T.I.M.E picks up majority in English coaching chain Veta

Triumphant Institute of Management Education Pvt Ltd (T.I.M.E.), an established test-prep institutes for admissions to the IITs and IIMs, has acquired a majority stake in English coaching institute Veta for around Rs 60 crore.

Chennai-based Veta, formerly known as Vivekananda Institute, has 250 centres across India and has trained over 2.2 million people to speak English. This move by the Triumphant Institute to acquire an English coaching franchise is part of an overall strategy to expand its offerings after focusing heavily on CAT coaching. Veta was advised on the deal by Mape Advisory Group.

T.I.M.E., over the past few years, has forayed into pre-school segment with T.I.M.E. Kids and presently has 35 schools across the four southern states. Apart from this, T.I.M.E. has also ventured into formal education with its co-educational, non-residential CBSE schools. Presently, T.I.M.E. School operates out of two locations in Hyderabad.

T.I.M.E has revenues of close to Rs 200 crore and is planning to continue its aggressive growth rate by adding new courses to its product portfolio and increasing its market penetration by enhanced geographical spread.

T.I.M.E. Kids, the pre-school chain, launched in 2008 along with its chain of primary schools and T.I.M.E. School, are expected to be the key drivers to the ambitious plans that T.I.M.E has laid out for its growth. By 2012, T.I.M.E. is looking at over 100 pre-schools being operational.

Additionally, while T.I.M.E. has already made forays into the highly challenging area of training for state-level engineering and medical entrance exams, it is now looking at achieving a national presence in these fields soon. It expects the number of students being trained annually to increase from the current figure of about 150,000 to about 300,000 by 2013-2014. T.I.M.E. also offers an IIT Foundation programme aimed at students of classes 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th. This programme focuses on strengthening the student’s conceptual clarity of the fundamentals in Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry.

T.I.M.E is among India’s leading test-prep institute with a pan-India presence and is headquartered in Hyderabad. Established in 1992, T.I.M.E. on Wednesday operates out of 204 offices located in 107 towns and cities across the country. Over 50 IIT/IIM graduates form part of the core team at T.I.M.E. T.I.M.E. has over the years built up specialities and offers a wide range of programmes not only for national and state-level entrance exams like the CAT, MAT, IIT-JEE and AIEEE, but also for international exams like GMAT, GRE, IELTS and TOEFL. The company also has a share in the campus recruitment training programme, through which it trains thousands of students every year in various engineering colleges across the country in aptitude tests and communication skills while preparing them for their campus placements.

In keeping with its tradition of always maintaining a watchful eye on market trends and tapping them, T.I.M.E. has introduced training programmes for the Chartered Accounting CPT examination, bank PO and clerical exams, GATE and CSAT.

T.I.M.E. has achieved an important milestone of training more than 800,000 students since inception and over 150,000 students in the last year alone for the various entrance examinations.