IT was a year of change for this education and services company. It acquired associate company Hexaware, and merged it with its software services group. That gave it one big Aptech with a training and education (T&E) division, and a software and consulting group. Then it decided to de-merge these, with a CEO for each, to “improve management focus” in the expansion drive.

While CEO Ganesh Natarajan moved out to Zensar Technologies. Pramod Khera carried on at the helm in the T&E division, and Rusi Brij joined as the head of software solutions. His mandate: to expand the company’s presence in the US, Europe and the APAC region. Aptech executed digital marketplace projects in the US and Europe for pharma, media and other segments. Other projects included embedded apps, and developing eWise, a knowledge management package.

Khera charted out a three-pronged strategy: global presence in retail education, penetrate multimedia education deeper, and focus on corporate training. Asset is now a full-fledged division for corporate training, both online and offline. In retail, Aptech plans to enter seven regions globally, and step up branding in India. Global growth has seen 155 centers in place and about Rs 12 crore in royalties. Aptech plans to double the number of centers by year-end, in 50 countries.

Its multimedia division Arena is the only national-level player, with plans to spread to 20 countries in the next year and to introduce multimedia courses for design. The new Arena Animation Academy in Mumbai caters to high-end animation courses.

This year’s Rs 766 crore revenue includes Rs 413 crore for T&E, from Aptech’s balance sheet and Q1, 2001 results. Aptech reported T&E at Rs 567 crore to DQ, to account for (a) multi-year courses billed, but not due, in the year, and (b) foreign franchisees, whose commissions (vs full billings) reflect in Aptech’s books. This would have taken revenues to Rs 920 crore. But Dataquest now follows only the principle adopted for the balance sheet. We have thus made the same adjustment to the previous two years figures, for consistency. Further, as this year’s revenues include Hexaware, for better comparison, we have added Hexaware’s revenues into the past two years’ figures.

Next year’s DQ report will again show two companies. And that might drop them from the Top 20. Staying in this list will be the growth challenge for Aptech.