The latest centre Arena Centre, which is the fifth in Chennai, was opened here on Friday and is to be operated by franchisee Kothari Software Private Limited. Arena Multimedia contributed to 15 per cent of Aptech's total income. However Aptech's Computer Education continues to bring the major chunk as it was started many years ago. The company has a market share of 35 per cent in the education segment as per July 1998 figures.

Arena Multimedia has also tied up with Southern Cross University of Australia to offer a bachelor's degree on multimedia. In this, a student can take Arena course for two years or four semesters and complete the thirdyear in Australia. Or he could have a choice of doing the third year with Aptech (which has a different curricula) and get a post graduate diploma degree for Rs 55,000. If he opts to go to Australia for the bachelor's degree, the final year tutelage would cost around 16,000 Australian dollars.

According to Ramesh, Arena Multimedia has tied up with Macromedia Inc (US) and Adobe Systems Pte Singapore, to get the latest technology on multimedia. By the time these technologies are launched in the country, Aptech finishes training some batches to take on the technology, he said. The courses teach effective usage of multimedia technologies such as computer graphics, animation, imaging, digitising, scanning, 3D modelling and rendering visualisations for creating interactive multimedia applications.

Aptech has also got another division called Asset International which conducts courses for computer professionals on advanced internet technologies, networking, client server and e-commerce.