QAI planning to raise $5-10 m for expansion 
The Hindu Business Line, Saturday, July 14, 2001

QUALITY Assurance Institute (QAI) India recently set up a wholly-owned subsidiary in Singapore and is planning one in the US by the year-end. The company would be investing close to Rs 5 crore in both these subsidiaries.

It is also planning to raise $5-10 million through second round funding by October this year.

``Our current requirement is to the tune of $5 million, but depending on the scale of expansion, we may raise up to $10 million,'' said Mr Navyug Mohnot, Executive Director, QAI. It had offloaded nearly 11 per cent of its equity earlier this year to raise an undisclosed sum.

QAI is planning to launch a slew of services in India, which include an e-learning initiative and quality management practices for the IT-enabled services sector.

It also plans to popularise the recently launched Certified Software Test Engineer (CSTE) programme.

``We are planning to go in a big way in promoting the e-learning initiative, expected to be launched three months down the line. The main motive behind this is to reach a large number of professionals,'' Mr Mohnot said.

``We will be hosting all our training material and curriculum on the Web so that a large number of software professionals have access to our course material. We would be also asking the IT corporates to host our training material on their intranets.''

He added: ``In short, we will be productising our services and aim to create a global brand for our e-learning initiative.''

QAI, a joint venture between QAI (US) and INTECOS, India, has trained some 40,000 professionals till date in various quality management and software engineering processes.

It is also planning to aggressively promote its another initiative, Softwaredioxide.com, the ecosystem for software.

In the first phase of its e-learning initiative, the company planned to target India, the US and South-East Asia, and in the second phase, it would be looking at countries such as Japan, Europe and Australia, Mr Mohnot said.

QAI, whose charter is to facilitate enhanced competitiveness among software organisations through multi-faceted interventions, is looking at non-linear growth and aims to grow big in the next 2-3 years.

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