Virtually speaking, it is back to school for many working professionals in India. As corporate India continues its battle with the slowdown, employees across sectors are logging onto e-learning web sites to enhance some critical skill sets.

E-learning web sites, which are gaining popularity because of easy accessibility and user-friendliness, are becoming an effective way to imbibe skill sets. “In the past four to five months, because corporate demands are rising, we are seeing an increasing number of working professionals signing into our education modules,” said Sailesh Mehta, CEO & founder, Gurukul Online Learning Solutions (GOLS).

In the past five months, GOLS has seen a 50 per cent jump in the number of working professionals logging onto its websites. At present, the website claims to have one lakh professionals as students and Mehta expects the number to rise by 100 per cent by the year-end. The students belong to sectors ranging from IT, financial services to organised retail and logistics.

NIIT’s e-learning websites such as www.niit.com and www.hyperlessons.com are also attracting professionals who feel that they need an extra edge to fight the downturn. Says Vijay Thadani, CEO NIIT, “In the past six months, there has been a significant change in economic environment. Since organisations are looking to cut costs, they prefer to draft their training modules using e-learning, as it is cost-effective. This has resulted in a spurt of professionals logging on to education web sites to upgrade themselves.”

However, he added that e-learning alone couldn’t be a fall-back for imbibing all the skill sets needed to deal with downturn. NIIT’s e-learning initiative has 80,000 registered members and Thadani expects this to go up by at least 100 per cent by end of the year.

“Brushing up skill sets is becoming a norm especially among ambitious youngsters who are looking to excel in their works stations,” said Bindu Rana, programme director, R&D, Educomp Solutions.

Aptech Institute’s e-learning initiative is also seeing a similar trend with many working professionals looking at upgrading themselves both through the online and offline routes. At present, the size of online education is about 7.5 million users.

Viennova Solutions, another e-learning website, has a completely different mix of people logging in. “In the past six months, many people from tier I and tier II cities have been taking the e-learning route to learn basic computer education,” said Parikshit Jain, founder of Viennova Solutions. In these cities, e-learning has caught the attention of almost 25,000 people, Jain added.