24X7 Learning targets Rs 24cr revenues next fiscal

Strongly driven by its employment enhancement programme, SkillBridge, besides its growing virtual corporate campus business, Bangalore-based e-learning implementation company, 24X7 Learning Solutions Private Limited, expects to garner close to $6 million (around Rs 24 crore) revenues during the next financial year.

"Not every Indian graduate speaks English well enough to work for multinationals or for the Indian vendors that serve them. Nearly 3.5 million English speaking students graduate every year, of which only 10 per cent are employable. The rest are our country cousins from tier-II and tier-III cities. Our idea is to fuel the number of students from the hinterlands to get into the corporate world through SkillBridge," Karthik KS, chief executive officer, 24X7 Learning, told Business Standard.

SkillBridge, which was designed to help students acquire the latest IT and behavioural skills that are critical for successful recruitment but are not effectively integrated in the formal college syllabi, was launched last year on a pilot basis through a blend of e-learning and classroom training in 20 colleges across the country, including IIT-Roorkee in Uttarakhand and SNDT-Mumbai.

"Our objective is to reach out to at least 100 colleges in the next two years. Talks are on with a couple of state governments and we expect to bag contracts through tender process in the next one to one-and-a-half year," Karthik said.

Stating that the company's corporate e-learning initiative had witnessed a 60 per cent growth last year, he said they expected this business to grow 80 per cent this year.

"This, coupled with our employment enhancement programme, is expected to drive our revenues to touch $3 million (Rs 12 crore) this fiscal, and eventually reach $5-6 million next year," he said.

Through its corporate e-learning initiative and virtual corporate campus programme, 24X7 Learning has so far trained around 7.5 lakh employees. It currently has 150-odd corporate clients and over 30 virtual campuses.

As part of its committed investment of $10 million in the next two years, the company had, in October 2007, received $4 million (Rs 16 crore) in a second round of funding from Capital 18 of the Network 18 group.

"These funds would be spend on expanding our manpower from the existing 75 to 90 within two months, besides creating additional infrastructure and office network for the same," Karthik said.

The company has implementation network with office in Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune and Kolkata.