Training centres likely to settle for hybrid model in the future

PUNE: Training firms Aptech and NIIT, which had to switch to a digital-only model because of the nationwide lockdown earlier this year, have said that some amount of offline training will remain a part of their programme once things normalise.

Aptech operates in areas like training for IT services, beauty and wellness, retail and aviation and banking.

“Business has been digitized over the last 6 months during lockdown,” said MD and CEO Anil Pant. “It was an extremely challenging time as the business model is built around students coming to the centre.”


In the last few months, Aptech delivered 2.5 million hours of training online with 500,000 tutor hours. Aptech runs 800 centres in over 30 countries.

Both companies have also had to switch their sales and marketing models to a digital-only format.

Earlier, students would typically visit a centre with parents and discuss their options, which is no longer possible.

“Even our customer acquisition model had to go digital. We used a mix of tools like Salesforce and Google to increase our digital engagement and added features to enable student acquisition,” said Sapnesh Lalla, CEO of NIIT.

NIIT, which gets 90% of its revenues from its international operations, switched to a 100% online model from April.

NIIT, which had a ready digital platform used by some of its larger enterprise customers, customised that for a broader set of students. This is expected to continue in the foreseeable future.

“We will not be restarting the centres until we have a way to keep our students safe,” Lalla said. “The digital platform has worked out better than expected. It is a robust platform and in the long term we may adopt a hybrid model,” he said.

The company may have smaller centres to impart training in areas like soft skills, while the rest of the training will happen online.

Aptech, too, is unlikely to entirely do away with physical centres. “Some things you cannot replace with a pure online model,” said Pant.

Demand is returning, both companies said, in a reflection of the improved market conditions overall.

Aptech placed almost 800 students during the lockdown and said that international and domestic demand was strong.

After reporting a loss in the first quarter, the company expects to end the ongoing fiscal year at about the same level as the previous financial year or close to it, said Pant.