NIIT Learning Systems expects two-fold growth in top line

Mumbai: NIIT Learning Systems, which is into corporate learning through an outsourced model, is expecting a more than two-fold rise in its top-line and hit the USD 500-million-mark by FY27 from USD 200 million it grossed in FY23.

If the target is achieved, the NIIT group firm will also improve its global ranking to No 3 from the present fifth rank. The company was listed on the BSE on Tuesday following the reorganization of the group into two separate companies in May 2023.

The outsourced corporate learning market globally is around USD 3 billion and is controlled primarily by IBM, Accenture, Raytheon and an NIIT-like European entity General Physics-LTG, and NIIT MTS (managed training services).

NIIT has no customers in the country and does not have competition in the home market. While the global spending by corporates on training is USD 400 billion and growing.

While the skills & career arm remains with the parent NIIT, which was formed in 1981 and went public in 1993 and was part of the Sensex in 2000, the corporate learning arm is now NIIT Learning Systems.

And with this, the NIIT Group has three listed companies: NIIT Ltd, NIIT Tech now branded as Coforge, and NIIT Learning Systems.

NIIT Learning Systems has around 80 global customers including many from the Fortune 500 global list.

"Two years ago we had set an internal target of becoming a half a billion dollar entity by FY27 and we are very much on track or even a little ahead of the track already," Vijay K Thadani, cofounder, vice-chairman and managing director of NIIT told PTI here this after the listing of NIIT Learning Systems on the BSE.

Sapnesh Lalla, the chief executive of NIIT Learning Systems, chipped in saying the company closed FY23 with USD 200 million revenue and around USD 30 million in net income.

The company hopes to improve on both margins as well as gross margins from the present 15 per cent and 23 per cent respectively this year and going forward.

Thadani is bullish about the business saying the green energy drive and AI hold a mine of growth opportunities for them.

Accordingly, they recently picked up around 2 per cent stake for 3 million euros in a Dutch company called EIT-Inno Energy, which is fully funded by the European Union and is into green energy transition research. The firm will start operations soon, he said.

"Currently, our clients outsource only 10 per cent of the employees for outside training but we see this moving up as the demand for transition gathers more momentum, Thadani said, basing his optimism for the future."

NIIT Learning Systems is present in over 130 countries and has over 80 corporate clients and trained tens of thousands of their employees.

"By FY27, we hope to more than double both these counts—number of clients (to around 200) and employees being trained and also take the number of trainers from the present 5,000 to 10,000," Lalla said, adding most of these trainers are not on the rolls.

NIIT after its listing in 1993 went on to become one most valuable companies being included in the BSE 30 index or Sensex and one of the most profitable technology companies by 2000.

In 2004, the IT services business was spun out as a separately listed as NIIT Tech, and NIIT Ltd retained the training business and has been the No 1 IT training firm in the country.

With over 400 global customers from a diverse range of industries, each year NIIT Learning Systems develops over 5,500 hours of customized learning content, supported by a network of over 2,500 learning and development suppliers worldwide, which in turn allows it to deliver over 40 million training days annually.