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.

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!:

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

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.

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:

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.

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."

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."

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!

Indian eLearning Wakes Up To Second Life

What do a NID grad, a bass guitarist, a street racer and a management grad have in common? 

The four of them have come together to launch a start-up called VR1. The website of this start-up says that their main goal shall be to "provide a platform that facilitates entry into the rapidly growing market of persistent online 3D virtual worlds."

Given that Second Life is currently the most popular of the lot, VR1 wants to work with their clients to create for them, a presence in this virtual world. This presence could be created toward efforts in brand building, marketing, promotional activities, and immersive training / 3D virtual education for their employees. VR1 is still in a very nascent, probably ideative stage and it remains to be seen what they will eventually bring to the table.

Read:

Economic Times article titled "Live life second time".
Glimpse Inside a Metaverse: The Virtual World of Second Life - From Google Tech Talks
Post on learning around Second Life by blogger Rich Hoeg
How Not to Teach in Second Life - An interview with the Second Life founder
Articles About Education In Second Life
The Big Business of Second Life
My Virtual Life - From Businessweek Online
Making A Living In Second Life - From Wired
Skills For Life In Second Life - From Simtech
Second Life As A VLE - Theodore Wright

Philip Rosedale and Cory Ondrejka, CEO & CTO of Second Life, take you inside Second Life. This talk was held at Google, March 1, 2006:

Harbinger Knowledge Products - FY 2006:2007

Pune, India Based Harbinger Knowledge Products who, in the past few years, has fast lost ground in the custom content development business to local competition such as Brainvisa Technologies and Maximize Learning (now Techbooks) has managed to hold on, on account of its rapid-authoring and interactivity building product line.

The company is currently working the PR channels to promote Raptivity which it claims is "the world’s first rapid interactivity builder for e-learning.". In a recent newspaper article the company's top executives discuss their expectations from this product line and plans going forward:

• The company has reported revenue of Rs 15 crore this fiscal, indicating a growth of 40 per cent at the group level.
• The product business, which contributes 35 per cent of the group’s turnover, grew at 150 per cent, contributing substantially to overall growth.
• Expects product business to contribute almost 50 per cent of revenues next fiscal
• Says it will add 500 square feet to its current facility immediately.
• Setting up another office at Pashan (Pune, India) at an investment of Rs 2 crore and with a capacity to seat 200 people.
• Plans to recruit 100 more employees, taking headcount to 300 by end of this year.
• Plans to grow to 500 people by end of 2008

Tarang Software - Sequoia Capital India's Dark Horse In The eLearning Game?

Bangalore based Tarang Software Technologies says that it is generating a revenue of $250,000 from Volvo in providing it with its spectrum of eLearning services.

From the Business Standard article: "Tarang, which employs about 270 people at its Bangalore facility presently, had achieved a turnover of $3 million last fiscal. This fiscal, the company is eyeing a turnover of $5 million."

Tarang is a Sequoia Capital funded company. Sequoia also is an investor in Pune based Brainvisa Technologies and Mr.KP Balaraj, Managing Director - Sequoia Capital India is on the board of both Tarang and Brainvisa.

Hurix Systems - Current Numbers & Revenue Figures

A new article in the Economic Times brings forward new numbers from Mumbai based Hurix Systems. Read the article for the rest of the PR plug but to sum it up here are the numbers (quoted from article):

• At the end of 2006, Hurix’ client base stood at 50.
  
• Cathay Pacific joined its list of clients through a marketing deal. Hurix will market e-learning modules from Cathay Pacific’s library of training courses to airlines all over the world.
  
• McGraw Hill, one of its biggest clients, picked up a 15% stake in the company at Rs 26 per share.
• Also, Hurix and McGraw Hill got into a contract, wherein the Mumbai-based company will be providing a bouquet of services ranging from e-learning to technology to media to the US-based company. The size of the contract is estimated to be $8 million per year spread over five years.
• The company is confident that it will close the year 2006-07 with revenues of more than $8 million, growing by 80-100%.
• The company is also known to be in talks with VCs and private equity players to raise around $5 million. This would be the second round of funding for the company. Sources say that the due diligence will begin in January 2007 and funding is expected to be received in February.

