Education on the web

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Operating out of an office in a business park in north London, iLearn.To is a rarity in the dotcom backlash - it is making money, while other startups are going bust. In September and October, the two-year-old online learning company made US dollars 360,000.

www.Ilearn.To is also different in that it was created by a Vietnamese refugee, Sieng Van Tran, 25, who came to Britain at the age of six, one of the hundreds of thousands who fled Vietnam by boat. Speaking no English, when he arrived, he resorted to the computer at home to catch up with his schoolmates.

A university degree in artificial intelligence and a six-month stint in the US, where he saw the potential of the internet laid the groundwork for his startup. ILearn.To has made a promising start, but the online learning sector is getting tougher all the time.

Last month, CityJobs, one of Europe's top online recruitment firms teamed up with BlueU, an e-learning company, to provide more than 500 specialist courses in finance and IT. In early November, Bookacourse.com launched its revamped website providing access to what it claimed was the largest e-marketplace for IT training in the UK.

In August, Forrester Research, the internet research group, revealed that of 40 leading corporations, all but one had online training initiatives in place.

"Firms turn to online training as a way to enable the lifelong learning habits required by the new economy. As they do, vendors ranging from traditional training consultancies to presentation-tools providers rush to tap this opportunity," Forrester said.

Firms like online learning because it is convenient and cheap. Employees can log on to courses from their desktops. Forrester identified more than 100 online learning players and expects the field to get even more crowded.

In the US, some big names already have put down claims in this market. So far the biggest is Michael Milken, the former junk bond maestro. He has partnered Oracle's Larry Ellison in Knowledge Universe, a conglomerate for educational and training ventures, online or otherwise. Elsewhere, the Washington Post company is investing heavily in Webucation.

Forrester predicts that gaming programmers will eventually jump on the online learning bandwagon. Games companies have the expertise that education software developers lack to develop lively and interactive training programs for e-learning in a merging of education and entertainment on the net.

Soon it will no longer be enough for companies to tout massive catalogues of courses as offered by Click2learn, SkillSoft and iLearn.To. Firms such as MindLever.com are in a position to steal customers by offering firms the tools and services to create, track and manage their own specialised content.

Tran has shown impressive resourcefulness and nous so far. The firm survived a rocky patch when promised technical and financial support from Outsource, a group set up by Alan Watkins, formerly of Cisco Systems, failed to materialise. ILearn. To severed the relationship, trimmed staff, cut expenses and paid no money to staff for four months. It has since gone back to 10 people, although their north London office has all the classic signs of startups, down to the mattresses stuffed in the cupboards for overnight stays.

The iLearn.To logo appears on 20 co-branded sites including Bank of Scotland, BT and Reuters. Alliances with such big established companies are quite a coup for such a small company, and free publicity through programmes on the BBC has helped spread iLearn's reputation as an energetic and innovative firm. Its first partner was British telecomms giant BT, which heard of the company through the grapevine and Intel, the microchip company, has supplied much technical help

One of iLearn.To's most valuable alliances is with McGraw-Hill, the American publisher. Subscribers have access to scores of McGraw- Hill courses, which would normally cost at least US dollars 1,440 through the publisher itself. It seems odd that McGraw-Hill would want to make its products available to an upstart like iLearn.To at about a tenth of the cost.

Tran believes McGraw-Hill needed a channel for its content as it would cost too much for the company to rebrand itself as an online learning company. But he finds it strange that McGraw-Hill would risk cannibalising its content. "I am slightly worried. The barriers to entry are very low and a company like Pearsons can jump in at any time."

Crucial to iLearn.To's survival has been its partnership with the British Department for Education and Employment. Anyone with an individual learning account can put the US dollars 216 towards the US$(Trade Mark) subscription fee. In effect, for only US dollars 36, that subscriber=has access to all of iLearn.To's courses for a year. Ilearn. To targets individuals and small to medium enterprises and Tran hopes to make the courses entirely free to learners by persuading sympathetic employers and other organisations to foot the initial expense.

Tran is also banking on iLearn.To's ability to move quickly. It can offer subscribers a massive catalogue of vocational courses, mostly in IT, some 665 courses in all.

Tran wants to ally with "knowledge champions", or individuals who create their own courses in exchange for half of the course proceeds such as royalties and sponsorship deals. "We want to turn your intellectual capital into an e-commerce proposition," he says.

The company's software continuously searches for information relevant to subscribers' interests and delivers it to their desktops.

Tran compares iLearn.To to the Greek method, when Socrates and Plato wandered like Gypsies, educating as they went. In this model, the learning comes to you via the desktop rather than you going to a classroom.

He believes that online learning can have a huge impact on countries such as China, which is seeking to catch up in the global economy, but which lacks the resources to build brick and mortar universities.

There is a reason, why companies are flocking to online learning. People are willing to pay, especially for the business education market. Ilearn.To is already making waves, with some of its competitors accusing it of killing the market because of low rates.

It sounds rather implausible, but this fledgling company run by a 25-year-old Vietnamese refugee, plans to be one of key players in online learning in Britain