Saudi Arabia - eLearning Market Size 2008
In its drive to flesh out a knowledge-based economy, the Saudi government is giving much needed attention to the education sector. More than a quarter of planned budgetary spending is dedicated to education and capital spending in the sector is expected to rise 34.4% in 2008. The number of universities is also on the rise – from eight to more than 20 since 2004 – but the Kingdom will still have trouble keeping up with the demand emanating from its massive young population.
Amid growing discontent with the public school system, to which over 90% of Saudi students attend, the private school industry is seen as a growth industry, as is the e-learning industry, which was expected to have hit $125m in value in 2008. One private university, Alfaisal University in Riyadh, hopes to cultivate valuable connections to the international scientific world through a new research agreement with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Lack of interest in science and engineering fields among tertiary students contributes to the growing skills gap in the Kingdom, a trend the government is aiming to reverse. In due time, the investment in education is expected to help curb national unemployment and the economy's reliance on foreign labour.



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.
Pune based eLearning company, 



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."
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