E-learning firm LIQVID sees business mix shifting to English learning software

LIQVID e-Learning Services Pvt Ltd sees its revenue mix swinging from customised e-learning solutions for corporates to its product business EnglishEdge, an English language learning software.

Vivek Agarwal, CEO of LIQVID, said, "We get half of our revenues from our custom content e–learning business and the rest from EnglishEdge. However, in the next two years, we aim to get 75 per cent of revenues from the EnglishEdge business."

The firm has 150 schools as its customers, apart from employability training institutes like Jetking, Teamlease and British Council as well as institutions like IIT Delhi and IIT Patna. Altogether, it has 250 customers and provides EnglishEdge to customers in 1,000 locations.

"It is nice to be in the product business; earlier we were only in the services business through our e-learning arm. At present, we have a decent amount of cash to expand. Next year, we will be raising our third round of funding and the money will be more than (what was raised in) our previous round," Agarwal said.

In February 2011, the company raised close to $1 million from LeapStart Trust and followed it up by scooping $3 million last August from a subsidiary of SBI Holdings, Japan. The company used the bulk of the second round of funding for EnglishEdge.

The Noida-based firm, which was launched in 2002, initially focussed on e-learning solutions for corporates and later started EnglishEdge. It was set up by Agarwal and Manish Upadhyay (COO). Agarwal, an alumnus of IIM Calcutta, earlier co-founded an e-learning portal eGurucool.com and prior to that, worked at SRF Finance. Upadhyay, an alumnus of IIT Delhi, earlier worked with LionBridge Technologies and NIIT Ltd.

According to Agarwal, the company has been growing at 30 per cent over the last three years and growth over the next three years will be led by EnglishEdge. He did not disclose the firm's revenues. The company has 150 employees and over a third of them work for EnglishEdge.

"You need more people for the services business than for the product business," Agarwal said.

According to a recent report by IBIS Capital, the global language learning market is set to grow at 20 per cent per annum to $247.5 billion by 2017, with the English language learning segment growing at 25 per cent a year. According to Agarwal, close to half of the global language learning market is for English language.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)