Kalpathi Group's ed-tech arm Veranda acquires Chennai Race for Rs 100 cr

New brand Veranda Race will initially offer online training programmes for Banking, Staff Selection Commission and TNPSC; also plans course content in 11 Indian languages by December 2021

The Rs 4,000-crore Kalpathi Group's newly floated ed-tech firm Veranda Learning Solutions has acquired Chennai Race, a coaching institute for Banking, SSC, and PSC exams. The transaction is valued at around Rs 100 crore and includes stock and earn out. The deal leads to the launch of a new brand called Veranda Race.

Veranda Race will initially offer result-oriented online training programmes for Banking, Staff Selection Commission and TNPSC. Veranda Race also plans to launch course content in 11 Indian languages by December 2021.

During 2019-20, Chennai Race recorded sales of about Rs 45 crore. It has trained over 200,000 students so far, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, and Punjab.

Beginning in Chennai, Race’s ‘6 level practice program’ will help students improve speed and accuracy. Its resulted-oriented strategic curriculum, developed for each category of competitive exams, has seen Chennai Race students filling up 60-80 per cent of Tamil Nadu’s vacancies during the past 4-5 years.

Suresh Kalpathi, CEO, Veranda Learning Solution said, “In Race, we have see an alignment with our philosophy of rigour 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 its offerings and will further define our position in the sector, he added.

Bharath Seeman, Promotor of Chennai Race & Head of Veranda Race, said  “the Veranda Race programs are set for roll out nationally, in the coming months, targeting a revenue of Rs 50 crore in the first year.

By the end of 2021, the company's content will be available in 11 Indian languages and plans to train around 50,000 to 60,000 students across the country.

The company priced its 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.

‘RACE’ was launched in December 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.

 The Rs 4,000 crore Kalpathi Group recently forayed into $1.96 billion ed-tech space by launching Veranda Learning Solution with an initial investment of around Rs 50 crore.

The 25-year old Group was started by Suresh Kalpathi with his two brothers business interests including, education, software services, property development, finance, and entertainment. The Group also runs a VC fund called Kalpathi Investments. The Group started SSI went on to become the first Indian IT company to be listed on the London Stock Exchange and acquired Aptech.

Veranda will offer training programmes 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 others.