The recruitment industry may have hit the speed breaker but the demand for quality education is on upswing. Education was the only sector to have been unaffected in the economic turmoil played out in India.
Pearson, U.K listed player has announced their infusion plans of $30 million(145 crores) into educomp and tutorvista. Pearson would be infusing 85 Crores in a 50-50 joint venture with Educomp Solutions to provide vocational training. The rest of the investment would be in tutorvista as they would also be acquiring 17.2 per cent stake in the online tutoring company.
Pearson is an international media house specializing in education, business information and consumer publishing.This investment is in line with their objective to par-take in India’s educational growth. Some companies in this sector is witnessing growth rate in excess of 50%.
According to pearson India, “As for vocational training, Pearson has content and assessment capabilities. The partnership with Educomp brings execution capabilities. The joint venture with Educomp will focus on vocational training which would target blue collar jobs.”
The sector first came into limelight when Educomp, a listed player started showing huge up rise in share price and net profits way back in 2007 which made many foreign investors to sit up and take notice. Since then the sector has seen many heavy inflows varying from online education portals to offline educational business. The major companies in this sector includes Educomp, Everonn, Core projects, Tutorvista and other funded offline model companies like MT Educare.
The sector is also benefiting from the governments renewed thrust on education in India and the education cess collected on taxes which gets re-invested into the sector. The major opportunities arising in this sector is from the convergence of Interactive education in schools by way of third party management system provided by companies.
Many companies are even going to the extent of setting their own schools in order to derive maximum benefit. The sector would continue to hog the limelight as there is good perception of growth in future and deals such as this only renews the investor’s confidence.