Click here for more Hurix info from The Learned Man! Blog.

Excelsoft signs 5 year agreement with Wolters Kluwer Education (WKe)

While it may not yet be David Vs. Goliath, its starting to look like the little guys are standing up to be counted.

Mysore (India) based eLearning company Excelsoft Technologies has announced a 5 year deal with Europe based Wolters Kluwer Education (WKe), a division of Wolters Kluwer (2005 revenues: €3.4 billion / Rs19,992 crore), the biggest information services and publishing company in Europe, for use of Excelsoft's e-learning 'application framework' across all WKe publishing houses. The agreement also covers development of custom e-learning applications on the framework, for each of the publishing houses.

From a first look at their website it looks like Excelsoft has stitched up a few clients in the UK already.

TATA Interactive Sums It Up

Do not miss this great podcast at the TATA Interactive Systems (TIS) corporate blog. For the first time, you have some of the seniormost people from that company talking about the year that was and their thoughts for the year ahead.

TIS is leading by example once again, and hopefully other companies will take the cue to open up a little bit more and voice and share their thoughts. This can only help facilitate dialogue, which, who knows, may even lead to something more structured.

India e-Learning Directory 2005

I get a lot of requests for a list of eLearning companies in India. I am putting up the first compilation, for 2005, that was done to catalogue the players in the market at that point in time and derive a sense of the size of the pie. It seems like a useful exercise, and I am working on updating that first report with newer data. Thanks to all of you who have been writing in, telling me about your companies or with suggestions.

Please click here to download the "India eLearning Directory 2005"

LIQVID Doing Well

LIQVID, a Noida, India based eLearning company has been voted to the no. 8 slot at the Deloitte Technology Fast 50 India 2006 awards. LIQVID claims 450% growth across the last 3 years and this would mean that the company would be gearing up to take a more visible role in the country's e-Learning landscape. Will we hear more of them?...time will most certainly tell!

Also see: IIM Grads & eLearning Start-Ups

Dude...wheres my salesforce!?

A reader wrote in recently with the news that a prominent Pune, India based e-Learning development company has had its sales and inside sales team all but gone.  Trouble in paradise...or part of a larger strategy...only time..or further information will reveal...!

Interview with Sanjaya Sharma, CEO, Tata Interactive Systems

Sanjaya Sharma, CEO of Tata Interactive Systems, recently spoke to CIOL. Some excerpts from that interview:

On merging with TCS:
[Sanjaya] There is no immediate talk of such a move, and I will be very surprised if it happens in 2006.

On facing pricing pressure from other e-learning players in India?
[Sanjaya] It has been so for quite many years. Many small e-learning companies often undercut each other to gain projects. But, TIS has been largely away from all this. The clients that choose us do so for the quality work that we do, in the last few years our average price has appreciated and not gone down. Clients recognize that we stand for quality, we have recently been awarded four international prizes for our work. Clients appreciate the kind of investment we have made in the facility and the overheads. Customers that are anyways looking for lower prices will always find vendors that offer them.

On attrition:
[Sanjaya] As far as people joining competition is concerned, there is also a lot of reverse flow happening. E-learning industry in India is still very fluid, so this kind of to-and-fro movement is pretty commonplace.

On implementing SAP:
[Sanjaya] With the use of SAP, we have aligned all our global offices on a single system. We have over 300 people who are working abroad. We have offices in different continents of America, Europe, Middle East, Asia-Pacific. There are at any given moment close to 200 projects that the company is working on. Keeping in mind all these complexities, the implementation of SAP ERP has helped us no end. Now, all the orders can be logged, tracked at a click of a button.

On its European acquisitions:
[Sanjaya] We acquired Tertia Edusoft AG in Switzerland and Tertia Edusoft GmbH in Germany. These are small companies that focus on specific areas; Like the German company, which was renowned in the country for it Simulation products; Or the Swiss company has a very unique anti money laundering product that has very good potential across the world. We chose these companies for the specific skill sets that they provided. These were profitable firms working in a niche market, now they are part of a global company. It has also helped us increase our footprints in European markets.

