Aptech has so far trained five million students globally and has over 1,000 centres in 35 countries. In his first interview to the media after taking over as CEO and managing director, Ninad Karpe tells Shivani Shinde how he plans to take the company into the next phase of growth.

Edited excerpts:

After close to 11 years with CA and catering to the enterprise space, you have taken the reins of a firm that focuses on teaching.

I think it was more a need for a change than anything (he was managing director, India and Saarc, at CA Technologies). The same logic that made me decide to leave my 13 years of consulting practice and join CA perhaps worked this time as well.

So, when I told my boss at CA on January 2, 2009, that I wanted to leave, the first question obviously was: What was pushing me out? But there was no reason for me to leave CA, especially now when it was doing well.

As for Aptech, it is very exciting. It's in a very exciting line of business. Though in terms of operations, Aptech will be new for me, the company is not new to me. I was on the board of the company for two years.

Your take on the operations, with the overall environment very challenging, especially on job creation?

I feel Aptech's businesses are well hedged. Take, for instance, Arena. It has not been impacted by the slowdown. The students joining this course have a different mindset.

In the case of Avalon and the computer education space, we did have some impact. Avalon caters to the aviation sector and also covers the hospitality segment. So we have tried to expand the scope of the business.

Computer education has been impacted but that's not too significant, simply because there is still need for the right talent.

Apart from these verticals, Aptech also has a corporate business. This section has also seen a slowdown. We are witnessing a delay in decision-making, but then this is just 20 per cent of our revenue, while the rest comes from the retail space.

Moreover, among middle-class Indians, education is still among the top three priorities. I don't think people are going to short-change the education spend.

What will be your growth focus?

From a domestic perspective, it will be consultation and leadership and internationally, it will be expansion. We have around 1,000 centres across the world. We are hoping to add 50 more by the end of this year.

From a brand perspective, we are looking to expand internationally, especially in the N-power (hardware and networking career) segment. We might look at taking Avalon international, as it is fairly settled in India now.

How will the current slowdown affect placements?

I still believe that if you have a right model and train a kid properly, good talent is still in demand.

The demand is not there for those who are not following industry standards. And this is true for the 10 per cent of employees who are now being asked to leave.

It is a good course correction from the long-term perspective for the industry.