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India is among the top four growth markets for British publishing and education company Pearson, said Deepak Mehrotra, Managing Director, Pearson India.
The company has identified two areas that will drive its growth worldwide — focussing on the digital push and making investments in the four markets of India, Brazil, China and South Africa, he told BusinessLine .
Apart from publishing, the company manages around 30 schools in India, runs a vocational training programme, online tutoring and creates test preparation material.
While the company did not share investment details for India, it said that a big focus area for Pearson India is going to be the schools that it manages, in terms of demonstrating a significant learning outcome. Providing skills would be another area, Mehrotra said, adding that it would also work towards bringing good quality higher education distance learning into the country.
Pearson has been on an acquisition spree in the past. In February 2013, it acquired Bangalore-based online education services company TutorVista. In April the same year, it bought out Educomp's shares in IndiaCan, the vocational training joint venture set up by the two companies in 2009. In December 2013, it acquired Grupo Multi, an adult English language training company in Brazil.
On whether acquisitions would be its strategy going forward, Mehrotra said, “Opportunistically, we will be looking at the right kind of investment to be made. Like any business we would do a make and buy decision on how we want to go ahead.”
In terms of the digital push, Pearson India is looking at integrating content with pedagogy. It aims to deliver excellent learning outcomes for 10 million learners every year till 2020.
On whether Samsung’s entry into the education sector with the launch of Samsung Smart Learning digital store would stir things up in the education space, Mehrotra said, “Content is not the only solution. How the content is delivered and whether it is residing on a very strong researched pedagogy which is impacting the learning flow is important. We may or may not have our own learning app. But we would be operating on a very strong researched backdrop of pedagogy, content and learning environment.”
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