News & Events

'eLearning will witness huge growth'

eLearning is the latest buzzword. The industry has come a long way from a $7 billion industry in 2004 to a $ 27 billion industry today. There are many more budding eLearning companies in the fray striving to make an impact. In an exclusive interview to Sify.com, Rama Kumar, CEO and Chairman of Tarang Software Technologies, speaks about the company's achievements and his dream to make Tarang one of the top three preferred Indian companies specialising in eLearning, by breaking the competition clutter.

eLearning a $ 27 billion industry today. How do you see yourself in this space?

When we forayed into eLearning in 2002, we started off working with eLearning companies in the US for whom we developed the LMS (learning management system) on the web and CD-ROM. Today we are a fast growing global player and undoubtedly one of the top 10 companies in India with absolute domain expertise in the eLearning space.

Tarang specialises in both content services and technology services and has a whole gamut of offerings in the same. Our custom content solutions group specialises in creating highly effective and engaging courseware to support unique corporate learning objectives. Web based training, computer based training, simulations, content translation and localization, Publishing services and content management are the forte of the company. On the technology side, we deliver learning management systems, learning content management systems, authoring tools and portal development.

The Industry verticals that Tarang focuses on are manufacturing, financial services and information technology. We see ourselves well positioned because we are an end-to-end player in this industry, which is on a growth curve.

eLearning is a lot more in focus than your other areas of operation. What percentage of Tarang's turnover comes from eLearning business?

Tarang gets as much as 30 percent of its revenues from eLearning and this is growing! Primarily this is because we are in both Technology and Content services. The markets we address - NorthAmerica and India are both high-growth areas for our services.

We have a top notch team of subject matter experts, instructional designers, flash programmers, graphic designers and project managers. Our clients are Fortune 500 companies and giving us repeat business owing to the superior quality of service we provide.

How did Tarang fare in the last quarter. What's the expected turnover for Q4?

We added three new clients in the last quarter in India and two new clients in North America. We achieved revenue of half a million dollars from our eLearning clients. Custom content development comprised a larger proportion of the revenue followed by technology work.

We are constantly working towards escalating growth and see robust revenues in the quarters to come. For this we have rigorously streamlined our marketing strategies and also trained our resources to keep abreast with latest technologies and skills. Also, we make it a point to adapt ourselves to the changes in the eLearning space in order to provide competent customized solutions.

Your company's focused is on the US education sector and you have been concentrating mainly on developing solutions for the K-12 segment. Will your focus shift when India's eLearning market gains a greater potency?

We have seen a huge demand for eLearning in India. Our client acquisition has been good. We see a gap in the market for good quality work to be delivered to our customers. All segments of the market - IT, BPO, manufacturing , hospitality are good to focus on. We have increased our sales presence in India without any question.

We also see Indian clients asking us for end-to-end solutions. They would like us to provide the LMS and custom content as well. We are excited by the Indian market. We see huge upsides for ourselves here.

Mumbai is considered the eLearning hub in India. Any specific plans to expand your base in Mumbai?

We have a state-of-the art global delivery centre based out of Bangalore and well-trained resources with domain expertise. We are not planning to open a centre in Mumbai currently. Nevertheless this is not a deterrent for us in growing fast because our centre in Bangalore is well-equipped to cater to our customers' needs worldwide. Also, we have our business development team participating in various events and forums organised in the country and abroad to explore lucrative business opportunities.

Wipro, Satyam, Accenture, Convergys, ING Vysya Bank and others have taken a huge lead in this industry. What are your strategies to counter the stiff competition?

The market is big enough for all of us. We see greater challenges in being able to make clients differentiate between good and poor quality work. You can build courseware for $ 4000 per hour as well as $ 10,000 per hour. The key is to deliver outstanding instructional design in the courseware and make a difference to the workforce being trained.

eLearning can make a difference to the customers business. It can produce better trained work force. That will result in increased productivity and happier end-customers. Tarang's goal is to be able to help our customers achieve this.

Partners and collaborators have a strong role to play in this business. Your take on their ability to influence change.?

Tarang has a few partners in eLearning. They bring in products, which we offer as part of a total package to our clients. We work as technology partners to some North American clients' tool. This industry is all about collaboration. The eventual goal is to meet and exceed customer expectations.

Can you explain more about your finance verticals? (banks, brokerages, insurance companies) How do you plan to move ahead in this arena?

We will continue to provide robust, defensible, low-risk, eLearning environment where a bank, insurance or any other financial corporate company can train its employees at a quick pace and in a cost effective manner. This will simultaneously minimise the costs of training in the organisation.

At Tarang, we continuously innovate to develop solutions and services catering to fraud and risk management, regulatory compliance, process improvements and outsourcing, multi-channel transformation and customer service.

What's your current market penetration in the Indian market and overseas market?

We have a strong global customer base that includes Fortune 500 companies. Some of our esteemed clients in the eLearning space include Volvo (N. America, Sweden and India), RWD, GLS, Riverdeep and The Wired School House. Also, we have ventured into the domestic market rigorously and have customers like Wipro, Infosys, EDS Mphasis and TVS Motors to add to our credit.

In the Payments domain, companies like Verisign, Payment Data Systems, Electracash, Card Services International, and Cybersource have associated themselves with Tarang to derive maximum business benefits.

Are all your eLearning courses in Macromedia Flash? What are the other technologies you are eyeing at?

Primarily, our coursewares are all in Macromedia Flash but we are also eyeing at Rapid eLearning Tools like Captivate, Breeze and Microsoft Producer. Our resources are extremely skilled and can work in Java, .Net, PHP, HTML, XML, JavaScript and Adobe Flex. Our graphic designers with fine arts background have the expertise to develop complex interfaces, characters and animations (both 2D and 3D) and are capable of providing competitive artwork and rich multimedia effects.

The Subject Matter Experts and Instructional Designers effectively convert information into instruction, which is a challenge for all self-paced coursewares.

Your goal was to make Tarang a US$100 million company in the first four years of operations...

Revenue growth may not have met expectations. However, we have met our goals in terms of domain specialisation and clients. We have developed off-the-shelf solutions in these segments. Seventy-five percent of our business is repeat business and that's evidence of the fact that clients are delighted with our services.

We have been slow to take off but are confident of the next 4 years when growth is expected to spiral. Some solid traction is happening in our sales and marketing activities, and we are increasingly being engaged by global clients to provide valued added solutions. Also, we are exploring the partnership model, where we and our partners share a symbiotic relationship and derive maximum benefit from each others expertise. We are all set to jump into the next orbit of growth, and we look forward to challenging and fulfilling years ahead.

What's your vision for Tarang?

To be among the top three preferred Indian companies specialising in eLearning and Payments services by the end of this year. We aim to snag some marquee clients in both eLearning and Payments to grow faster. In addition, there will be inorganic growth through acquisitions in eLearning. Also, new offerings in both domains such as EMV certification, mobile payments on new devices like Blackberry and leveraging content delivery through new channels like iPod are on the anvil.