Mr Ninad Karpe is a man on a mission.

Ever since he joined Aptech as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer he has been focused on expanding the international bouquet of business especially from untapped markets of China, Vietnam, the Philippines and countries in Africa and Latin America.

Now, his plan is to drive retail overseas revenues to 50 per cent in three years time from 33 per cent currently.

“In many international markets, we see a similar aspiration level among students to avail of training that has not been covered by the traditional models of education. As a company, we believe we are well-positioned to ride on this wave,” said Mr Karpe.

As part of this strategy, the company has revamped its corporate brand identity and consolidated all its educational initiatives under the Aptech umbrella. For instance, Avalon Academy (which focuses on hospitality and travel/tourism related training) has now been rechristened Aptech Aviation and Hospitality Academy.

Similarly, NPower — Aptech's hardware and networking training business — has become Aptech Hardware and Education Academy.

Business Line spoke to Mr Karpe on the sidelines of a media conference in Rajasthan for more insights on the company's plans going forward. Excerpts.

A majority of the students working in animation companies in India have learned the trade at Aptech. Is there not a temptation to get into the actual business of rendering third-party animation services?

We have always stayed away from such temptations. Education as a business is very different from running an IT shop or managing an animation studio. We do not understand those businesses and hence we prefer to stick to what we know the best.

You may recollect that we acquired Maya Academy of Advanced Cinematics (MAAC) in 2010 in order to strengthen our animation training business. However, we acquired only one of the two businesses that the company specialised in. Our idea is to provide career training options, especially in areas where formal education has failed.

Would you be raising external capital in order to fund your international drive?

We recently received Rs 33 crore as dividend for the 22 per cent stake that we hold in China-based Beijing Aptech Beida Jade Bird Information Technology. We are a zero debt company with surplus cash on our balance sheet. Since our overseas expansion will happen through franchisees, we believe we have an asset-light model that can take care of our international expansion programmes. Overseas investments tend to be high only when you do a joint venture.

Apart from the investment in the China venture, could you give us an update on the joint ventures in Brazil (Aptech Brasil) and Philippines (Aptech Philippines …Will the company be taking the JV route even in future?

Our JVs in Brazil and the Philippines are doing well. While the Brazil operations would break-even later this year, we expect the one in Philippines to start generating profits in fiscal 2013. However, the JV route is not a preferred route for us. We will go for it only if there are regulatory requirements in a country with a large population base.

What would be the tangible benefits of the re-branding exercise?

This new branding aggregates all our other brands into the Aptech mother brand, thereby giving us what is called ‘the power of one'. Our channel partners will benefit as the mother brand grows stronger than the individual brands. All the back-end functions, such as academic support, content, examination, placement, etc, will get consolidated and hence we will also be able to drive better cost synergies.

(This correspondent's trip to Rajasthan was sponsored by Aptech)

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