Veranda Learning Solutions, the newly launched education technology venture of Kalpathi Group, has recently acquired coaching institute Chennai Race for Rs 100 crore in a stock and earn-out deal.
With this, the new venture has been rebranded to Veranda Race. The acquisition comes less than a month after Veranda Learning was launched by Kalpathi Group, a Chennai-based company with operations in education, software, venture capital and entertainment, with a focus on test prep sector.
Chennai Race offers coaching for examinations related to banking, staff selection commission (SSC) and public service commission (PSC). The institute has so far trained over 2 lakh students across four states – Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and Punjab. Chennai Race claimed that its students fill up about 60-80% of Tamil Nadu’s vacancies in the past 4-5 years. During the 2019-20 fiscal, the company recorded sales of about Rs 45 crore.
Commenting on the development, Suresh Kalpathi, CEO, Veranda Learning Solutions, said,
“In Race, we see an alignment with our philosophy of rigor and discipline in their education delivery, focus on outcomes and affordability to the real India. We expect Veranda Race to grow significantly in the coming months, with addition of more products and languages. Race is a great brand to bring under our newly launched venture, as it opens possibilities in the core areas of our business….The acquisition of Race will bolster our offerings and will further define our position in the sector.”
According to a statement, the new brand Veranda Race will initially offer online training programs for banking, SSC, and Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission (TNPSC).
Bharath Seeman, promoter of Chennai Race and who will also head Veranda Race, said the new brand targets revenue of Rs 50 crore in the first year, and it plans to launch course content in 11 Indian languages by end of 2021. He also added that they have priced their courses at Rs 7,500, which includes course materials and mentoring support.
Veranda Learning aims to be a large player to offer training programs in test preparation for all competitive exams in India and abroad, including IIT-JEE, NEET, IAS, state PSC, banking/SS/RRB, CA/ACS related exams, NTSE and Olympiads, besides the larger K-12 school segment.
Apart from its focus on test prep programs, Veranda Learning also plans to offer courses in software skills such as languages and databases, and frontier technologies including artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, analytics and others.
