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Archana Venkat

Chennai, Dec. 14 New Horizons India Ltd, an independent training and content development company, plans to invest about $1 million (about Rs 4 crore) over the next six months to set up a content development centre at Chennai.

This would focus on developing content on the lines of instructional design, 2D/3D animation, aesthetics design and technical books that can be used by corporates to educate their employees and customers.

The company currently has a 15,000 sq ft centre at Noida employing about 300 people. The Chennai centre is expected to be larger and employ 300 people initially, according to Mr Ajay Kumar Sharma, Managing Director, New Horizons India.

Mr Sharma told Business Line that the company had plans to have a 3,000-strong employee base between Chennai and Noida in the next two years.

New Horizons India currently has orders worth $3 million (about Rs 12 crore) — all for overseas clients — and plans to create and release content in Indian languages in future.

“We expect order size of about $15 million (about Rs 60 crore) in two years,” Mr Sharma said.

New Horizons India will hold the intellectual property rights (IPR) for all the content it develops. The company is yet to evaluate the worth of the content it has so far created and is likely to do so in future, he said. It holds the IPR for 21 technical book titles, all of which are soon going to be exported for use in the US. This export market is valued at $30-40 million (about Rs 160 crore) and New Horizons India plans to write and own IPR for 1,200 books in the next few years.

The company has been doubling revenues since its inception five years ago and expects to touch the Rs 100-crore mark in next March. It expects to continue doubling its revenues year-on-year for the next 3-4 years as the Indian education market, valued at about Rs 5 lakh crore, is under tapped.

New Horizons India is a joint venture (5:95) between US-based New Horizons and New Delhi-based Shriram Group, who is the main promoter of the company.

Mr Sharma and a few private equity companies also hold some stake in the company. The company also operates about 40 training centres across India with 2,000 employees.

More Stories on : IT Training | Human Resources

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