On the future:
[Sanjaya] We are quite buoyant about the future prospects. TIS is a 16-year-old company, and has created a brand name that is known globally. We will be opening an office in South Africa shortly. We are aiming for over 30 per cent growth this year. It is quite an exciting time to be in business.

Link to full interview.

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

IIM Grads & eLearning Start-Ups

This Economic Times article (actually, more the headline than the article itself) got me to share something I have known for a while now. Coincidentally or not, but a lot of graduates from the IIM's (The Indian Institute of Management's, also among India's best known B-Schools) have been setting up e-Learning and custom content development start-ups. And some of them are now captains of very successful enterprises. This article mentions just one but there several examples.

Some examples:

• Subrat Mohanty and Viswamitra Hariharan (Batchmates from IIM-Ahmedabad). Subrat quit Tata Interactive and joined up with Hariharan to set up Hurix.
• Brainvisa CEO Supam Maheshwari is ex IIM-Ahmedabad and CTO Vikas Kumar is ex IIM-Lucknow (Brainvisa co-founder Anand Lunia, currently at Hurix, is also IIM alumni )
• Tata Interactive Systems' CEO Sanjaya Sharma is also ex IIM-Ahmedabad.
• Educomp Solutions Ltd., which just went through an IPO, is headed by Shantanu Prakash, also ex IIM-Ahmedabad.
• NIIT's President for their Knowledge Solutions Business, Ashish Basu is ex IIM-Bangalore.
• Ashutosh Garg, Head Operations, of Zeus Learning is ex IIM-Bangalore
• Vivek Agarwal, CEO of Liqvid is ex IIM-Calcutta

Trendspotting: India eLearning Inc. Discovers EPSS

A bit late in the day, and 15 years on from the release of Gloria Gery's pathbreaking book Indian eLearning companies seem to have discovered EPSS. Better late than never!

What are Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS):

"An integrated electronic environment that is available to and easily accessible by each employee and is structured to provide immediate, individualized on-line access to the full range of information, software, guidance, advice and assistance, data, images, tools, and assessment and monitoring systems to permit job performance with minimal support and intervention by others." - Gloria Gery

Gloria Gery today is an independent consultant based in Tolland, Massachusetts. She specializes in performance centered software design and in developing and implementing eLearning and performance support systems. Don't miss these articles, and presentations from her website.

Click here for some more definitions of ePSS

The Learned Man! predicts that before long the larger Indian vendors will start to add ePSS to their suite of products and solutions. As of now Tata Interactive Systems appears to have been the first off the block by hiring former Director of KM at Zurich Financial, John Kusi Mensah to spearhead their ePSS practice. Tata though, has traditionally been an innovator (having made it to Gartner's coveted magic quadrant for e-learning content) and we should soon see other Indian vendors trying to play catch up and come out with their own EPSS products and solutions.

Indian vendors for some time will have some serious catching up to do if they are to come anywhere near established players like Panviva* from down under. But considering that Indian companies have risen to the challenge and are admirably taking on competition in the bespoke content markets, it should only be a matter of time until they hit the nail on the head. The Learned Man! as always, will keep you clued in.

*Panviva, by the way, had its origins in the mid-1990s as a content company. It soon realised that content was commonplace but the tools for delivering it to users of applications were very basic. So it set out to develop its own software for doing so. After an injection of venture capital in 2000 it built its product into an innovative authoring and delivery system that can be used in a range of environments in which users need immediate access to detailed information, such as call centres or for users of complex applications.

Panviva has been profitable for the past two years, and now has about 40 staff. It has offices in Britain and the US, where is sees much of its future occurring, and has users in 10 countries, including banks, insurance companies and many government departments. Read more here.

