'Content is a $1-bn opportunity'
Mark Miller, CEO of New Horizons — world’s largest independent IT training company — hopes to leverage India’s intellectual capital to further his firm’s global growth agenda.
By Shreya Biswas, TNN |
Mark Miller, CEO of New Horizons — world’s largest independent IT training company — hopes to leverage India’s intellectual capital to further his firm’s global growth agenda.
On this, he says, will help the company change gear and move into an exponential growth trajectory. On his recent visit to explore future investment options, he gave Shreya Biswas a lowdown on the Indian subsidiary’s entry into the global content business and how it could open up new career opportunities.
On this, he says, will help the company change gear and move into an exponential growth trajectory. On his recent visit to explore future investment options, he gave Shreya Biswas a lowdown on the Indian subsidiary’s entry into the global content business and how it could open up new career opportunities.
What will be your strategy in India, going forward?
For the last five years, since it entered India, New Horizons India (NHI) has been largely focusing on the corporate training space, which is emerging as a growth area in the IT training. In fact, corporate training is the company’s core strength and contributes 80% to our global revenues.
In India, we have also established a strong presence in the e-governance space over the last one year and we will consolidate our position in that area in the short term. In addition, our focus will be to expand our footprint to the retail training segment and add several new areas to our portfolio, including soft skill training. Content development remains within our growth plans in India that will see fastest momentum.
Considering your foray in the content business, what kind of offerings could one expect, in terms of services as well?
New Horizons’ network world-wide consumes content worth over $40 million annually. In addition, we have a flood of enquiries from our Fortune 100 clients for customised content for their internal usage. We believe this to be a $1-billion opportunity. NHI is ideally suited to support our global foray in content business.
During this trip, I have inaugurated a state-of-the-art content development facility at Noida and signed a global content marketing and distribution agreement with the Indian arm. The content development centre will provide content for over 500 titles, spanning both IT and non-IT segments.
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This includes instructor-led proprietary course material, technical documentation, user manuals and e-learning material and the non-IT segment includes text books and career development programmes as well as customised content for internal customers of Fortune 500 companies.What kind of careers will emerge as a result of this?
There is a virtual rush in some developed countries including America, as companies look to outsource their content development to offshore companies. What is fuelling this is the desire to gain access to lower cost and high quality labour.
Top content development areas include content development for websites, corporate profiles, reports and business plans, IT training, and now corporate training. The market for content outsourcing is a $1-billion opportunity worldwide.
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A whole set of associated careers will come up as a result of the growth of this industry and this includes content writers and editors as well as researchers and analysts.How do you propose to physically scale up operations?
In the current year we have scaled up from 300 to 1,800 employees system-wide headcount. Over the next two years we plan to grow to over 3,000 employees, our new content division in NOIDA accounting for a significant portion of this. We are looking at acquisitions between $5 and $25 million in India and around the world.
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