NEW DELHI: Aptech Ltd., a global training company, has attained 300,000
students mark in its National Literacy Drive program, under its specially
designed course called "Vidya".
Vidya, a multilingual course, launched in January 1999, was targeted towards
working executives, government employees, self-employed professionals, traders,
housewives, farmers and students to create a massive base of competent computer
users in all walks of life at the village, taluka, district and city level.
Aptech received good response in the first year and enrolled about 95,000
students under the Vidya course. It increased to over a lakh enrollments in the
year 2000. Aptech estimates around 1.5 lakh enrollments by the end of 2001 for
the course.
Aptech plans to bring 500,000 students by the end of 2002 under the National
Literacy Drive program, by continuing its initiatives with government offices,
banks and other public institutions.
Last year saw nearly 30,000 enrollments from government employees from
different states -- Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka
and Rajasthan -- which is all set to double in the current year.
"We have achieved a very good penetration throughout the country that
accounts for about five per cent of students from smaller villages, 12.5 per
cent from taluka levels, 16 per cent from districts and remaining 66.5 per cent
from cities. We have been able to achieve such a good penetration due to a good
spread of our branches and franchisee network of 1358 centers through which this
course was promoted," said Pramod Khera, CEO, Aptech Ltd.