UP: Zee Learn to enter 'mass segment'

Zee Learn, the Essel Group’s educational arm, is planning to enter the ‘mass segment’ through the public private partnership (PPP) route.

The company is in talks with various state governments, including Maharashtra, Karnataka and Rajasthan to expand in the hinterland and cater to the mass market, an area dominated by government run schools.

“We are holding talks with the state governments for the PPP foray wherein we would facilitate pedagogy, train teachers and conduct performance audit of the schools,” Zee Learn’s national sales head Shafi M Mohammed told Business Standard here.

He said Zee Learn was also keen on opening up the process of dialogue with the Uttar Pradesh government in this regard. Zee Learn runs preschool Kidzee, higher secondary Mount Litera Zee Schools (MLZS) and activity based learning programme Braincafe across urban India and is the largest entity in the segment.

It currently runs over 900 preschools and 62 MLZS.

In UP, it runs about 110 Kidzee preschools and 22 MLZS and plans to set up 90 new Kidzee preschools and 18 MLZS by the end of 2013, especially in Varanasi, Allahabad, Gorakhpur and Meerut.

“There has been considerable progress in UP on education front and its literay rate improved to 70 per cent in 2011. However, it is still below the national average of 74 per cent and hence there is a lot of potential in the education space,” Mohammed added.

Almost 90 per cent of the Zee Learn institutions are franchisee owned. A typical Kidzee and MLZS franchisee invests Rs 8-10 lakh and Rs 8-10 crore respectively. Listed on both BSE and NSE, Zee Learn grew 43 per cent last year posting Rs 62 crore revenues.

He informed the company was exploring the possibility of setting up its own private university. “The school education segment has not faced any slowdown in recent times, since there has been a rising demand for quality education,” he underlined.