NIIT Group acquires Element K for 40 million dollars

New Delhi, July 27 : The NIIT Group today said it had acquired North America's Element K, a learning solutions provider, for a total cost of 40 million dollars, thereby stepping up its presence in the developed economies of the West.

''NIIT has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Element K for 40 million dollars, a respected brand in North America's learning industry, which will benefit from NIIT's global presence and complementary learning services,'' NIIT CEO Vijay Thadani told reporters here.

''This acquisition is consistent with our stated plans for accelerated growth in developed economies,'' he added.

Element K's 80 million dollar learning solutions business leverages its renowned technology Knowledge Hub, and an award-winning suite of more that 3,500 courses.

Together, NIIT and Element K will emerge as the leading global provider of comprehensive learning solutions, with more than 3,000 employees, over 250 million dollars in revenue and a presence in 32 countries.

The unique and combined offerings strongly position NIIT and Element K to emerge as the leader in the Learning BPO marketplace, Mr Thadani said.

NIIT is also going to foray into three new areas in the rapidly emerging services sector.

''At first, we are going to set up the Institute for Finance, Banking and Insurance (IFBI) to prepare professionals, both at the entry level as well as inservice training for experienced professionals for the fast growing BFSI industry,'' NIIT Chairman Rajendra S Pawar said. Thereby NIIT Imperia, the Centre for Advanced Learning, will be the second initiative to offer advanced training programmes in executive management and technology education, in association with prestigious institutions using sychronous learning technology, he said. The third initiative will be NIIT Litmnus, which will offer assessment and testing services for recruitment and proficiency testing initially focussing on the BPO and IT space.

Meanwhile, NIIT also announced its net profit at Rs 13.2 crore for the first quarter of FY2007, ended June 30, which led to the earning per share (EPS) of Rs 6.8.

On the back of strong enrolment growth in the GNIIT and Engineers' programmes, NIIT's individual learning business posted 33 per cent year on year (YoY) revenue growth in Q1 of FY2007, while the corporate business accelerated 17 per cent YoY. The enrolements for GNIIT went up 156 per cent while for AAE (Advanced programme for Engineers) went up 122 per cent, during the first financial quarter.

Based on the Q1 performance, the institute is expecting higher revenue growth than the last fiscal, coupled with improved profitability.

Quoting an annual survey, Mr Pawar said NIIT significantly strengthened its position in the Rs 1,453 crore Indian IT training sector. ''During FY2005-06 our revenues made it 3.72 times the size of nearest competitor, as against 3.4 times in FY2004-05,'' he told UNI.

NIIT is also coming up with six specialised centres at major cities, which would be tele-connected with the faculties of IIM Indore and IIM Kolkata.

UNI