Mr Mohit Shah, Mr Rohit Khurana and Mr Ritesh Dudeja are all in their mid-twenties. They met a year ago, when they were chosen to work together on a computer education project, Websity, of IIS Infotech Ltd.

On exchanging notes, they found that none of them was satisfied with the work they were doing. Each of them had ambitions to start a business of his own. That plus a common love for eating out brought them close. And at one such outing, they hit upon the idea of setting up a state-of-the-art e-commerce learning centre, the eAcademy Centre for Advanced Learning.pThen began the search for a venture capitalist who would provide the funds to shape the dream into reality. Luckily for them, thy didn't have to wait too long. "The Rs 225 crore ITL group, which funded the Websity project, agreed to back our eAcademy," says Mr Shah, now director, marketing and communications, eAcademy Centre for Advanced Learning.

He adds, "The state-of-the art e-commerce learning centre was set up in the month of June this year as a part of ITL Education Solutions Ltd, which is a subsidiary of the ITL group."

Apart from the extreme flexibility of the courseware that allows for accommodating new technology such as Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) and Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS), the other big advantage of the programme at eAcademy is its pedagogy, called Theoropractical.

"The concept is nothing new," explains Mr Khurana, director, technical, eAcademy, "but no one practises it at the moment." According to Mr Khurana, under the theoropractical mode of teaching, each student will have a PC before him and whatever the teacher teaches him will be displayed on the PC.

This means that a student gets 100 per cent practical time. The theory and practical classes are not separate, but combined into one so that each student gets the opportunity to check the practical applications of the theory he is being taught. "This is more like our old gurukul system," says Mr Khurana.

Getting into the computer education business has suddenly become remunerative, thanks to the onslaught of Internet technology. And like many others, these three entrepreneurs too are not averse to making a fortune.

None of them has more than 4-5 years' experience in the field, but they are enterprising and ambitious.

A Delhi University graduate and still unmarried, Mr Shah started earning in 1993, when he was still in class 12, working as a door-to-door salesman.

"I'm a self-made man," he says proudly. "For my pocket money, I never depended on my parents, who were engineers with a government of India enterprise. After my graduation, I took up my career in sales and have worked for Maruti, Hewlett Packard, STP and IIS Infotech. But I never liked working under someone, I wanted to be my own boss."

Of the three, only Mr Khurana has a hardcore computer background. He is a computer engineer from Kurukshetra University and an accredited systems engineer (ASE). He is also the only one of the three who is married. "My wife teaches computers at Apeejay School and she is very supportive when it comes to my business," says Mr Khurana. He adds, "My sister is also a computer teacher and I started learning computers when I was still in school. After completing class 12, I joined a computer programming course and took it up as my profession."

Mr Dudeja is an MBA from the Amity School of Management. He is also an engineer from Nagpur University.

None of the three belong to a business family. While Mr Khurana's father is employed at ACC, Mr Dudeja's parents are school teachers. But that hasn't deterred the three from making a success of eAcademy. For if numbers speak for success, then an initial enrollment of 200 students is a laudable achievement indeed.