In his famous “Ballad of East and West”, the 19th century english poet Rudyard Kipling writes, rather prematurely: “East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet”.
Little did he know that a little over a century later East and West would not only meet frequently and have plenty of cultural exchanges, but also become very good business partners.
Or that Asia would be a much coveted marketplace for western business of all sectors, including eLearning.
China, the economic miracle of the 21st century with its rising middle class, is a huge potential market for eLearning services, with its overall training market estimated to be worth around RMB300 billion (a little short of $50 billion dollars).
Besides its vast population and huge economic growth, there are three important factors that make China an ideal eLearning market:
1) It has a traditional cultural focus on education, which families invest heavily on, for their children’s studies.
2) It has the necessary internet penetration, with an estimated 650 million internet users as of 2014, the majority on DSL lines.
3) It has a long history of private education.
eLearning, with its lower costs and easy accessibility, is perfect for the upwardly mobile Chinese middle class households who can’t afford costly private schools or sending their kids abroad.
Furthermore, the vast amount of available training subjects that can be had at the learner’s own pace and location, make it perfect for employees looking to expand their skills and improve their hire-ability.
Last, but not least, eLearning fits the needs of Chinese business, enterprises and organisations, that need agile and cost effective solutions to train their personnel to new technologies.
It’s no surprise then that the online education market quadrupled in China in the last decade, while still having a vast growth potential (considering that eLearning users are less than 10% of the Chinese population).
As for Japan, its advanced internet infrastructure, web-savvy population and large middle class also make it a very important market for eLearning. In fact it is estimated that Japan’s eLearning market has been growing by 100% year over year for the last few years.
The same phenomenal growth is seen all over SE Asia, whose internet users now represent over 40% of the world’s users.
So, we’re excited to report that our CEO and co-founder Dimitris Tsingos, currently concluding his business trip in the region, signed a partnership agreement with Tokyo based Brastel Telecom for the sale of eLearning services to the Japanese market, and another one with Chinese eLearning consulting agency Shanghai 4INS, for the resale and implementation of eFront based solutions for the Chinese market.
While eFront has always been an international product, our greatest adoption has been in USA, Europe and the English speaking parts of the world.
We’ve very proud of expanding our reach even further, and we look forward to working with our new partners to help bring the Epignosis family of products and services, with their legendary flexibility and ease-of use and our world-class support, to the Asian market.
