Aptech aims at 25% topline growth

Revenues from the domestic market have dwindled for the company during calendar years 2001 and 2002 and have slightly increased during 2003. The company is in the process of finalising the full year numbers for the last financial year ended December 2003.

"We are expecting to post over 25 per cent revenue growth and expect to maintain a similar growth for the current year too," Pramod Khera, CEO and managing director of Aptech, told Business Standard.

In 2002, the company earned Rs 280 crore revenues, of which 70 per cent came from the domestic market, 20 per cent from the international market and 10 per cent from institutional clients.

During 2003, the contribution of domestic market to its revenues came down to 55 per cent while that of international markets and institutional customers rose to 30 per cent and 15 per cent respectively.

"We are planning to commence initial courses from our university that was set up in Chhattisgarh during the ensuing academic year that begins in July," Khera said.

Aptech has set up the university in October 2003 to offer academic programmes related to technology, management and media studies.

The company plans to spend about Rs 25 crore on the university in the next three to five years.

"We are looking at few acquisitions in the non-IT education sector that have excellent content delivery capability," Khera said, adding, "The acquisitions will primarily be in the management and other technology areas."

The acquisition by SSI, the Aptech-SSI combine has a network of 3,208 centres with operations in 52 countries. It is now looking at expanding its international presence to some other Latin American countries including Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and CIS countries like Russia and its neighbouring countries.

The company plans to open about 40 centers abroad in the current calendar year.

The company is also planning to expand the employee strength at its offshore development centre set up in Chennai in January to 150.

The centre employs about 30 people at the moment and caters to e-Learning content development for international clients.

The company plans to spend about Rs 10 crore on the centre in the next two years.

The integration with SSI's training business had resulted in significant cost efficiencies for the company, Khera said.

SSI provided us the opportunity to offer short-term, high-end technology programmes in Oracle, Java, Linux and networking which find greater demand in cities and urban areas, he added.