Veta to challenge Singlish

Veta has set up its own centre in Bangalore.

Veta, a spoken English training academy, is set to offer its spoken English course in Singapore soon. The city state is known for its own brand of English called Singlish which has an influence of Malay, Chinese and Tamil.

The 28-year-old firm, which claims to be the only ISO-certified firm that is into English-speaking coaching, plans to use Singapore as the gateway to South East Asia. Over time, the firm also hopes to be able to use the Singapore foray as means to enter Europe and other developed countries.

"Veta has so far received franchisee enquiries from Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia," said K V Rajan, Executive Director, Veta.

The firm trains doctors going to the UK in spoken English in Bangalore. It offers corporate training and BPO majors like Genpact have training arrangements with Veta for its employees. These include training their employees to have a neutral accent.

Veta had secured $10 million funding from Saif Partners, a private equity firm based out of Mauritius. Saif Partners has investments in 14 firms, including NSE, Sify, IL&FS Investsmart, Intelligroup, makemytrip.com, HomeShop18, JustDial and SlashSupport, among others.

Veta has set up its own centre in Bangalore, its biggest market, with all training facilities. It has 175 centres run by franchisees across the country. It hopes to have 500 centres by 2010.