E-Corp brings ESL tech firm's HQ to Vermont

By Galen Moore

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E-Corporate English (E-Corp), a French company providing tech-supported English as a Second Language training (ESL), is moving its headquarters to Middlebury, Vt., the company is expected to announce in a press conference today in Middlebury. E-Corp is bringing in-house its IT department, previously outsourced to an Indian firm, said CEO and founder Deborah Schwartz, and expects to hire 28 people in Middlebury in the coming year.

The move is backed by equity investors, including General Catalyst Partners Managing Director George Bell, said David Bradbury, Vermont Seed Capital Fund president. Bell is investing as an individual angel, Schwartz said. The quasi-public Vermont Seed Capital Fund is putting in $200,000, and the Vermont Economic Development Authority is putting in $175,000, Schwartz said. She declined to discuss the private investors’ participation. Boston-area angel investor Roy Rodenstein is the company’s technical advisor but is not investing, she said. E-Corp has been profitable since 2007.

E-Corp provides language learning via e-learning programs, and live distance learning, including virtual classes and telephone classes. “We teach them to do their job in English,” Schwartz said.

In relocating to the U.S., E-Corp settled on Vermont for a handful of reasons – some related to Vermont’s concentration of French speakers. “We made a national search, and we looked at states that met our four criteria, which were to have a strong IT infrastructure, availability of skilled IT and management personnel, as well as telephone trainers, and the third was linguistic capability: our markets are France and China.”

The fourth category, she said, was proximity to an international airport, which Middlebury has in Montreal.