CDEL & Educomp Solutions Ltd Reach Exclusive Licensing and Distribution Agreement

BEIJING, and NEW DELHI, India, Oct. 12 /PRNewswire-Asia-FirstCall/ -- China Distance Education Holdings Limited (NYSE: DL) ("CDEL" or the "Company"), a leading provider of online education in China focusing on professional education, and Educomp Solutions ("Educomp"), India's largest education company, today announced an agreement whereby Educomp, through its Singapore subsidiary AsknLearn Pte., has granted CDEL exclusive rights to license and distribute Educomp's Smart Class(R), Edulearn and Wizlearn products in the People's Republic of China (excluding Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan).

Educomp's Smart Class(R), Edulearn and Wizlearn products provide dynamic multimedia learning, teaching and administrative content and tools aimed at improving teacher effectiveness and productivity in-class, improving academic performance of students, and effectively managing school administrative processes. The solutions are primarily aimed at the primary and secondary school markets, and will significantly bolster CDEL's primary and secondary school offering. As part of the agreement, CDEL will provide students and schools in China with access to Smart Class(R), Edulearn and Wizlearn via its online platform.

Zhengdong Zhu, Chairman and CEO of CDEL, said, "I am pleased to announce our new partnership with Educomp, a leader in the development of dynamic, multimedia content and solutions for the primary and secondary education markets. As part of our growth strategy, we have successfully launched a number of initiatives to penetrate the large K-12 education market in China, including the development and roll out of a platform which allows courses taught by well known teachers in China to be recorded online and made available to schools and students across the country, even in remote areas. With this agreement, we can now offer participating schools in this program access to Educomp's market leading education content and multimedia learning tools via our platform, a clear value-add which we believe will strengthen our offering and attract more students and member schools to our K-12 program."

Shantanu Prakash, CEO and MD, Educomp Solutions Ltd, said, "China represents a large and growing market opportunity for Educomp, and we are excited to partner in this important market with CDEL, the leading online education company in China." Rakesh Sood, Business Head - Asia Pacific for Educomp, added, "The combination of our leading multimedia educational content with CDEL's proven online platform and local market knowledge creates a robust and dynamic educational tool for students and teachers alike. We look forward to working together with our partners at CDEL to help drive the adoption of our products in China."

About China Distance Education Holdings Limited

China Distance Education Holdings Limited is a leading provider of online education in China focusing on professional education. The courses offered by the Company through its websites are designed to help professionals and other course participants obtain and maintain the skills, licenses and certifications necessary to pursue careers in China in the areas of accounting, law, healthcare, construction engineering, information technology and other industries. The Company also offers online test preparation courses to self- taught learners pursuing higher education diplomas or degrees and to secondary school and college students preparing for various academic and entrance exams. In addition, the Company offers online foreign language courses, offline GaoKao retake courses and offline business start-up training courses. Further information is available at the investor relations website at http://ir.cdeledu.com .

About Educomp Solutions Ltd

Founded in 1994, Educomp is a globally diversified education solutions provider and the largest education company in India. The company has been at the forefront of pioneering initiatives in the education space over the years. With an employee base of more than 10000 professionals, Educomp serves 26,000 schools and 16 million learners and educators in India as well as the US, Canada, Singapore and Sri Lanka. Educomp has partnered with leading global education companies such as Raffles Corporation and Pearson to offer best-in- class higher education and vocational programs to students. Educomp's long undiluted focus on curriculum design and teacher education space, in developing applications and products, has revolutionized leverage of information technology and Internet for education. For more information, visit http://www.educomp.com

Educomp's Smart Class(R) is a multimedia digital content and e-learning program consisting of curriculum based digital instruction materials designed to enable teachers to transact difficult curriculum concepts inside the class and has built-in student self-learning and assessment features that enhance and monitor comprehension by the students.

Edulearn is one of AsknLearn's flagship products. It is a comprehensive Learning Management System (LMS) that comes with an array of features that allow teachers to create a dynamic and vibrant e-learning platform for their students. The system comes complete with various reusable learning objects and pre-packaged content for students. EduLearn is designed to be used by Primary and Secondary schools.

Wizlearn is a full featured, scalable Advanced Learning Platform. It is a comprehensive solution that incorporates 2 systems into 1, a learning management system for the students and instructors, and also an Administrative Management system that manages staff, administration and learning resource matters. Wizlearn is compliant to major e-learning standards such as SCORM and QTI. It is also built on a scalable architecture that supports web farms and database clusters that can support large numbers of concurrent users. It also has multi-language compatibility which ensures that the system can be ported internationally. ( http://www.asknlearn.com )

    For more information, please contact:

    China Distance Education:

     China Distance Education Holdings Limited
     Lingling Kong, IR Manager
     Tel:   +86-10-8231-9999 x1805
     Email: [email protected]

     Investor Relations (US):
     Mahmoud Siddig, Director
     Taylor Rafferty
     Tel:   +1-212-889-4350
     Email: [email protected]

     Investor Relations (HK):
     Ruby Yim, Managing Director
     Taylor Rafferty
     Tel:   +852-3196-3712
     Email: [email protected]

    Educomp Solutions Ltd:

     Educomp Towers,
     514, Udyog Vihar Phase III
     Gurgaon - 122 001, Haryana
     Tel:   +91-124-4529000
     Email: [email protected]

SOURCE China Distance Education Holdings Limited