Resources:
EPSS Central

 

The Heat is On: Indian eLearning Companies Slug It Out In Global Markets

Indian companies like Tata Interactive, NIIT are becoming more sophisticated, growing larger front end teams and making acquisitions in their key markets. NIIT bought out Cognitive Arts and now Tata Interactive recently announced its acquisitions of 2 european companies, Tertia Edusoft AG and Tertia Edusoft GmbH.

Local eLearning companies in the US and Europe have been tom-tomming their advantages over Indian companies as being their sensitivity to local cultural issues, proximity to clients and reliability. These differentiators are fast eroding away with every new acquisition made by an Indian company. And to take on this new threat from Indian vendors, we can now expect US and European vendors to set up their own production facilities in India or buy out smaller Indian vendors. Case in point being the recent acquisition of Maximize Learning by US based Techbooks. Other players to have set up shop in India are Element K (in Chennai), Accenture (has Accenture Learning in Bangalore), GE Global (divested by GE in 2004 to General Atlantic Capital Partners & Oak Hill Capital Partners), IBM (has IBM Training Services in Bangalore) and smaller players like Inspired eLearning.

It''ll be interesting to watch and see if tier-II companies like Brainvisa and Hurix (who up until 2004-2005 were clocking about 4-5 Million USD in revenue as compared to the 20-25 Million USD being clocked by Tata and NIIT for the same period. ) will use VC funds to make acquisitions or be bought out by large US/European/South Asian companies.

List of eLearning Companies in India - Out Now!

Click here to download the 2005 Directory.

Marketing Indian eLearning: Crabs In A Bucket

Indian e-Learning companies are booming. Indian e-Learning companies are poaching off each other. Indian e-Learning companies are slugging it out in an ever intensifying competitive scenario. Indian e-Learning companies are currently like crabs in a bucket, pulling each other down instead of banding together and finding solutions to common problems.

Right now, more than ever, there is an acute need to have a common voice, a common body in place that will promote the Indian eLearning companies collectively and fight for mindshare in markets increasingly crowded by companies from Ireland, Scotland, Canada and even SE Asia.

We need to learn some lessons and learn them quickly.

Lets begin by considering Canada. Canadian eLearning companies band together under the umbrella of the Canadian eLearning Enterprise Alliance (CeLEA). According to the website, "CeLEA is an industry-based organization, established in 2003, to help Canadian elearning companies increase their share of revenues from the growing global elearning market place.

As the only organization in Canada focused solely on the commercial elearning sector, we have played a key role in fostering communication between industry, government, and other stakeholders in the elearning industry in Canada and abroad, with the ultimate goal of identifying and communicating business opportunities, and helping Canadian companies successfully compete for those opportunities."

Scotland seems to be have realized the power of collective marketing. eLearningScotland is a portal created to serve the needs of the Scottish eLearning community. While browsing through the forums on this portal, I came across an interesting thread titled, "Marketing Scottish e-Learning". The creator of this thread says that 'she been tasked with a research project to look at the Scottish e-Learning industry in general and more specifically to explore the opportunities that exist to market “Scottish e-Learning” more effectively.'  Her opening  question - ' Is “Scottish e-Learning” a brand we can market in the same way as VisitScotland have marketed tourism in Scotland?'

That is exatly the question we in India should be asking ourselves.

In the same thread, Harold Jarche of Jarche Consulting shares his experience with LearnNB, a body set up to increase the presence of and market e-Learning companies in New Brunswick. According to their website, LearnNB's four main thrust's are, 'collaboration among learning industry enterprises and institutions in New Brunswick; allied export marketing; career growth and networking for regional workplace learning and performance practitioners; and an online community of practice for e-learning professionals, wherever they may be.'

Harold says of New Brunswick companies, "The medium-sized companies (100-400 employees) have a very different focus from the small businesses (1-10 employees). For instance, the larger companies are focused on exporting products and getting large (US-based) contracts. The smaller companies are more service-oriented and many have embraced open source software as a low-cost way of delivering learning services. There is no single vision but the LearnNB brand seems to be getting us some more recognition. I'm not sure if it with translate into revenue, and only time will tell. So my advice is to find a few like-minded people and just go for it. The other option is to remain in analysis-paralysis"

Ireland has Enterprise Ireland, which supports Irish eLearning companies through a variety of ways, including organizing events around the world to display Irish capabilities in this sector. Ireland also has the Learn3K Research Centre (comprising of ICELT & REALT), an education-industry initiative, set up at the National College of Ireland, headed by Prof. Stephen Heppell.

