The Venture Intelligence Blog

As the only industry in which investments continued to growth through the 2008-09 downturn, Private Equity & Venture Capital investors continue to be bullish about investing in Education companies, reveals a new report – the second edition of “Private Equity Pulse on Education” - from research firm Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of data and analysis on PE/VC and M&A activity in India,. Nitish Poddar and Aneesh Vijayakar of KPMG set the tone for the report in an article highlighting the opportunities and challenges facing Private Equity investors in Education. They point out how the demand-supply gap, higher spending by consumers, superior quality perception of private sector offerings and government reforms, are set to drive growth of the industry. They highlight regulatory hurdles, need for complex structuring, lack of exit routes and shortage of management & faculty talent as key constraints for making investments. According to data from Venture Intelligence, ...

Edited excerpts from the press release: Fidelity Growth Partners India (FGPI) is to invest up to $15M to acquire a significant minority stake in Mind Shaper Technologies Private Limited. Branded as Classteacher Learning Systems, the company is a pioneer in K-12 educational content in the country. The investment will be used to further the company’s product portfolio and strengthen Classteacher’s role as an organization that combines technology and innovation as part of its commitment to education. At present the company has one of the largest repositories of digital education content in the industry with about 85,000 teaching modules mapped to multiple education boards. The company offers an integrated solution to assist teaching in classrooms using software, hardware and school support services. This provides an ideal platform to make learning an enjoyable and enriching experience. As part of this investment Mr. Kabir Narang and Mr. Raul Rai with FIL Capital Advisors (India), the pri...

As part of its Cover Story on Education, Business Today has an article on how private ventures are now increasingly targeting the K-12 segment. Six months ago, Manipal K-12 broke new ground by taking over Sharada School, Mysore. “We offer two choices to managements of schools that fit our business model. They can either pay us to manage their schools professionally or transfer management responsibilities,” says (CEO Meena Ganesh). The firm has also taken over four schools in Nepal recently. She plans to manage 100 K-12 schools and set up six International schools in the next five years. ...The K-12 (Kindergarten to Class 12) is estimated to be worth half the $42-billion (Rs 2,01,600 crore) private education market in India and growing fast enough to double in a decade. Analysts expect the share of average household spend on education to increase from the present seven per cent to nine per cent by 2018. Technopak, a consulting firm, sees enrollments in K-12 growing to 351 million, requ...

In an article for the Economic Times, Bureaucrat-turned-Education CEO Amit Kaushik, calls for "bold new steps" that will encourage private investments in schools. The simplest way to do so would be by allowing private schools to be held under one of two options: schools could either be operated by not-for-profit foundations as is presently the case, with the understanding that such schools would not be allowed to charge high fees and would have to include children from underprivileged backgrounds, or by for-profit commercial entities set up like any other business venture by the corporate sector. The latter entities could be treated at par with other commercial venture, subject to taxes and applicable company laws, but allowed to distribute surpluses to investors as dividends. It is not unreasonable to allow a reasonable return on investment in order to attract that investment in the first place. Naturally, schools set up by private companies would not be eligible for conces...