The institute will initially invest Rs 2.5 crore in the venture. The company is in talks with business partners who can invest a similar amount in the company.

An application to the Foreign Investment Promotion Board for permission to set up the subsidiary will be moved within the first quarter of the next calender year, WWWI managing director Bruce Elliott told The Financial Express.

Encouraged by the response from the Indian market, the institute is not only eager to set up its direct presence in training, but might also shift its internet career product development and design base to India.

WWWI, which licensed its first franchisee training centre in India in late 1997, is also talking to a large number of entrepreneurs to increase thenumber of franchisees here. It presently has 18 centres located all over India. The plan is to increase it to at least 40 by the end of the year.Besides, the institute is keen to enter strategic alliances with Indian education and training majors like NIIT and Aptech to quickly extend its market reach.

"They are very well established players with such fantastic reach and understanding of the market. If we can derive from their strengths, why not have a tie-up with them. I do not see them as rivals," according to Elliott.

The institute, which has been offering just one specialist 240-hour course called Certified Web Master divided into four modules so far, will introduce its second course soon. It is an e-commerce-centric course called E-Commerce Master. WWWI students comprise IT professionals, school passouts and other professionals who want to migrate to the IT industry.

Interestingly, WWWI is also keen to shift the programme research and design for its internet career products base to India.

"The best content developers are here and the Indian market appreciates the finer product. This will allow us to make derivative products for other Asia-Pacific markets such as Singapore and Malaysia. Hence, we are also evaluating the possibility of developing that core engine in India," Elliott said. Though WWWI is seeking to aggressively increase its operations in the entire Asia-Pacific region, the Indian subsidiary will be the only one in the entire region, according to Elliott.

"Not only because the English speaking pool of talent in the Indian software industry is immense, its economic fundamentals and strong presence of information technology corporates here presents a fabulous opportunity for us to set up more centres and also have a few of our own centres," said Elliott.

It will set up five centres in Malaysia, one each in Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei and Australia before the end of this year.