De-growth in education biz weighed on Q4 nos: NIIT

Vijay Thadani, CEO, NIIT says the main reason for de-growth in IT education business has been the depressed consumer sentiment towards IT in general.

However, in an interview to CNBC-TV18 he adds that their corporate learning solutions and school learning solutions have growth 19 and 17 percent year-on-year respectively.

Below is the verbatim transcript of his interview on CNBC-TV18

Q: Can you tell us through the quarterly performance and going ahead what is your expectation in terms of margin growth?

A: As you know, the organisation has been in a state of transition. Last year we had a divestment of Element K business and we added new activities. Therefore on a like to like basis, our revenue on year to year has declined to Rs 961 crore and that will mean a five percent drop. While it appears that revenue has dropped but there are three out of four businesses which have done exceptionally well.

The Corporate Learning Solutions has grown 19 percent year on year, improved margin by nearly 400-500 basis points. School Learning Solutions has grown by 17 percent year on year and again has shown an improvement in margins.

The issue really has been the depressed consumer sentiment relating to IT, which has led to de-growth in the IT education business which also happens to be a large part of NIIT.