Eruditus Executive Education, which provides executive education programmes for mid-career professionals, wants to nearly treble its revenue in FY18 to $40 million, co-founder and Director Chaitanya Kalipatnapu told BusinessLine recently. The company, launched in 2010, reported revenue of $14.5 million in FY17.
In August, the company raised $8 million in a round of series B funding from Bertelsmann India Investments. Eruditus — which offers tailored programmes in business management in partnership with top global schools such as INSEAD, MIT Sloan, Harvard Business School, Wharton, Kellogg, and Columbia Business School — wants to expand its geographical reach, increase the number of partner schools, and treble the enrolments in the company’s Emeritus arm from the 5,000 till date to 15,000 by 2018.
“We offer unique courses to our students,” Kalipatnapu said. “You won’t be able to do a programme from Columbia on digital business or one from Berkeley on data analytics anywhere else.” The programmes, which last between six months and a year, cost about $30,000-$40,000, and are a combination of classroom sessions and online courses. “We want to make Ivy League education accessible for students around the world,” he added. Since Eruditus was launched, about 800 students have graduated from these programmes.
Shorter online courses
The company also offers six online programmes that are eight weeks long under its Emeritus branch to batches of 200-300 students each on subjects such as innovation and leadership. The fees for these courses are about $,1500 and have had about 5,000 students graduating till date, Kalipatnapu said.
Apart from individual enrolments, Eruditus has also worked with companies such as Future group, Reliance ADAG, Accenture, Bharat Petroleum Corporation, TCS, and Rockwell Automation in creating management workshops.
A May 2017 report by KPMG forecast that India’s online education market is set to grow from $247 million in 2016 to $1.96 billion in 2021. Re-skilling and online certifications is currently the largest category within this market, at $93 million, and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 38 per cent.