E-learning company for professionals Simplilearn looking at break-even by March

Bangalore-based Simplilearn Solutions Pvt Ltd, the company behind Simplilearn.com, an online education and training destination for professional certification courses, is planning to train 5 million participants in the next five years across the world, according to Krishna Kumar, CEO & founder of Simplilearn. The firm, which is looking to add 200 more courses with over 3,500 hours of HD e-learning content, is targeting break-even in the current financial year (FY2014-15).

Simplilearn was founded in 2009 by Kumar, a BE in Electronics & Communication from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka. The platform offers an online learning destination for young working professionals, who are looking at career enhancement through certification courses across industry verticals.

With study centres across the globe, Simplilearn offers over 100 certification courses across 11 categories. It claims that to date, the firm has trained around 100,000 professionals in over 150 countries around the world. At present, it trains around 5,000 professionals a month. The company is also planning to launch a mobile app soon.

In terms of revenue, the US contributes around 50 per cent, while India is about 20 per cent. Kumar, however, declined to share the revenue figures.

Talking about competition, Kumar said, "I look at competition as a growth stimulator. Almost all large players in training have diverse training offerings with a significant mix of their own proprietary courses and cater largely to the corporate segment of the market. Simplilearn, however, has positioned its training offerings specifically around certifications and concentrates on the individual training needs, which is a large space dominated mostly by small regional players," Kumar said.

Other players in the online education verticals include Info Edge-backed Meritnation.com, Pearson Plc-backed Zaya Lbas, and angels-backed Flipclass.com.

Last September, Simpliream had secured $10 million in a Series B round of funding from Helion Venture Partners and existing investor Kalaari Capital. Previously, it has bagged $3 million in Series A funding from Kalaari Capital in March 2012: Kumar informed that the company has enough cash in reserve, and is not looking at fresh funding soon.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)