India is fast emerging as the global online tutoring hub by delivering top-notch teaching services

at down-to-earth rates.
With a large number of dedicated post-graduates well-versed in English language, India has the
greatest potential to grow in the online tutoring industry, say industry insiders.

Indian teachers provide tutoring services at a fraction of the amount charged by their counterparts
in the United States, United Kingdom and other European countries.

"When it costs $40-100 per hour in the US, Indian teachers charge three to four times less," says
V Rameshwar, Chief Quality Officer of Chennai-based Tutors World Wide (I) Pvt Ltd.

Going a step further, Bangalore-based Tutorvista provides unlimited tutoring for a month for USD
100, says its Chairman and Founder, K Ganesh.

Within a short span of two years, ever since supplementary education through internet attained
an industry status in India, the growth rate is 100-150 per cent, says Rameshwar.

The company, which was started in 2004, now has 400 teachers in its pay-roll and around 5,000
students across the globe.

According to Ganesh, 18 months back, Tutorvista started with one teacher and one student and
now has 500 teachers and over 2,000 students.

India now earns around 15 million USD per year from online tutoring --10 per cent of the total
market share. "This is expected to swell to 2.4 billion USD within three years", says Ganesh.

Tutorvista has students in 12 countries, including Australia, Turkey, Denmark, Singapore, the
Middle East and Canada. But majority of the students are from the US and the UK.

Thirteen-year old Kathreen of Westchester county, New York, says, "My Indian tutor is very
patient and kind. She takes time to explain things to me and I have improved in classes".

"With online tutoring, we can do sessions at our convenience. We save a lot of time, instead of
having to drive

up and down", Kathreen, who has been receiving tuitions from Tutorvista for English since
October last year, says in an

online interview.

Among the other developing countries which have ventured into the "eBay of education", such as
Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Malaysia, India has an edge, says Ganesh.

India has a large number of post-graduates with sufficient computer know-how compared to these
countries, he says.

"When we gave a recruitment advertisement, we received applications from 6,000 post-

graduates, many of them being Ph.d and M.Phil holders", says Ganesh.

Through online tutoring, globalisation, whose merits were hitherto enjoyed only by the
technologically qualified, has reached the homes of people educated in all subjects.
It gives opportunities to science and arts degree holders to earn from home. For seven hours
work a day, Tutovista pays them Rs 12,000-14,000 monthly. Moreover, there are no commuting
hassles and the timings also are flexible, he says.

According to Rameshwar, TWWI recruits freshers and trains them for the job.

But Tutorvista has retired professors, teachers and qualified housewives in their pay-roll.

These companies also have representatives in many of the client countries, especially in the US
and the UK, through whom the necessities of the market are ascertained.

By online tutoring, Indian outsourcing companies have even ventured into the B2C (Business to
Consumer) model, says Ganesh.

They deal directly with the parents and the students. There is no other brand or company
intermediating in the B2B (Business to Business) model, he points out.

Tutoring through letters and couriers had been a mode of supplementary education in sparsely
populated countries like Australia for long.

But, with the advent of voice technology on the internet, "real-time voice-based online education"
has become accessible to everyone across the globe

At the end of every school day, seventh - grader Sandy heads straight to home excitingly.
She is excited because she has just met her new tutor Mr. Garg. But Sandy’s tutor, Mr.
Siddharth Garg, doesn't come to her house. In fact, Mr.Garg has never has been to
America. Isn’t that surprising? Welcome to this new world of online tutorials! Every day
Sandy switches on her personal computer. She then logs onto a website and then chats via
voice over internet technology. Sandy then puts her headsets and speaks to Mr.Garg
“Hello Mr. Garg, how are you?” the response comes in real time “I am fine Sandy, how
was your day?” Siddharth is one of a growing number of educated Indians now teaching
online tutorials to U.S students over the Internet. Siddharth lives in New Delhi, India –
11,000 miles away from Sandy.

“My son was not performing well in his Geometry classes and I was really very worried
about his low grades in school”, said Claudia, mother of Brad who is in 7th grade. “One
of my close friends told me about these online tutoring companies. I decided to at least
give it a try and got surprisingly good results. My son got full marks in his geometry
paper. Thanks to online tutoring!”

