as talent. In these situations, our size sometimes acts as a roadblock."

Shift Happens

TATA Interactive's Jon Revelos brought this great video to my attention via his post Shift Happens

clipped from www.youtube.com

Veotag It

Check out Veotag, a new service that is able to text tag a podcast or video making it easy for the listener/viewer to directly jump to the section of relevance.

TATA Interactive Systems got Veotag to tag their Annual Review Of 2006 podcast and you can check that out here. I am sure you will agree that after seeing this, it is going to be very difficult to go back to your old way of listening to podcasts or viewing videos.

Indian e-Learning Bloggers - Way To Go!

Here are the top e-Learning related blogs in India by their Technorati rankings. Its good to see a few new blogs crop up, especially around the ID space.

I dont think any e-Learning blogger harbours delusions of being a Technorati Top 100 Stud someday, maybe he/she does!, but its fantastic to see the community growing and so many talented and vastly experienced people coming forward with their thoughts and opinions and weaving their own special communities around themselves. Some, a couple of years late maybe, but better now then never! I'm hoping tons more of you will hop on to the blog bandwagon in 2007. Try it...you might just get hooked on...!

To see the rankings and the buzz around these blogs for yourself all you have to do is go to Technorati and type in the name of [xyz] blog.

1. http://elearning.typepad.com  (now also accessed at www.thelearnedman.com)
(We are humbled that so many of you keep coming back day after day to get your dope on the Indian eLearning landscape. Our newsletter currently reaches over 800 mailboxes around the world!)

2. http://simply-speaking.blogspot.com
(New ID centric blog by TATA Interactive's Geetha Krishnan. This blog has gained ground fast, garnering a dedicated and growing readership. We are not surprised!)

3. http://e-learnindia.blogspot.com
(Asim offers his own quirky views on the e-learning landscape. I have enjoyed reading selective parts of his sometimes, long pieces. There is no doubting that this is a very opinionated blog and we would like to see an increase in the frequency of posts.)

4. http://elearning.kern-comm.com
(Multi-author blog by the team of Kern Communications. Should really be under "corporate blogs", but given the size of this company I thought I'd introduce it here for now. Once again...More posts please!)

5. http://discursive-learning.blogspot.com
(Another new ID centric blog from TATA Interactive's Anil Mammen, really - TATA seems to be churning out the bloggers! We would though, like to see an increase in the frequency of posts)

Maybe we shouldnt be asking for an increased frequency of posting from some of these bloggers, given that ID guys like to take their time and churn out long and very intense posts! :)

As usual, please mail in or plug in your comments and let me know about blogs that should be here and are not!

eLearning South Korea: Online Education Market Expands In 2006

From Yonhap News:

South Korea's market for online learning grew sharply last year, buoyed by strong public demand, the government said Wednesday.

• The country's e-learning business, measured in total sales, rose 10.0 percent year-on-year to 1.67 trillion won, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Energy said.
• Private demand for e-learning rose 11.1 percent to 697 billion won, with demand in the public and corporate sectors contributing 137 billion won and 752 billion won each.
• The number of firms engaged in the sector jumped 63 percent annually to 621. In 2005, the number of companies was 381.
• "There was a surge in education-service firms entering the e-learning market, with private learning academies starting online programs," said a government official.
• The growth also caused the number of people working in the business to jump 19.7 percent vis-a-vis 2005 to 19,644, with firms surveyed expressing a need to hire more workers to meet growing demand.

Andheri-Kurla Road, Mumbai: e-Learning Hub Of India

I recently came across this post (someone very frustrated with the Saki-Naka traffic) on the NDTV Blogs network that has inspired me to write this...!

This below is a satellite image taken from Google Maps. Click to see expanded view.

 

You can see the Tata Interactive Systems Offices marked on this. I am sure a lot of you must have thought about the fact that this road, on and around, houses to my knowledge, 6 well known eLearning companies - TATA Interactive Systems, Hurix, Praxis, LearningMate, Lionbridge, Aptech As someone who works in the area, it completely beats me as to why this has happened!

We also have it on good word that Praxis CEO Jay Sitaram works out at a gym bang in the centre of this crazy road - one question for you Jay - How often do you really go to the gym??

The traffic conditions in this part have got to be the nastiest in Mumbai, good accomodation close to these offices is hard to come by and the rents are killing! Yet thousands of people come to work here and hundreds more apply from all parts of the country every single day! And lets not even get into the attrition and job-hopping that the HR guys of these companies have to deal with because of this!