See 15% topline growth in corporate learning biz in FY17: NIIT

With 27 large and fairly diversified global customers and USD 195 million worth of visibility, NIIT Ltd’s corporate learning business is likely to repeat the 15 percent revenue growth rate for a second consecutive year in FY17, says the company’s Vice Chairman and MD, Vijay Thadani.

Thadani pointed out that the company’s retail business - skills group growth (SCG) also posted growth despite it being a seasonally weak quarter.

He highlighted that, to meet its business expansion goals, the company has entered new geographies like Norway and Ireland, launched new projects like StackRoute.in and NIIT.tv and entered into new partnerships with HP and MetaScale to launch new products in the information technology space.

"We remain an important part of the government’s SkillIndia and Start-Up India initiatives, where our products and services have high degree of relevance," Thadani says.Below is the transcript of Vijay Thadani’s interview with CNBC-TV18's Mangalam Maloo and Reema Tendulkar.Mangalam: Looks like a strong operational performance that there are in terms of your EBITDA as well but the concern is that what does FY17 look like. We did have a weak base going forward, the company did have a turn around and now with this out of the way FY17 could you give us some guidance for FY17 because we did hear you in the press conference indicating that your guidance for FY16 has been met with a growth of 15 percent and 12 percent EBITDA margins as well?A: There were three objectives for FY16 and as you know we started with transformation journey by first restructuring then reenergising. So, this year we are in the reenergising phase and in that we were to achieve in corporate learning group 15 and 12 which we are ahead of. 15 percent growth and 12 percent margin. The second was that we said our retail business which has been challenged for the last few years the India based skills and careers business and last quarter was a good quarter and this quarter has been a better quarter in comparative terms given the fact that it is seasonal business but on a year-on-year (Y-o-Y) basis it is done well and it has been both back in growth as well as back in black which is back in profit.The other issue was to make sure that we launched new products. So, one of the feature of this quarter are the way we have launched, we have got into newer geographies. You saw Norway and Ireland. You saw we launched products. NIIT StackRoute was an important addition, NIIT.tv is a very is a very important new business model and then we also got into new partnerships with HP and MetaScale to launch newer products in the IT states. So, we are on the right trajectory and I guess we would continue on this continue and continue to strengthen ourselves and we remain an important part of the new initiatives of Skill India as well as Startup India where our products as well as services have very high degree of relevance.Reema: Your turnaround plan is well reflected in the stock price. It is one of the big outperformers of last year with over 60 percent gain if you see it at least in the last 12 months or so. But give us some numbers of how FY17 going to look like in terms of revenue growth. This year you were focussing on 15 percent growth in the topline. Would that be a similar run rate for FY17?A: Yes, a similar run rate in corporate leering group with a strong order intake and we now have 27 large global customers for our managed training services and a fairly diversified one. So, that is a sound footing with USD 195 million of visibility for us to continue with that kind of trajectory in the corporate learning business.