Macmillan goes up the e-learning curve

Macmillan India - a venerable over hundred years old publishing house -- provides a classical roadmap of how the old order in business changes while remaining wedded to the basic trade.

Old fashioned paper and ink publishing now accounts for less than half the Rs 81 crore (Rs 810 million in calendar 2002) turnover of the company.

Information processing accounts for 48 per cent of turnover, concentrating mostly on high end data conversion - turning manuscripts in various forms to XML, the format in which most of the world's data is being stored.

But even this is passé. Macmillan India has been doing data conversion for 20 years now in different forms, though their IT enabled services, which now have a 700 staff, began in 1996.

The real new initiative is the e-business division of Macmillan India, eMacmillan, started in 2000, accounting just now for only 4 per cent of turnover but with almost boundless prospects.

It broke even last year with a small surplus of Rs 23 lakh and projects topline growth of over 50 per cent in the current year.

It is just about to sign up with a leading educational institution in India and a large international publishing firm. Later this year it will commence a full fledged long term online executive programme.

eMacmillan's domestic and international business revenue is broken up in the 40:60 ratio. While the aim for the domestic business is achieving stability, that for the international business is growth.

The domestic business is spearheaded by the e-learning sites of the company which, says Raj Joshi, vice president and head of e-business operations, make Macmillan the leading e-learning company in the country.

The sites provide course like the following: corporate finance in collaboration with IIM, Calcutta; customer relationship management in collaboration with MDI, Gurgaon; finance for non-finance executives in collaboration with IIT, Delhi; and graphics design for effective packaging in collaboration with the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.

Joshi says the course have proved t be popular with leading corporates like Dr Reddy's, IBM, ONGC and IOC among the 70 companies which have nominate their executives to it.

The 2-3 month courses earn participants who fulfil certain criteria a certificate. Individuals can and do participate, paying a fee of around Rs 5,000.

The big thing about these course is that the content is provided by leading academics at the respective institutions who also take queries and hold online classes. eMacmillan has a revenue sharing arrangements with the content providing institutions.

The company offers two other products in this category. It will install its learning management system in companies with a large intranet so that their employees can access the course through the company intranet.

A company appointed coordinator filters the questions for the faculty. The third product is a learning management system installed for companies which wish to devise their own courses and run them for their employees.

The international business of eMacmillan comprises Web site development, IT services, technical support and animation services. The big feather in its cap is developing the world's largest life sciences Web site, the flagship Web site of Nature.

The company has also developed a biology teaching website for a UK customer and an English e-learning site for Hong Kong students.

Software maintenance support to foreign publishing companies is a key overseas business which supports the production, editorial and costing systems of the client. eMacmillan in India helps maintain the production management system of Macmillan UK.

For the animation business the company has developed games, especially e-learning games, for overseas companies.