NIIT, top choice of 116 IT recruiters, says Dataquest

NEW DELHI: In a nationwide survey of 116 companies in India, the IT training

pioneer, NIIT, has emerged as the first choice of recruiters. The survey,

conducted by IT industry magazine, Dataquest, establishes NIIT as the first

choice of recruiters, for the second year in a row.






The Dataquest survey reveals that the quality of manpower produced by NIIT,
emerged as the most important parameter taken into account by IT employers while

recruiting the products of IT training institutes.



Conducted in April 2002, the survey sought opinion of heads of human resources
and IT departments from 48 IT companies and 68 non-IT companies. Apollo Tyres,

Cipla, GE Capital, HCL Infosystems, HP, IBM, NSE, Pepsi, Polaris Software and

Wipro were among the 116 companies that participated in the survey.






The Dataquest survey also predicts a shortfall of 5,00,000 IT professionals in
India by 2006 with industry leaders expressing concern over the lack of

Government efforts to plug this demand-supply gap.






With NIIT’s training revenues of Rs 451 crores during calendar 2001 it emerged
as the leader exceeding the combined revenue of the next four players listed in

the survey (Aptech Rs 261.17 cr; CMC Rs 53.88 cr; IIHT Rs 49.13 cr; C-DAC Rs

47.06 cr).






In a CD-Rom based listing of IT training institutes prepared by the magazine,
NIIT leads with over 2500 training centers. Commenting on NIIT emerging as the

1st choice of recruiter’s NIIT chief operating officer P Rajendran said,

"The overwhelming preference of recruiters for NIIT products encourages us

to introduce new technologies in GNIIT curriculum and further strengthen NIIT’s

industry accepted professional practice." Even though 2001 was a

challenging year for the Indian IT training industry, NIIT through introduction

of 4 new technologies in its curriculum (C#, Citrix, J2EE, IBM Tech) and 9 new

programs (eCRM; C#; Citrix Program for IT Professionals; Swift Jyoti; GNIIT

Classic; IBM Technologies; CareerEdge; Swift Jyoti for Women; industry-accepted

ITES training) grew its enrolments by 50 per cent to touch a record figure of

4,55,000 and made significant gains in its market share.






"We plan to launch a slew of new products over the next six months. The
primary engine for market share is going to be segmenting the sector into finer

and finer segments," said Rajendran.



NIIT, which has over 2,500 education centers in India and abroad, offers courses
ranging from a 10-hour Swift Jyoti program costing Rs 500 to four-year GNIIT

priced at Rs 135,000.