Jay Sitaram - Second Time Lucky?

New interview by CIOL with Jay Sitaram, founder of Praxis Technologies, an e-Learning start up based out of Mumbai.

A little background on Jay -

• Met Maurice Haeems while pursuing his graduation at VJTI in Mumbai.
• Enrolled for his MBA course at Wharton School of Business
• Subsequently teamed up with Haeems to launch Mentorix -- an e-learning company – in 2001.
• The concept of e-learning was not yet popular in Indian market, but Sitaram went all out and turned Mentorix into a success.
• Two years later, Lionbridge Technologies bought out the company for approximately $21 million. Sitaram joined Lionbridge as a general manager & vice president (India).
• Itching for adventure again, so he quit Lionbridge Mentorix and founded Praxis Technologies with Haeems (again).

The interesting part in the interview for me was when Jay is talking about e-Learning companies in India not working with each other. The Learned Man! wrote about this in a previous post titled: "Marketing Indian eLearning: Crabs in a Bucket"

And here is Jay's take on the issue, taken from the CIOL interview:

"Sadly, most of the players in India spend more time battling each other. We often go to e-learning forums in the US to get customers. We are not sharing of ideas across companies, I don't know whether Wipro and Infosys sit across the table and talk to each other. But it may be useful to us, to get together as a group and brainstorm as to what is good for the industry. People in the industry seem to be more focused on their operations trying to eek out a decent living." - Jay Sitaram

Comments

[sumanth nath]

I agree with jay that there is at present chaos reigning in the e-learning space. It would make more sense if the e-learning companies form a consortium which would present a united front to international customers.

This would dramatically improve the quality of the competition.

[Aditi Kulkarni]

I think Jay has raised an important issue. I have just entered the elearning market but I can sense the kioss and slapdash...Jay has rightly pointed out the unhealthy competition going around..I think we should form a strong community of practice to help each other grow..elearning being developed rapidly, our community of practice can create wonders!

[Ram]

This is an excellent point. More so, as I am not aware of any professional organization in India that deals specifically with Instructional Design, eLearning and/or HPT. Part of this is, traditionally, these jobs have been under roles like HR or Training and we are yet to acknowledge their unique status.

While it is probably too much to expect Wipro, Infosys and Tata Interactive to sit and talk, conference participation, presentations etc under the guise of professional networking might admirably serve this purpose.