So whether we do it under NASSCOM, or independent of, the idea is "TO DO IT!". If you have any further thoughts, and plans along these lines, please share them with the rest of us. 

CEO Speak: Brainvisa & Hurix Systems

CIOL has of late been doing interviews with the CEO’s of Indian e-Learning companies. The Learned Man! has taken some important questions (from an industry context) from the first couple of these interviews (Brainvisa & Hurix Systems) and juxtaposed the responses of the CEO’s to make it easier for the reader to have a combined perspective.

Q: How big is the E – learning market and what is the share of the Indian players?

Supam Maheshwari (Brainvisa): Globally the E – learning market is about 30 billion dollar, out of which India has a meager share of 150 million dollar.
Subrat Mohantry (Hurix): I can give a wide range; according to my guesstimate it could be anywhere between $200 million to a couple of billions annually, depending on how you define the market.

Q: What are your views on Brand India in the e-learning domain?

Supam Maheshwari (Brainvisa): There is no big difference. The Indian companies are as competitive, creative, innovative and focused as their foreign counterparts. Right now India is shining and would continue to shine, as more and more work would flow in. Now it's a compulsion for the foreign players to come shake hand with us due our competitive and skilled workforce.
Subrat Mohantry (Hurix): Times have changed drastically, when I started off selling the e-learning concept abroad in 1996-97, the companies were a bit vary of our capabilities and unsure about outsourcing their work. The global success of Indian IT services has changed all that, clients across the globe associate positive things with India. We in the e-learning industry have also proven our worth in the international market, and now 'India' tag can be quite favorable during a sales pitch.

Q: What are the compelling reasons for clients to outsource their work to India?

Supam Maheshwari (Brainvisa): In e –learning it is crucial to understand the culture and language of the target group for better designing of the course. Also it is very hard to find dedicated workforce in this field other than India. Though come eastern European countries are picking up the trade techniques but still India remains a strong contender.
Subrat Mohantry (Hurix): There are a couple of factors that can be termed as compelling, namely: quality, cost benefits, etc. Companies also look at India for project development, when a great deal of work needs to be accomplished in a short time frame. Finally, the expertise, India has a proven track record in the e-learning industry and has many highly qualified developers working in this space.

Q: What are the emerging trends in the e-learning space?

Supam Maheshwari (Brainvisa):  Well, flash exhibits and facilitates to built a more focused solutions. Thus it remains the most favored with 95% of the market using it.
Subrat Mohantry (Hurix): Macromedia Flash is the platform of choice for the industry due to its rich user experience. Flash Lite for mobiles is going to open new vistas for learning. Some of the technology that is going to play an important role in the future is multi-role synchronous learning, like gaming or multiplayer interactive simulations. And the next frontier is obviously mobile handheld devices.

Q: What needs to be to promote e-learning in India?

Supam Maheshwari (Brainvisa): It will take its own time in India. Budget needs to be allocated with increased bandwidth to facilitate faster connectivity. Everybody concerned needs to give it a serious thought.
Subrat Mohantry (Hurix): The industry currently lacks visibility, not too much is talked about this market. It is due to the fact that there are not many publicly listed companies or a corporate figurehead, who goes about talking for and about the industry and becomes the spokesperson for the industry. As most of the clients are based overseas and lot of companies spend their advertising money in the foreign market and not in domestic market. Previously getting business was a challenge; now getting the right people is a challenge. I am pushing for an industry forum, a place where members can share concerns and learning. The e-learning companies could have a forum under the NASSCOM (National Association of Software & Service Companies) umbrella.

Q: What are your views on opportunities in domestic market?

