It seems that the Chinese consider that Indian software education model is most appropriate for them besides success stories of Indian firms in global outsourcing field that encourages them. There’s enough here to substantiate this.

We have NIIT and Aptech on our agenda for you today. These global IT learning solutions corporations are pioneers in the field of IT education and training.

NIIT was founded in December 1981 while Aptech commenced its business in 1986 , in India, and have since become the attraction for Indians looking for careers in the IT sector. But a replica seems to be in for China for the last few years.

China has over the years become a very important market for NIIT and Aptech. One of their officals had said “Since our business in China is contributing 35-40% to our revenues, for us it’s a very important market. If one ignores China, he has to pay a heavy price.”  The IT education retail market in China is expected to grow between 17-19% annually by 2010!

Since year 2000, Aptech has been operating successfully in China through its joint venture - Aptech Beida Jadebird IT Co. Ltd, an affiliate of Beijing University in China, it has over 250 centers in 57 cities and trained around 4 lac students in all.

Aptech Press Release 2007, “According to the report, Aptech’s share in the Chinese IT training market has jumped to 32.1% in year 2006 from 27.3% in 2005. The market share of Beijing Aptech Beida Jadebird Information Technology is almost 1/3 of the total training market.’’
 
Says Mr. Pramod Khera, CEO & Managing Director, Aptech Ltd. ‘The key to Aptech’s outstanding performance in China is standardization - of all Systems, Quality of Training & Curriculum, which has been appreciated by the students & the industry alike. Additionally, co-operation with colleges, technical schools & other social institutions has helped to improve our market share.’”

NIIT in China has established also very strong foundation and it engages in the Chinese market in a variety of dimensions. IT strengthened its position in China by introducing a gaming curriculum, and partnered with Sun Microsystems to train students on Java technologies, focused on building collaborations with both Indian and MNC IT companies operating in China and thereby expanded its network there to offer training at more than numerous locations across twenty-four provinces.

Today NIIT has about 165 training centers in China and now it wants to expand further. There are plans to set up another 85 of them within 3 years totaling them to 250! It has 7.6% market share in China.

Mr Thadani,CEO, NIIT,  : ‘As the first Indian IT company to venture into China, NIIT has a deep understanding of the Chinese market. Leading Asian economies, India and China can come together and use their strengths innovatively in the area of developing talent for the global knowledge economy’.

But why they choose China:

This was reported in a leading daily: “We (NIIT) found that Chinese programmers were very talented, very hard-working and highly disciplined, and that the cost of doing software projects in China would be lower than in India however, many Chinese IT professionals, though possessing excellent mathematics, engineering and science background and blessed with impressive logic orientation, often lack proper training in software development. Most of them also lack experience of working in large software projects and hardly have any knowledge about project management. Therefore, we had come up with the idea that we should first take our education programs to China to train people before starting our software projects there”.

 Some observations relevant here:

1. In China the government is a good factor. can’t imagine a collaboration with government-owned universities in India in this manner.

One of the Officials from Aptech in China once said “ The Chinese government enables you and enhance your presence; they are not a hindrance.” But the important thing is this. “They begin by asking whether it will help China as a country. Will it help meet with objectives? Is it in their interest?” And then they work from there.

2. These institutions are not just running IT-training classes through franchisees but also re-designing curriculum for several universities

Lots of business lessons there to learn for India.

3. University degree in China only equips students with theoretical knowledge, not suited to the practical needs of companies. NIIT and Aptech has had their sucesses in China from this mantra like in India: Theory + Practical application.

Also though India is doing great in China, but wonder if Indians are preparing the Chinese to be ahead of the IT race. Or is it a question of when?
 
 

This entry was posted on Friday, September 21st, 2007 at 5:53 pm and is filed under setting up in China, Business, Investment, Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.