The company plans to tap the Asian markets through its partnership with AEC. Interactive training currently accounts for about 50 per cent of Zenith's business, but Dr Bijlani expects this to touch 90 per cent in the next three years. In an interview with Priya Srinivasan of the eFE, Dr Bijlani, who is also a former president of the Institute of Management Consultants of India, outlines his plans for e-training as well as his views on the e-learning scenario in India, as well as worldwide. Excerpts: Could you briefly outline Zenith's area of business and also how you have adapted training for the Internet?

As a consulting firm, our area of focus for several years now has been executive training. I was heading a Planning Commission study on management consulting, in the course of which I found that management training was a huge growth area. Training has been our specific focus for the last six years or so. We have worked with over 200 clients, among whom are names like Citibank, Hong Kong Bank, ICICI, Siemens, Murugappa Group, TCS, Tata Finance and Usha Martin. We first work with the company at the strategic level, understand their goals, in terms of turnover targets, growth targets and then go about identifying means of achieving that incremental growth by identifying key people for the task, and then training them. We use various tools for this training. The tools range from `Personal Productivity Analysis' to `Goal Planning Systems' and `Affirmation Visualisation'. The media we have used traditionally range from tapes to audio visual material, manuals and group interactions. Today only about 50 per cent ofour business is done through traditional media, the rest utilises the Internet.

Online training and education is being touted as the next big wave and is poised for major growth as per International studies, why do you think this is happening?
Two basic things are responsible for this trend, there has been a rapidly growing need for training, coupled with the fact that the demand is now for faster and better quality training due to globalisation. Training was getting expensive and the speed was not keeping pace with the demand. Internet technology came along and has enabled fast and inexpensive training programs. Multimedia means that you encompass the audio visual as well as print elements in the training capsule. Besides, you can also access the capsules anywhere and at any time.

To what extent has the Internet made training more cost effective and how?International studies have shown that the combined average cost of training per executive is about $300 per hour, when training is conducted in the traditional way, whereas Interactive training costs can be as low as $3 per hour. The Internet saves you classroom costs, travel costs, instructor fees, and not to forget, the man-hours spent by executives in the process of training. Moreover online costs keep decreasing with the multiplicity of usage. Development costs can also be amortised over a number of users.

How has your own revenue model changed since the advent of the online business?
Earlier we used to sell the training modules for a fixed price, today we undertake development work for our overseas partners, wherein we charge a fixed cost plus royalty. We also develop the Asian versions for some of the training programs and in some cases retail the CD-ROMs, alternately we also license the capsules to companies and also offer custom built solutions for a price.

What is your observation on the various online training and learning ventures that are currently coming up in India?
These companies can bring tremendous value addition, but the real challenge is quality. Instructional Design as a concept for instance doesn't even exist in India and it is critical for any online training or learning endeavour. These are not merely electronic books, you need a skill set, which combines design and creative capabilities with instruction capabilities. It would be tough for a bunch of youngsters with venture capital to succeed in this arena.

What are your own plans for a retail initiative, where you would be able to follow a pay per user model?
We are in the process of creating our own portal Train2Success. We plan to focus on the executive training market and incorporate soft skills like presentation and sales techniques as well. We do not plan to get into the education market which concerns schools and colleges per se. At some point we might consider tapping the MBA market, but that's about as far as we would go in the education market. We plan to focus on training and believe that India has an edge when it comes to the online training and education market, with potential not only in Western markets, but all over Asia as well.