The details of the joint venture, likely to be announced in a couple of months, are still being worked out with two Chinese companies. In two years, the venture is expected to emerge as Aptech's biggest foray abroad.

Aptech will make an initial investment of Rs 2.5 crore in the venture, with the Chinese companies expected to make matching equity investment, Aptech managing director Ganesh Natarajan told The Financial Express on Tuesday.

The company will launch its first training centre in Beijing by the end of 1999. It is already working on the development of course content in Chinese languages.

The Chinese foray is part of Aptech's ambitious global expansion plan of having 100 foreign centres in 40 countries, including Russia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia. It presently runs 1,250 training centreslocated in India and 24 countries. Most of the overseas centres are presently located in the US, Europe and Africa.

The company is keen to corner 20 per cent of the world's total career education market, estimated to be $1 billion by year 2002, according to Natarajan.

For Vietnam operations, the company has entered into a strategic alliance with the government sector IT organisation FPT Corporation which will set up centres in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh cities soon. While Russian operations have already started, Aptech will add four new centers in Malaysia by end of the year to the present one. Similarly, it plans to open three new centres in Saudi Arabia.

"Besides eight Indian languages, it has developed course content in Chinese, Spanish and Russian which will help our global expansion," Natarajan said.

Natarajan indicated that the company will maintain 24 per cent per annum growth. It will soon announce its half-yearly results for the six-months ended June 1999. The company is looking at a four-foldrevenue increase by 2003.

However, Natarajan emphasised that the core emphasis of Aptech will remain on education and training which will continue to rake in 80 per cent of the targeted Rs 1,000 crore revenue by 2002. At present, it is earning Rs 250 crore from education and Rs 30 crore from software development.

"For the next four years we will target an annual growth of 30 per cent in education business and a 100 per cent growth in the software development activities," he added.

Leading the software thrust will be tie-ups with a string of lesser known US-based technology firms with which Aptech will jointly develop software templates for e-commerce applications.

Aptech has recently entered into alliances with several major players in university, technology and e-commerce segments to ensure quality of its programmes, he added. On Monday, it launched a bachelor degree in computer education in affiliation with the Manipal Academy of Higher Education.