12 - Sure And Steady...

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color="#FFFFFF" SIZE="2">MD: GANESH NATARAJAN

This year Mumbai-based Aptech Ltd
must take some fairly important decisions for the future. One, what will be the future
character of its instruction-led training paradigm-one that it has used for the last 13
years of its existence? Two, what will be the full magnitude of its globalization
plans-where will it culminate in the future? And three, will it or will it not be
perceived as a function of the will and vision of a single man-its charismatic CEO Ganesh
Natarjan.

In the last 13 years, Aptech has been on a
roll. Thousands of youngsters, with dreams of making their careers in the area of IT, have
helped push Aptech into a growth orbit. From scratch, the company toted up revenues of Rs
304 crore last fiscal and became the first Indian IT training company to cross the
thousand mark in centers in 10 countries worldwide. Besides the career computer courses,
Aptech entered into a tie-up with Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) to offer
the latter's Bachelor of Computer Applications degree program through its premier centers
in India and abroad. With this Aptech now has relationships with four universities in the
world, the other three being with the Open University of Canada, British Columbia, Pace
University of New York, and the University of Northumbria, UK. Last year, Aptech also
entered the US training market by opening a center at Princeton, New Jersey, and the
African market with a center at Mombasa, Kenya.

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align="right">Two other divisions of Aptech, Asset and Arena, also expanded their
businesses in the areas of professional and multimedia training respectively, while the
consulting division made significant progress contributing close to 10 percent of Aptech's
overall revenue. The newly-created enterprise solutions division entered the ERP arena
through a tie-up with Baan, while the software products division continued with the RDBMS
products from Oracle, Informix, and Sybase and other client server products like
PowerBuilder, SCO Unix, and NetWare. This division contributed Rs 24 crore to the turnover
in the first year of operations itself, and is expected to be a high-growth area in the
coming year. But overall, much of the focus last year was on the consulting division,
which was strengthened considerably.

The high point for the company came when
its multimedia projects division delivered the AGM of Reliance Industries over the
Internet live-a first for any public company in India. This was followed by live Internet
coverage of Femina Miss India Contest, the Filmfare Awards and the ZEE Cine Awards.

In education the focus last year was on
retraining and on continuity of its differentiation initiative. Launched over two years
ago the differentiation technique looks at specialization within the IT training industry,
which could be growth areas for its students. In the last year the specific areas of
differentiation which Aptech focused on were networking, the Internet, and multimedia.

Retraining or certification programs
formed much of the company's expansion plans over the year. Aptech, too, got onto the
Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) bandwagon. This, alongwith other certification
programs like the Novell Certified Engineer and ERP training, form the backbone of the
retraining program which has emerged as a core focus areas for the training industry. For
Aptech this is where the high growth is going to come from in the coming years.

The company is also becoming increasingly
aggressive and ambitious on the export front. Previously limited to the Southeast region,
the company plans to open more centers in the US and other parts of the world, especially
the developed world, following the success of its New Jersey center. Aptech intends to
have at least 40 more centers across different parts of the globe by the end of the year.
Interestingly, Aptech is still not taking the Internet route while tapping the
international market. The company sees the Internet as an inherent part of its training
program but believes that 'only Internet'-based training will not be that successful.

Last year Aptech also created the
multimodal educational delivery architecture, which makes use of the multiple formats of
Internet, CBT, video, CD ROM etc. for delivering education. This year, it is likely that
Aptech will invest considerably in the creation of the multimodal infrastructure so that
delivery methodologies become more streamlined. As the first cut objective, Aptech is in
the process of creating a virtual classroom by using technologies to facilitate delivery,
interaction, and evaluation of the course content.

One problem the company must resolve this
year is that of succession planning. Unlike many other companies in the Top 20 club,
Aptech is very closely associated with its CEO Natarajan. While src="aptech3.jpg" width="300" height="119" alt="aptech3.jpg (17659 bytes)" border="0"
hspace="4" vspace="2" align="right">this has
enabled the company to set up a scorching growth pace, this might also become a key
limitation in regard to future growth. Even some of the financial analysts that DQ spoke
to in the course of the Top 20 survey indicated a similar apprehension. With the company's
global expansion, it might become imperative for Aptech to at least initiate a plan that
will incorporate this crucial aspect of leadership. The flip side to this, of course, is
that announcement of a successor might lower the morale of the second-tier team that
exists today. The real question is how long can Aptech afford to ignore this critical
issue.