“No child left behind Act”, the recent law passed by the American government in the year
2002, has been a propelling force towards the direction of boosting online tutoring.
According to this law the schools (public as well as private), which “failed” to provide
quality education to the teenagers, are required to hire private tutors to enhance the
student’s performance. Since then the schools that were lagging behind have tightened
their belts. Due to this many American families have started enrolling their kids to these
online tutoring centers rather than sending them to private tutors. The private tutors or
tutorial companies in US charged $ 50 to $ 100 per hour and that helped a lot in boosting
the business for these online tutorials companies as they charge as low as $ 15 per hour!
This is the latest trend in education industry in which tutors from India provide help to
American teenagers to help them to understand and grasp the concepts of their respective
subjects with ease. These online tutorial companies provide their customers with high
quality content and that too at reduced costs!

The tutors working with these companies have completed their Masters or postgraduate
degrees and all of them undergo exhaustive training for several weeks on how to speak
with a low pitch American accent or how to understand American slang. All tutors
working under these online tutoring companies have to go through a rigorous interview
and have to pass through a certified test.

Many Indian based companies like TransWebTutors (transwebtutors.com), BrainFuse,

TransTutors and Tutor vista have come up with some very exciting offers. They are
providing preparation for standardized tests like TOEFL, SAT, GRE, GMAT etc. Apart
from this TransWebTutors (transwebtutors.com), a New Delhi based company is offering
an unlimited online tutoring for $ 99 per month. Isn’t that mind blowing? These online
tutorial companies have got a pool of teachers specialized in subjects like Mathematics,
Science, English etc.

Online Tutoring industry has risen up very much and is growing day by day. Online
tutoring is a key to success for American teenagers and serve as a tremendous weapon for
their growth and success in the coming future. It's the outsourcing of education. Just like
manufacturing or service jobs, borders no longer limit the task of teaching America’s
youth!

The Economic Times (Bangalore edition), 22 Jan, 2008

The changing face of the Indian IT industry has been giving birth to a new breed of
companies, which do not necessarily go by the old model of lower costs, but are being
built on a platform of innovation and differentiation. The appreciating rupee and the scale
game have seen the gap between the large players and others widening, but this has not
dampened the growth of new IT companies.

As Nasscom vice-president Rajdeep Sahrawat says there has been no dearth of new IT
companies emerging in the country and these are generally focused on technology
innovation.

He felt that the Indian IT industry has been seeing about three to four trends. With large
IT services players getting into the scale game, mid-tier companies are playing to their
strengths and there is expected to be some considerable amount of churn in the lower
rung category. This in fact brought about the focus for new companies to zero in on
creating an intellectual property (IP) or come out with a services offering which stands
out in the marketplace.
For K Ganesh, founder of TutorVista and a serial entreprenuer, the real crux of the change
is the movement from being an IT service provider to actually being an owner of the
value creation. Till now, for any IT service or product, there might be an Indian
connection, but there is very little value, which has been captured by Indian IT players.

Nasscom recently launched the Nasscom-ICICI Knowledge Park Innovation Fund with
anchor investors being Tata Consultancy Services, Bharti Airtel and ICICI Knowledge
Park. This Rs 100-crore fund looks to provide seed-stage investments to promote
intellectual property driven innovation in emerging technologies, the key areas being
wireless technologies, automotive infotronics, life sciences, energy conservation
technologies and medical devices.

Ganesh says, “In the new wave, we are trying to capture the full value and brand
ourselves. In TutorVista, for example, when a customer pays $100 for the tutoring
service, the entire value created comes to us. The customer is paying for a service being
provided by an Indian service provider.”

The VC community is also not seeing any slowdown in the number of new innovative
companies or the proposals they are getting. Kanwaljit Singh, MD, Helion Ventures, says
that the momentum has shifted to more specialised IT companies. The VCs typically are
keen on new IT companies with differentiated business model with the ability to create
execution excellence.

According to a study done by Zinnov, there are around 430 product companies in India
and the last 18 months saw more than 200 companies starting their operations. The
majority of these start-ups are in the internet/web 2.0 domain with the rest being in the
mobile space. However, the eco-system for the sustained growth of these kind of new
companies is just evolving and it may be some time before it gathers steam. Sahrawat felt
that there could be couple of interesting options opening up for new IT companies like
focusing on the tier-II and III towns and in the domestic market. Ganesh says the greatest
challenge in building such innovative companies is that it takes more time, funding and
risk. He felt that selling or positioning service offerings to the consumer directly provides
the highest margin.