Tuesday 28 June 2011

Everonn to set up 1,000 test prep centres in three years

Education technology firm Everonn Education Ltd on Tuesday said it will enter India’s test preparation market and open about 1,000 centres, named Everonn World, in all districts in three years.
“We will be investing around Rs.400 crore, but much more investment will come from our franchise partners,” said P. Kishore, managing director of the Chennai-based company.
While Everonn will provide the technology, faculty and content for the centres, the franchise partners will have to set up the infrastructure. In a large city such as Delhi, a big centre could incur an investment of Rs.3 crore.
Everonn will introduce test preparation programmes for the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) of the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Common Admission Test (CAT) of the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), said Manoj Chawla, president at Edupreneur, an Everonn subsidiary that promotes entrepreneurship in the education sector.
“Besides, we will offer university programmes like MBA (master’s in business administration) and BBA (bachelor’s in business administration) in collaboration with Annamalai University and MS (Maharaja Sayajirao) University,” he said.
Everonn also aims to offer coaching in various subjects to students in the US, the UK and Singapore on its satellite platform.
“The test prep market is big in India, but it’s quite competitive,” said Bharat Gulia, senior manager (education) at consulting firm Ernst and Young. “It would be interesting to see how the company will try to get a chunk of it.”
India’s test preparation market is worth $1.7 billion (Rs.7,650 crore) and is growing at 16% a year, according to research firm and brokerage CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets. A significant portion of this constitutes coaching for professional courses such as engineering and management.
With about 500 million people aged below 25 years in the country, expenditure on education and test preparation will grow, said Kishore.
On Tuesday, Everonn shares gained nearly 2% to end trade at Rs.523.85 each on the Bombay Stock Exchange, on a day the Sensex index rose 0.43% to 18,492.45 points.
The 24-year-old Everonn said its recent tie-up with the National Skill Development Corporation will help its skill education segment and overall revenue grow faster. It plans to provide skill training 15 million people in the next 10 years.
Everonn already has an association with the CAT. Last year, the company entered a partnership with US-based test delivery firm Prometric Inc. to help the IIMs conduct the CAT online. Kishore said the arrangement will continue.
“Everonn is trying to integrate various verticals of education,” said Gulia of Ernst and Young. “Perhaps they want to leverage technology, which is their main strength. I believe other players have not done that so far successfully.”

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