Create Elearning targets $56bn market

A GLASGOW entrepreneur who sold his last business for $1.3 million (£840,000) is gearing up his second venture for launch in dozens of markets around the world.

Mark Taggart demonstrates training can take place in any environment

Create Elearning, which began trading “in earnest” at the end of 2014, is predicting sales of at least £500,000 in its first year after picking up clients in the UK, Europe and the US. The firm is translating its product into French, German, Polish and Spanish and plans to have it available in 20 languages by the end of this year.

A graduate of the Entrepreneurial Spark accelerator prog­ramme, Create Elearning has developed a software platform that simplifies the process of delivering online training. ­Users can adapt it without any knowledge of coding, allowing organisations to tailor their workplace programmes.

The company is the brainchild of Mark Taggart, who sold his previous business, ­Pat­ient-Reminders, to Cenduit, part of US multinational Quintiles, for $1.3m in June 2013.

That deal generated a ten-fold return for the network of family and friends who backed Taggart in setting up the firm in 2010 and have invested £300,000 in Create Elearning, which Taggart suggested can grow to a much larger scale than his previous venture.

He said: “Patient-Reminders was a very different business. It was operating in a very risk-averse culture, where clients aren’t so willing to work with start-ups. This business has massive legs – workplace training is a $56 billion industry.”

Patient-Reminders is a cloud-based service to ensure participants in clinical drug trials take their medication as prescribed and attend appointments. It includes a module for training doctors and nurses on how to use the platform, which gave Taggart the idea for Create Elearning.

The firm employs five people in Glasgow, three in Germany and a ten-strong development team in Poland, and is now profitable on a monthly basis.

Taggart said: “I’ve been working more than ten years with tech start-ups and helping them grow, including my own firm, and I always noticed the need for an efficient training platform.”