Veta, earlier known as Vivekananda Institute, is India's premier academy for teaching spoken English. It has now ventured into international operations with the brand name Amoha Learning Solutions Pvt Ltd, with Singapore as the hub. Chennaionline's H Ramakrishnan spoke to Suresh Subramaniam, Director, Amoha and Mrs Jayaradha Shankar, Country Head.

H Ramakriahnan: Can you give me a brief about your international operations?

Suresh Subramaniam: We started our international operations on January 24, last year - exactly one year back. We opened our first international centre at Singapore as a totally new company, Amoha Learning Solutions Pvt Ltd, which is a hundred per cent subsidiary of Veta India. The name came from Amoham in Tamil that means excellence or flourish.

Mrs Jayaradha Shankar: In fact it has an international connotation as well. In Buddhism, Amoha is supposed to be one of the qualities of a true Buddha. Thus Amoha is also in fact South East Asian.

Suresh: We started with a model centre in Singapore. We selected Singapore as a gateway to other countries. In the first three months after January last year, we enrolled one hundred students. It is an achievement in Singapore, because, there the requirement of English teaching is not as much as it is in some other countries. In Singapore, one has to get the permission of the Ministry of Education to start an education institution. We submitted our curriculum, which was vetted by them. They interviewed all the trainers and then gave us the licence to start the Centre. The Singapore law is very strict.

Meanwhile the Sri Lankan Government announced its intention to launch teaching of English in a big way and naturally we received an invitation. They had organized a Fair and we participated. We appointed one Master-Franchisee for Sri Lanka in April last year. In the next three to four months, we started three Centres in Sri Lanka - Kandy, Vavunia and Nuvarelia, besides Colombo. We will soon start one in Mathale as well. Classes have been started in three Centres and they will be started in the other two Centres soon. We plan to have twenty Centres in Sri Lanka by April.

JAKARTA

In July last year, we participated in a Fair in Indonesia and we appointed a Master Franchisee in Jakarta. In Thailand we have appointed another master franchisee in Bangkok. In Bangladesh we have identified a Master Franchisee in Dacca. In Kualalampur in Malaysia we have signed with one Master franchisee. In all these places the Centres will be started by end February. Latest by April, we hope to have at least one hundred centres in South East Asia. This is just the starting point. In fact our plan is that by 2011, we want to make our presence in twenty countries with one thousand centres, with Singapore as the model centre and gateway. By then our top-line estimate is $ 1.3 billion for our International operation.

Rama: The franchisees are local citizens?

Suresh: Yes, they are. The teaching staff is also local people. They are all controlled by Singapore.

Rama: Can you explain your methodology?

Suresh: Teach English through their mother tongue. We follow the bilingual methodology.

Rama: But do you think the bilingual method is better than the direct method. Many friends of mine have learnt German and French by the direct method and they say it is the sure method.

Jayaradha: There are two opinions and two extreme points of view. One is that you learn a language only by totally immersing in it. There are several institutes following this method. In Veta, we do not subscribe to this methodology, especially in the beginning stages. This method does not suit people who have, in the first place not learnt the language or avoided learning the language as it puts them in a defensive mode. This is so especially to adult learners, who have been perhaps exposed to the language right from their school days. They did not like the language because it did not align with their native thought process. And secondly, they didn't feel any great need for it. Their own classmates and teachers spoke their mother tongue. Thus there was no need to learn a foreign language.