Redstone Learning Sees 6x Growth Potential From Indian Skill Training Market

As India is on a skill development mission with initiatives such as prime minister Narendra Modi’s Skill India Programme, Redstone Learning is expecting to grow its revenue from India to as much as 30 per cent in the next 2 years from just 5 per cent as of today. Currently, the US is their largest market contributing about 80 per cent to their topline.

Founded by IIT-Kanpur graduate Subrata Ghosh, Redstone Learning is a startup providing on-demand expertise to businesses and individuals offering over 100 courses through 250 experts. Ghosh, founder and CEO of the company, said that while the potential in the Indian market is huge, Indian companies will have to increase their training and development budget and need to perceive learning as an investment as opposed to cost.

As per a document on the framework of implementation of the National Mission for Skill Development, just 2.3 per cent of the workforce in India has undergone formal skill training as compared to 68 per cent in the UK, 75 per cent in Germany, 52 per cent in the US, 80 per cent in Japan and 96 per cent in South Korea. IT industry apex body Nasscom has been stating for quite some time now that only 25 per cent of technical graduates are employable in the rapidly growing IT & ITeS sectors.

Redstone Learning currently owns and operates two leading B2C brands in global professional education. The first brand ezCertifications (www.ezcertifications.com) focuses on professional certifications in business, management and IT, while the second brand, Compliance.world (www.compliance.world) focuses on global compliance training – with a strong presence in FDA regulated industries. It has also introduced online mentoring in emerging technologies such as big data analytics and virtualization through a new platform called Sharpen8.

Redstone Learning is a self-funded and profitable firm generating about $1 million per quarter in sales, which translates to an annualised topline of $4 million. It claims to have already reached a size that its funded competitors needed $10-15 million to build. In the e-learning space, the company competes with the likes of Simplilearn, Jigsaw Academy, and Edureka. In the compliance space, its single largest competitor is ComplianceOnline.com, part of leading GRC company MetricStream.

“We focus on businesses and mid-career professionals. This is a $200 billion+ segment within education. The key focus here is on value-addition and customer experience – and we adopt a technology-leveraged blended approach of classrooms + online classrooms + self-paced e-learning,” said Ghosh.

Some of Redstone’s clients include Intel, Cisco, Sony India, Societe Generale, Amadeus Software, and Cerner.