THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS
Wednesday Sep 6, 2000

Openlearningworld ties up with 13 institutes for online courses

Neeraj Saxena 
New Delhi

DELHI based-e-learning portal 0penlearningworld.com has tied up with 13 institutes, including National Institute of Fashion Technology. Manipal Academy of Higher Education, All India Management Association, Institute of Management Technology and National Institute of Advertising to bring their degree, diploma and certificate courses online.

It has also tied up with the books portal, firstandsecond.com. to offer a click through facility on the latter's home page. Openlearningworld.com caters to those who wish to further their career prospects and also the professionals in different fields who wish to enhance their abilities.

Its promoters, Mr Anurag Jain and Mr. Ashish Jain; are hopeful of tying up with 35 more institutes and universities within next two months to launch 150 online courses by the end of the year. According to chief executive officer Mr Anurag Jain, the portal had already bagged projects worth Rs 75 crore through these tie-ups.

So far, Jains have put about Rs 80 lakh as the initial investment to put up the site. Of this, 50 per cent is held by the management and education publisher, Excel Books. The promoters are in talks with the venture capitalists and claim that a first round will be tied up by the month end. "Our site incorporates the latest learning aids with tools for self- analysis and offers optimised online learning courses for students. This is for the first time ever that online students have an opportunity to get recognized degrees from well-known institutes and universities," said Mr Jain. He also claimed that the degree courses offered by Openlearningworld.com are priced anywhere between 20 to 50 per cent cheaper than offline distance education.