History

It began in a garage… by two students…

Electude was founded by John Vlaar (L) and Koen Berends (R) in 1990, while studying at University. As two young automotive whiz kids, they were invited to give specialized automotive training for educators.

Already back then, teachers were complaining about the declining quality of students and trainees. John and Koen disagreed completely, they felt the problem lay with outdated teaching methods and materials. As soon as they graduated, they founded Electude to apply a new approach to automotive training. The company was built with the vision of changing the traditional ways of educating vocational students.

Electude quickly grew into one of the Netherlands‘ leading automotive training institutes. By the second-half of the Nineties, John, Koen and Hans van der Riet, who had joined as the lead technologist, saw that the future of automotive education was with e-learning. Students and trainees did not want to read textbooks, manuals or watch videos. They wanted to learn by doing. The trio took their inspiration from realistic gaming industry and the first e-learning development began in 1999.

The early realization that e-learning could provide the required interaction to more effectively teach the new generation of students was major turning point for the company. Electude spent eight years developing Argo before attempting to roll it out. In the process, the company developed such a strong belief in the e-learning product which it was building, that after almost 15 years of making automotive training programmes and content, Electude shifted its focus to becoming an e-learning company.

In mid 2007, Argo was launched commercially. In 2009, Electude's management was strengthened by Thomas Snyder, who has been tasked with the commercial portfolio. In the three years since it was launched, there are Argo customers in over 30 countries around the world. In 2010, the United States became the largest market.