Terming the range of pathbreaking technology initiatives as "the biggest ever" carried out by an Indian company, founder and managing director, Rajendra S Pawar said that "NIIT would invest Rs 60 crore to meet required infrastructural changes".

"This investment is besides the work and effort our team of researchers and experts have put in. We are yet to tabulate those expenditures from within the organisation," he said after announcing the global launch of web-centric curriculum here on Sunday.

According to Pawar, the new education programmes will come into effect in eight metros from Monday and other major cities would follow suit in the coming months.

"We are hoping to implement this pattern in other cities in phases and expect to cover 70 to 80 per cent ofremaining centres in the next quarter," he said. Asked whether the new curriculum would result in a hike in course fees, Pawar said, there would be a modest increase of about 15 per cent in the course fees. Pawar said the three areas NIIT would focus on would be enhanced computer practice sessions, a methodology involving applications of skills on "real life problems faced by software developers" and a strong web-centric curriculum. The new web-centric curriculum represents a revolutionary way of learning computers and offers instructional and technological additions with a series of systematic changes to equip students to function successfully in the Internet environment, Pawar said."The new technology will implement on-line classroom earning, internet access to students and will impart NIIT's proprietory technology model centered learning architecture (MCLA)," he said. With this the company will also launch India into linux, Pawar said adding that the terminal server technology adopted by the company wouldhelp them implement new curriculum seamlessly. The curriculum also helps students to prepare for information technology (IT) certification exams that give an edge to the globally recognised GNIIT title."The new packages delivers modules specially mapped to certification objectives of Microsoft and Java technologies from Microsoft and Sun Microsystems respectively," Pawar said. He said that by providing computers in every classrooms NIIT has created a capacity of over 100 million hours of student computer sessions per year.