Kalapathi group bets big on job entrance exam coaching business, acquires Chennai Race for Rs 100 crore

KV Lakshmana

Consulting Editor / [email protected] Twitter @kvlakshman

Education space is getting hot, and especially the organized tutoring for entrance examinations for jobs.

Chennai-based Kalapathi Group owned Veranda Learning Solutions on Monday declared acquiring Chennai Race, India’s leading coaching institute for Banking, SSC, and PSC exams. The transaction, valued at over INR 100 crores that includes stock and earn out, now leads to the launch of a new brand, called Veranda Race.

Veranda Race will initially offer result oriented online training programs for Banking, Staff Selection Commission and TNPSC. The focus of Veranda Race remains firmly on ensuring rigour and discipline amongst enrolled students thereby giving them the best opportunity to get jobs once they appear for written examinations.

Obviously the Kalapathi Group is looking at the Pan India market is planning to launch the course content in 11 Indian languages by the end of next year.

During the financial year 2019-20, Chennai Race recorded sales of about Rs 45 crores and has trained over 200,000 students so far across the states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, and Punjab. Beginning in Chennai, Race’s unique ‘6 level practice program’ which, helps students to improve their speed and accuracy in a short span of time, and their resulted oriented, strategic curriculum, developed for each type of competitive exams, has seen Chennai Race students filling up about 60 to 80 percent of Tamil Nadu’s vacancies in the past 4-5 years.

Suresh Kalpathi, CEO, Veranda Learning Solution told Infodea that “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 and years with addition of more products and languages. Race is a great brand to bring under our newly launched venture, as it opens new 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”.

Talking at the launch of the program Bharath Seeman, Promotor of Chennai Race & Head of Veranda Race, said “the Veranda Race programs are set for rollout nationally, in the coming months, targeting a revenue of Rs 50 crores in the first year. By the end of 2021, our content will be available in 11 Indian languages and we would be training around 50,000 to 60,000 students across the country. We have priced our courses around Rs 7500/- which includes course materials and mentoring support”.

“This partnership is an important opportunity for Race as a brand to grow big and take our ‘real result-oriented coaching’ approach to every part of the country. We launched ‘RACE’ in Dec -2012 and created a unique curriculum with focus on helping our students to land PSC and Banking jobs. At Veranda RACE the key metric to assess our success will be ‘number of students getting jobs’, which is the main goal of this venture.” Bharath added.

Veranda Learning Solution the new ed-tech venture from The Kalpathi Group, is India’s first comprehensive 360-degree online education platform.

Veranda Learning Solution offers training programs in test preparation for all competitive exams in India and abroad, including IIT JEE, NEET, GRE/TOEFL/IELTS/GMAT, IAS, State PSC, Banking/Staff Selection/RRB, CA/ACS related exams, Medical, K-12, NTSE and Olympiads. Veranda will also offer courses in software development namely databases, languages, development tools, cloud/analytics/big data/AI/ML platform and at an affordable price point.

Veranda is a unique online platform that combines the best of technology, processes, and methodologies that delivers high-quality content, seeking to be one of India’s first to offer a comprehensive 360-degree education. Focused on academic outcomes for its students, Veranda adopts a multi-modal delivery system backed by a rigorous and disciplined learning framework.