Narayana to buy stake of Morgan Stanley, BanyanTree in Nspira at Rs 1.4k cr

Morgan Stanley PE and BanyanTree currently hold a 20 per cent stake in Narayana's group firm Nspira Management Services

Education group Narayana is looking to buy the stakes of Morgan Stanley Private Equity Asia and BanyanTree Finance in its group firm Nspira Management Services for around Rs 1,400 crore, The Economic Times (ET) reported on Tuesday.

Morgan Stanley PE and BanyanTree currently hold a 20 per cent stake in Nspira. Over 18 per cent of this is held by Morgan Stanley, and the rest by BanyanTree. In 2018, Morgan Stanley and BanyanTree invested $75 million in Nspira.

"Narayana group has decided to buy out the stakes held by the two PE firms and they are engaging in talks with various foreign banks to raise structured debt of around Rs 1,400 crore at a group entity, which will predominantly be used to buy the Nspira stakes held by Morgan Stanley and BanyanTree. A small portion is likely to be used to fund discretionary spending for other group entities," a source aware of the matter was quoted as saying by ET.

With a staff of over 50,000, Hyderabad-based Narayana runs over 750 schools, colleges and coaching centres across the country. It was founded in 1979 by P Narayana. It is considered to be among the top 10 biggest school chains in the country.

Nspira provides end-to-end solutions for various requirements of the Narayana group's educational institutes. This includes staffing, IT infrastructure and sales and marketing.

In 2021-22 (FY22), Nspira's revenue rose to Rs 1,272 crore from Rs 877 crore in the previous year. The profit jumped to Rs 134 crore from Rs 54 crore in FY21.