NIIT takes Net-based training to 9 `mini metros'

By Anand Parthasarathy

KOCHI, JUNE 29. Having recast its flagship training programme to centre it around the ``i'' of Internet, NIIT the leading Indian IT trainer is taking it to 9 mini-metros, nationwide. The cities with populations just below one lakh, where the ``i-GNIIT'' course will be offered starting this month, are Ahmedabad, Baroda, Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Dehra Dun, Jaipur, Kochi, Lucknow and Ludhiana.

Mr. Pradeep Narayanan, Senior Vice President and NIIT's head of Education in India, told The Hindu that global IT recession notwithstanding, the training market leader was experiencing a 65 per cent upsurge in the placement of its students. By September 2001, NIIT hopes to enlarge its network to 3,000 training centres worldwide, across 27 countries, serving six lakh students. Recent experience has shown NIIT that almost one fifth of its students are to be found in the smaller Indian metros with populations between 50,000 and one lakh. Tamil Nadu remains the State which gives NIIT its densest penetration by way of number of centres and students.

To make its i-GNIIT programme - a 6-semester course followed by a stint of professional practice - affordable in the smaller towns of the Indian heartland, where the household incomes might be around Rs. 5,000 a month, the institute has launched the NIIT- Citibank-IFC study loan programme, where students selected by NIIT will be offered collateral-free loans to cover 90 per cent of the cost of training and equipment, by Citibank.

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