Supam Maheshwari (Brainvisa): There is potential but no one is bothered to use it. Someone needs to budget and plan it. There is no governmental initiative in this regard. The basic infrastructure for e- learning is lacking. In Singapore e – learning programme is used to train taxi drivers.
Subrat Mohanty (Hurix): It is a mind-boggling proposition. I get goose bumps when I think what technology can achieve in the Indian market, and it will happen in the years to come. The traditional learning method is not an option, as we do not have that kind of infrastructure, e-learning will democraticize education in India. Millions of people in India who have the right base are waiting for the enabling layer to make them efficient, and that can happen through technology based learning alone. We are in talk with different parties. Personally, I feel India requires someone to own this vision and drive it.

The full interviews in original form can be found here:
With Supam Maheshwari, CEO, Brainvisa
With Subrat Mohanty, CEO, Hurix

New Articles on Indian eLearning

Wow! My RSS Bandit has been burning up today! For the first time ever, I saw two Indian publications put out pieces on eLearning within hours of each other. Check them out:

India: e-Learning's Knight in Shining Armour by CIOL

The e-Learning Boom is Here by CXOtoday.com

Size of Indian eLearning Industry: Custom Content

In the absence of any formal body like NASSCOM the Indian eLearning Industry is virtually devoid of any official figures or statistics. All pointers to the size of this industry are mostly guesstimates. The Learned Man! recently attempted to put together the pieces of this puzzle. Relying upon information provided by friends through this industry an accurate image of the true size of the industry came to light which is represented here through this chart.

And from what these numbers tell, theres a long long way to go...!

This is indeed open to debate and you are most welcome to email me your feedback or views on this analysis. The email address is:

eLearning News: Expansion is the new name of the game

Hot on the news of Techbooks' aquisition of Pune based Maximize Learning come the expansion plans of two Indian vendors, Pune based Brainvisa and Mumbai based Hurix.

*WestBridge to invest US$5.5mn in Brainvisa*

WestBridge Capital Partners on Thursday announced an investment of US$5.5mn in Brainvisa Technologies. This new injection of funds will be used for expansion and M&A activities. With this investment, WestBridge will take a significant stake in Brainvisa and KP Balaraj, Managing Director and Surendra Jain, Venture Director of WestBridge Capital Partners, will join the board of the company. For more details click here.

*Hurix Systems announces ambitious expansion plans*

Hurix Systems, a knowledge-based solutions company, announced on Wednesday its ambitious expansion plans. The company wants to open sales and delivery offices in key business locations within a period of 3-4 years and increase the staff strength from the existing 150 to 400.

At present, the company has a 8000 sq ft head office in Mumbai with staff strength of 110. Its development centre at Chennai has a 4200 sq ft office space and staff of 40.

Viswamitra Hariharan, Chief Operating Officer, Hurix Systems, said, “ We have expanded our global presence to encompass the Asia Pacific markets of Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong as well as North America and Europe. We are also planning to come up with a development centre in US in near future.”  For more details click here.

Corporates train staff through e-learning

"The critical success factors for the (eLearning) players in the future would be adequate capitalisation, referenceable client base, delivery capability and scale" - Ankush Gupta

Check out this article that appeared in the Economic Times, India.

The article can also be viewed here.

Shortage of Instructional Designers Hits Off-Shore Vendors

The booming off-shore eLearning industry in India has a few unique problems of its own to grapple with. An acute shortage of trained Instructional Designers is one. Unlike the United States, there are no institutions offering courses in Instructional Technology or Instructional Design. This usually means a great deal of time and money and effort is spent by companies in bringing their rookie ID talent upto speed. To address this problem, a Pune based custom eLearning solutions provider, Brainvisa is experimenting by partnering one of India's renowned educational institutes, Symbiosis, to offer their students of Mass Communication an optional course in Instructional Design. The students are being encouraged to consider entering this field, apart from their usual choices of advertising, print, broadcast, and journalism. The collaborators hope that this first of its kind initiative will gather momentum and go a long way in addressing the needs of the eLearning industry.