This is because in the coming years sourcing talent for software business would be a tough task. NIIT has the advantage in this task because of its vast network of educational institutes in 26 countries. We can even alter the course curricula to suit our requirements. Especially because of the recent clearance of two lakh H1B visas by the US administration and the requirement of big pool of good talents.

What is the uniqueness of the NIIT business model?We call it sustainable, strong, steady and safe model. NIIT is spread over 26 countries, both in developed, developing and under developed countries. NIIT is the number one Indian company in terms of geographical spread. In some countries we are both in software as well as education, in some regions we are only in software and elsewhere only in education. However, this spread will well place us ahead of any other Indian company in the days to come.

Why do you describe the model as sustainable? Is it on the basis of the geography or over the product mix?It is said based on five factors. Range of geographical spread, range of IT services offered by the company, underlying synergy, in-house resource generation and rapid changeability of the company.

Q. How would the change of revenue pattern support this model?A: Geographical mix of revenue is poised to change in the next four years with two-third of the total revenue coming from US and Europe against two-fifth today. The second part is the change in product mix with portfolio assessment de-emphasising low growth, low profit product lines. In fact this again would work in favour of the company as it would move from low growth, low profit products to high growth, high profit at a time when other companies would be moving in the reverse direction. Third aspect would be new products in software and learning.

Q: Has the NIIT's greater focus in the South East Asian markets over the US markets in the early phase has been proved to be not well intended?A: The US markets required more attention as the volume of business comes from that part of the globe. This year, the US has contributed 48 per cent of the global revenue with the strongest growth of 55 per cent at Rs 320 crore.

Q: NIIT has been delaying overseas acquisition because the global markets were overheated with high valuation of technology stocks?A: Just because we announced a plan for acquisition, we need not acquire a company at any cost. We have to look at the market conditions too. The markets have come to a reasonable levels in the recent days. Now we would look at the option of acquiring. But in the meantime, we have gone for picking up strategic stake in four companies. In fact, many companies like Infosys and Saytam have followed this model of picking up limited strategic stake in synergic companies. This will work good.