Aptech, which has over 1,400 centres in 28 countries expects to get more than 2 million page views per month by the end of this year on this portal, announced its executive director Pramod Kera. The on-line learning market worldwide is expected to exceed $10 billion by 2002, he added.

Kera said that his company had worked on this portal for over six months and so far spent Rs 8 crore. Additional investment of around Rs 20 crore will be made this year especially on the marketing of this portal, he added.

Aptech On-line head R Krishnan said that it planned to host the portal and the virtual campus on multiple servers to serve the needs of the world-wide audience. According to him, students and corporates will be able to access a variety of courses in IT, management, personality development and other areas.

Kera said that the students can register on line and pay the fees through DD or at the Aptech training centres till payments on Internet becomes a regular feature. For certification, Aptech plans to tie up with testing agencies. In a related development, global IT solutions company, NIIT, has formed an alliance with Australian telecom company, Telstra, to offer total service provisioning comprising a broad range of value added application and communication services.