Using an electronic pen, his colleague Varinder Kumar highlights areas on his interactive computer screen where US students are making simple mistakes and suggests solutions real time.

India's outsourcing industry, which usually covers services such as software programs, customer management and accounting for companies abroad and at home, has discovered a new market for its talents.

Employing part-timers and staff tutors, outsourcing firms believe they have tapped a potential goldmine in what they call "e-tutoring" or "e-mentoring".

Educomp Datamatics Ltd., where Singh and Kumar work, is one of a small clutch of players in the market and its staff teach mathematics to around 800 students in the United States.

"Six months ago, we thought we would launch a pilot project and see the response," said Shantanu Prakash, chief of Educomp Datamatics, a firm which provides technology solutions such as digital content for the education sector.

"To our surprise, the response was phenomenal. Now we're stretched to capacity and instead of an earlier estimate of having 1,000 students by year-end, we're on course to touch 2,000," Prakash told AFP.

Singh, who has been working with the company since it started e-tutorials six months ago, said he liked the work so much, "I might even take it up as a full-time career."

The company has three outlets giving instruction to US students and is the largest player in the country's nascent Internet tutoring industry. So far at least half a dozen companies in India offer such tuition, said Prakash.

The firm has 20 math tutors, who work at night to bridge the 12-hour time gap between India and the United States, teaching students ranging from the sixth to 12th grades.

Educomp charges 20 dollars to 40 dollars an hour, according to the grade taught.

"India, which invented the numerical zero, has enough qualified teachers. Indians pick up mathematics pretty fast while in the US the kids are very weak," official Prakash said.

"Statistics show 40 percent of students in grade seven in the US fail mathematics every year. In India, the failure rate is five to 10 percent," he said. "To add to the problem there's an acute shortage of teachers in the US."

According to the US National Centre for Education Statistics, in a 2003 national assessment, 32 percent of American grade eight students failed to achieve even basic maths skills, 29 percent were at or above proficient level while only five percent had advanced skills.

The Internet students consult their Indian teachers at a pre-set time decided by e-mail. The virtual tutoring sessions last 30 minutes to an hour daily.

Most of the e-tutoring firms teach students through a combination of chat and interactive software that the students download from the company's website.

After the student downloads the software, the teacher prepares the course that is individually tailored to address the student's weaknesses.

The student can see the "white board" on his computer screen. The mathematics tutor teaches with a stylus or electronic pen.

Both can speak to each other through an Internet phone.

"It's the next best thing to having a teacher near you," Prakash said.

At Career Launcher, another e-mentoring firm employing 15 teachers, plans are afoot to hire more tutors due to huge demand for its services in the United States and the Middle East.

"At our centres, all topics such as sciences, English and mathematics are covered," said Anup Nautiyal, assistant vice president of Career Launcher.

"But mostly help is sought from students in the US for maths. It's surprising. They find it very difficult to solve simple calculations. Our (Indian) grasping power is good and so are the teachers," Nautiyal told AFP.

The teachers in both companies are trained to speak with US accents and earn about 7,000 rupees (155 dollars) a month.

Prakash and Nautiyal said a student would spend between 20 and 100 hours to complete the Internet tutoring course. The companies keep the names of the students strictly confidential.

And with 77 million students in the United States with Internet access, Prakash sees huge potential.

"We have not even scratched the surface," he said.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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