"NIIT has already taken up strengthening of top management by reallocation of responsibilities aiming at the new policy of market thrust," Rajendran said here, after announcing NIIT's partnerrship with Microsoft India to provide training on its latest software - MS Office 2000.

The company has appointed Jim Gionfriddo, an American, as the COO of the wholly-owned American subsidiary, NIIT (USA) Inc, to give local image to the company, he said, adding local image was considered necessary to provide added impetus to its expansion plans.

Till recently, marketing activity in Europe was very slow, but in consonance with the latest policy, the company had deputed one of its directors, Gopal Chakravarthy to Europe with a definite mandate to expand marketfor its training programmes, as well as training software, he added.

NIIT was on an expansion drive in India too, Rajendran said adding that an accredited IT personality Srikant Inamdar, from Motorola, has joined the company's team in India.

His experience as the head of Motorola's Bangalore-based development centre, which was the first institution in India to acquire software level-5 certification, was expected to come to the company's help in pursuing its plans, he said.

"NIIT will add at least 100 new institutes during the calendar year to its existing network of over 750 institutes in the country," Rajendran added.

Besides, the company would be assuming greater role in providing training to government employees in the states in which government's have taken initiatives to develop IT networks, he said.

Earlier, he said NIIT, which has over 50 training institutes in about 20 countries outside India, had launched training programmes for MS Office 2000 software in 18 countries 10 days in advance ofits formal launch on June 7.

The company was marketing 17 computer-based training titles developed by it for the new software from Microsoft, he said.