TutorVista firms up India plans

BANGALORE: A few months after raising its second round of funding worth $10.75 million (about Rs 48 crore), the Bangalore-based online tutorial firm TutorVista has charted out plans to enter the Indian market as part of its expansion plans. It also plans to foray into the Australian and Canadian markets.

The company is expected to invest about $6 million in various expansion initiatives this year. K Ganesh, CEO, TutorVista told ET, “We are going to offer a series of programmes under the banner Smarthealth. These are basically tutorials in subjects like maths, English and science for students between 6th to 10th standards.”

The company, which is going to launch the programme next month, is looking to reach out to 10,000 students by end of March 2008. TutorVista, which has made inroads in the US and UK markets, charges $100 and £50 per month for online tutorials in the two countries. The price will come down to Rs 499-999 in India.

TutorVista is also looking at multi-platform launches. It is currently in talks with cyber cafe chains like Reliance World and Sify for this programme. India has several regional players like Brilliant Tutorials, TIME, Agarwal Classes in the supplementary education field. However, they are not involved in online tutorials as of now. The rest of supplementary education is supported by neighbourhood teachers.