Tata Infotech in alliance with SmartForce

Tata Infotech Education Services Division has announced its plans to capture 40 percent of the e-learning market in alliance with SmartForce–an e-learning company, which provides integrated enterprise e-learning solutions. Under this alliance, they will offer end-to-end solutions to the Indian corporate. Tata Infotech would be enable e-learning solutions on the customer's Intranet and also at their offices

overseas.

SmartForce would offer in India its entire range of courses. The stress would be on making teaching student centric rather than instructor centric. SmartForce has an in-house development center in Dublin having 550 developers. The company also has a 5,000+ hours' library in seven different languages. In future the company is planning to open a content development center in India.

Speaking at the occasion, Rahul Thapan, Head (Education Services Division), Tata Infotech Ltd, said, "Currently the e-Learning market in India primarily comprises of content or instruction in the form of computer based training and web-based training, which has a 90 percent market-share. E-Learning being in a nascent stage comprises only 10 percent of the market. By partnering with SmartForce, we will provide a comprehensive learning solution comprising of instruction, collaboration, practice and assessment."

Speaking on future plans he said that the company expects e-learning to be 10 percent of their business in the next year. The company would initially target large corporate especially the software development companies and companies, which have offices at multiple locations. The fee for the course would be based on the content and value added services needed by the companies.