Hyderabad-based VAS player, IMImobile and IL&FS Education & Technology Services limited joined hands to offer ‘English Seekho’ services on mobile phones.

The service aims to offer English language learning skills in form of casual lessons and also targets non-native English speakers such as junior level clerks, traders, unskilled laborers, frontline staff, taxi drivers, restaurant waiters, farmers.

The content will be offered in 7 languages including Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Marathi, Bengali, Telugu and Malayalam. The services will be offered over interactive voice response (IVR) mode while grammar lessons will be offered over SMS channel as well.

The course structure consists of 10 chapters and 44 lessons with one lesson per day of 5-8 minutes. The curriculum provides a special focus on interviews, getting jobs and on job training. The total length of the programme is of 350 minutes. The subscription price for the service is Rs.30 per month while calls will be charged 30 paise per minute.

Madhavan Iyer, Vice President Managed Services, IMImobile said, “We have always been working towards innovation in telecom VAS space, and have realised that the huge potential the medium presents can only be unlocked by expanding the consumption boundaries. Our association with IL&FS Education is another step to expand definition and benefit boundaries of the end consumers. With this alliance we are confident of providing the mobile users an intelligent platform that will enable them to eventually get acquainted with M-learning and thus utilize its services to the fullest.”

Ninad Vengurlekar, Head of New Media in Education at IL&FS Education commented,  "Globally M-Learning is still at a nascent stage and therefore IL&FS Education is having deep engagements with its subscribers to develop the right instructional methodology and content that can impact learning. For example, English Seekho is built on IL&FS Educations'' long experience in teaching english skills to over 200,000 rural and urban youth and school children. We believe that M-Learning is more about quality of education delivery and less about mobile technology and hence our product development efforts in m-learning have been slow and cautious, rather than fast and frivolous. VAS, by default provides scale in India, and therefore we are focused on developing strong learning outcomes for our products."