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Oracle CEO-backed company eyes IB school space in India

Jamshed Siddiqui — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 14:23:00 +0000

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison co-founded Knowledge Universe and UK’s Knightsbridge are in the fray to float a joint venture with Mumbai-based Core Projects & Technologies to tap India’s growing demand for premium international schools.

Core, which is a technology solutions provider in the education space, had mandated Ernst & Young to advise on setting up a chain of premium K12 schools, said sources familiar with the matter. Core had identified UK’s leading school network Knightsbridge and Knowledge Universe, an education and training conglomerate backed by Oracle Corp founder Larry Ellison and Wall Street’s former Junk Bond King Michael Milken, as potential partners.

When contacted, Core Projects declined to comment. A decision on the foreign partner in the proposed 50:50 joint venture could come as early as this week. The demand for international education has been growing in the world’s second most populous and second fastest expanding economy.

India currently has 70-odd International Baccalaureate (IB) schools, with nearly 60% of them located in Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore and Hyderabad. These schools charge anywhere up to Rs. 250,000 as fee per annum. Then there are 245 schools that are affiliated to Cambridge International Examinations, which are again mostly present in the Western and Southern parts of the country.

Core Projects plans to show up with two premium benchmark schools, with emphasis on sports training, in Delhi and Mumbai initially. These could be subsequently extended into other tier-I and select tier-II cities. Dubai-based GEMS Education and Singapore’s Global India International Schools have been expanding in the country.

Mumbai’s Ecole Mondiale and Dhirubhai Ambani School are among the niche players in the super-premium segment of K12 education. Last year, DY Patil had appointed Kotak Mahindra to raise $100 million for setting up a network of affordable international schools. Real estate costs and scaling up remain the big hurdles in the way of expanding the school network in India.

Source: The Times of India, July 25, 2011

>CORE Technologies bags 2.95 billion education deal

Jamshed Siddiqui — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 02:35:00 +0000

>CORE Projects and Technologies Limited, a global education company has bagged Rs. 295 crore (Rs. 2.95 billion outsourcing contract to incorporate technology in classrooms across Haryana. The contract amongst the largest awarded by a state government requires the CORE Projects to train teachers on use of technology in classroom pedagogy.

“The government is now opening up huge opportunities in the education sector for private players,” said Sanjeev Mansotra, CMD, CORE Projects and Technologies. Education spending was a big winner in this year’s budget. The amount of funding for education has been increased by 24% to Rs. 52,057 crore (Rs. 520.57 billion).

The Mumbai-based firm will install and maintain information and communications technology (ICT ) laboratories in 2622 government schools. These will cater to five million students spread over all the 21 districts of the State in next five years. Besides computer aided learning and software to manage the schools, these technologies will also include child performance tracking system and biometric devices to capture teacher attendance.

The government will also set up five smart schools. These will have more advanced technologies and based on its success, they will be replicated in other schools. “While most of the large players have built their businesses around private schools, the market has developed multi-fold with the Central government’s move to fund Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) for ICT@Schools programme,” says Bharat Parmar, partner at EduVisors — an education sector advisory services firm.

“With the Haryana project CORE’s total contract in India will reach to Rs. 600 crore (Rs. 6 billion),” said Mansotra, a first generation entrepreneur who founded the firm in 2003 and has till now derived nearly 80% of revenues from overseas markets such as US, UK, Middle East and Africa. This will change with about one-third of its revenues coming from India in next few years.

The company which started as a pure IT firm transformed itself into a global education player by acquiring around seven education companies in US and UK. It raised US$ 150 million through foreign currency convertible bonds to make these acquisitions.

Source: The Economic Times, March 11, 2011

Core Projects arm bags $24-m deal from Los Angeles school

ivgpartners — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 10:17:59 +0000

The US arm of BSE-listed Core Projects & Technologies (CPTL) has bagged a $24-million deal from the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to implement a formative assessment and diagnostic testing program in 375 schools.

Nearly seven lakh students will be covered under this five-year contract won by CoreK12.LAUSD is the second largest, in terms of number of students, public school system in the US.

The Mumbai-based education solutions company will deploy one of its flagship products Assessment Center, a solution which allows teachers to assess students from kindergarten to high school.Business Line