Kalpathi Group-owned Veranda Learning Solutions has acquired Chennai Race, a coaching institute for banking and competitive exams, for a deal valued at over ₹100 crore that includes stock and earn out.
The new entity will be called Veranda Race, and will initially offer result-oriented online training programmes for banking, staff selection commission and the Tamil Nadu Public Service Commission exams.
Suresh Kalpathi, CEO, Veranda Learning Solutions, told The Hindu that this is the first vertical that the firm has announced and more verticals are on cards. “IAS coaching, coaching for Chartered Accountancy and the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) are also under consideration and each of these would be separate verticals,” he said.
By December 2021, Veranda Race is also planning to launch course content in 11 Indian languages. “We will first start with the southern States and then we will go into Hindi, Marathi, Odia and Bengali. In the next 12 months, we plan to be there in all national languages,” Mr. Kalpathi said.
Bharath Seeman, promoter of Chennai Race and head of Veranda Race, said, “The Veranda Race programmes are set for rollout nationally, targeting a revenue of ₹50 crore in the first year. By the end of 2021,we would be training around 50,000 to 60,000 students across India.” He added, “The key metric to assess our success will be the number of students getting jobs, which is the main goal of this venture.”
During the financial year 2019-20, Chennai Race recorded sales of about ₹45 crore and has trained over 2,00,000 students.
