S Chand and Company Limited, one of India’s largest Education content Companies, has recently announced that it will sell its entire stake in the artificial intelligence and data sciences-focused EdTech platform iNeuron Intelligence Private Limited to Physicswallah for a consideration of INR 14 crores. Co-investors Mukesh Sharma Family Trust would also be exiting iNeuron, the company has said in a filing to the stock exchanges.
The acquisitions come at a time when edtech companies, including some of the biggest and most valued, have seen demand moderate after the reopening of schools, colleges and physical tuition centres.
With a return of over 2x on the original investment of approx. Rs7 crores in December 2021, this is the second recent exit for S Chand and Company Limited from its various EdTech Investments on back of the recently concluded exit in Testbook with an ~ 8x return on investment in July, 2022, the company further mentioned.
S Chand along with its wholly owned subsidiaries Vikas Publishing and Chhaya Prakashani had acquired a minority stake in iNeuron Intelligence Private Limited in December 2021 in two tranches; it completed its second tranche of investment in September 2022. Both the companies have agreed to collaborate and work together on university collaborations.
Commenting on the exit, CFO of S Chand and Company Limited, Saurabh Mittal, said:
This announcement is a definitive step in the portfolio diversification journey that we set out on. iNeuron and S Chand have agreed to work together to empower students and job seekers with education and experiential skills regardless of their economic and academic backgrounds and have built together a learning infrastructure that does not restrict itself to physical settings. We are happy to now hand over the reins to one of India’s most loved education platforms and are confident that both iNeuron and PhysicsWallah with their expert faculty and focus on blended solutions will have great synergy and the potential to spearhead India’s digital learning journey.
Mittal further added:
This transaction additionally enables us to monetize our EdTech investments at an attractive valuation and provides opportunities to explore future investments that align with our growth strategies. We are focused on developing our own solutions and channels of interactive learning for K-12, test prep & college and will be launching newer initiatives and content to spearhead and navigate India’s journey on the back of the New Education Policy 2020.
S Chand, which aims to bring people and knowledge together, delivers content across the length and breadth of the country with established brands like S Chand, Madhubun, Vikas, Chhaya, Saraswati and Mylestone under its umbrella and a distribution reach of more than 3500 channel partners across India. With a footprint in more than 40,000 schools, colleges, universities, and institutes throughout India, it has consolidated the country’s fragmented education content market.
The company provides content, solutions, and services across the educational lifecycle through its presence in three business segments- Early Learning, K-12 and Higher Education and has also expanded its product portfolio through digital learning acquisitions. The Group is one of the market leaders in K-12 segment and has a strong foothold in the CBSE/ICSE and WBSE affiliated schools, with an increasing presence in the other state board affiliated schools across India. It has its own digital business includes platforms such as S Chand Academy (YouTube), TestCoach App, Learnflix App and Mylestone Curriculum Solutions and is also an investor in Smartivity Labs private Limited which is an education STEAM toys company founded by IIT alumni Ashwini Kumar, Apoorv Gupta and Rajat Jain
LoEstro Advisors LLP is the exclusive financial advisor to iNeuron and the existing shareholders.
Founded as a bootstrapped company in mid-2020 by Alakh Pandey and Prateek Maheshwari, PhysicsWallah recently forayed into offline coaching space by opening an institute in Kota, the country’s coaching capital. The company has been on an acquiring spree after it raised $100 million in a funding round in June 2022 at a unicorn valuation. It has since acquired at least four companies.
