E-learning fundamentally involves dissemination of learning through a variety of multimedia platforms. Driven by the need for constant upgrading of skills coupled with remarkable growth of communication technology, E-learning is rapidly gaining momentum worldwide to evolve into an industry.

Almost any vertical that is training-intensive ranging from Banking, Healthcare, Airlines, IT or Education has tremendous scope for incorporating e-learning for their employees, customers, dealers or their core business. The primary customers of E-learning are the corporate and the Education segments. Corporates use e-learning to impart training courses through the company network while universities, educational institutions and publishers use e-learning for providing planned teaching and learning through various multimedia technologies.

Despite being nascent, the E-learning industry has evolved to provide a range of services including educational consultancy, training needs analysis, content customization, content creation, knowledge portals, E-briefing, Training partnerships, and monitoring. The exhibit below provides a detailed description of services involved in E-learning:

Offshoring of E-learning content to India began around 2000. Today the industry has over 100 vendors, with several companies employing more than 400 people - Lionbridge, Tata Interactive, Aptara, Brainvisa, Magicsoftware, Emantras, MagnaIT, Sify E-learning, NIIT to name a few. Several vendors have matured and are capable of providing end-to-end services in the e-learning value chain.

The education market is a huge segment with global educational publishing alone at approximately $20 b currently. However the skills required for providing end-to-end services to the education segment are more complex and require a greater degree of cultural understanding. The offshore services in this segment are yet to move higher up the chain. While there are instances of content customization in the education segment, contracts involving original content development are fewer and far in between.

Corporate training is also an enormous market expected to cross $19 b by 2009, according to Simba information. The corporate segment is quick at catching technology trends, some of the recent ones include: gaming or interactive simulations and handset based training. Moreover, e-learning tends to be very cost-effective to the corporates, looking to continuously train or retrain employees/customers across geographies.

Of the two segments in the e-learning outsourcing industry, corporate e-learning will see more growth going forward. Almost 70% of the Indian vendors cater to the corporate training market compared to about 47% servicing the Education market. While the capabilities to service the education segment will continue to evolve for Indian vendors, there is enough to chew in the growing corporate training pie.