NIIT to strengthen IT training business in Middle East

Monday, 01 September 2003, 19:30 IST
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NEW DELHI: NIIT Ltd., one of India's leading computer training and software development majors, has drawn up an ambitious strategy to strengthen its presence in the Middle East as part of efforts to expand overseas market. The New Delhi-based company runs nearly 25 IT education centres in Bahrain, Dubai, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco and Yemen in partnership with local business partners. "We want to make a big dent in the initiative taken by governments in the Middle East region to significantly increase the number of IT educated people over the next few years," said Sanjiv Kataria, executive vice president of NIIT Ltd. "As part of our efforts, we plan to enter into an arrangement with local authorities to provide computer training in all schools as part of their curriculum," Kataria told IANS. "Our focus would be on big grass-root initiatives that prepares a large base of IT trained professionals." The official said NIIT had signed a memorandum of understanding with Bibliotheca Alexandria, a large, modern world-class library in Egypt, to offer its "minimally invasive education technology". "Bibliotheca Alexandria plans to replicate NIIT's experiment in setting up 30 clusters of computers with Internet access to help young children learn computers in a minimally invasive education format," said Kataria. "We are also evaluating a number of other initiatives to lend our indigenous technology and programmes to help the leaders in the Arab world bring their people and computers together," he added. Rajendra Pawar, chairman of NIIT, will lead a delegation of IT experts to Egypt next week with a view to exploring vast potential in the IT trained manpower development space in the region. Pawar will participate in the third conference on IT and telecom in the Arab world in Cairo. Over 100 delegates are expected to participate in the conference to discuss on issues like e-learning and building IT resource base. The NIIT chief is likely to meet ministers of education, heads of universities, and government officials during his three-day visit to Cairo. NIIT manages 3,835 education centres in 31 countries. Its IT education programs are available in Mandarin, Spanish, French, Arabic, Thai and Japanese languages. NIIT Technologies, the IT services arm of NIIT Ltd., has customers in Asia Pacific, Europe, India, Japan and North America. Its customers include British Airways, ING Group, Office Depot, Singapore Airlines, SEI Investments and Toshiba.
Source: IANS