Veranda acquires coaching institute Chennai Race for ₹100 crore

Veranda Learning Solution, the newly launched edtech venture from the Kalpathi Group, announced on Monday that it has acquired coaching institute Chennai Race for over ₹100 crore including stock and earnout.

Chennai Race offers coaching for banking, Staff Selection Commission (SSC) and Public Service Commission (PSC) exams. Post deal, it will offer online training programmes for banking, SSC and Tamil Nadu PSC exams under the new ‘Veranda Race’ brand.

“Two out of every three banking openings in Tamil Nadu are filled by Race students. In Race, we see an alignment with our philosophy of rigour and discipline in their education delivery, focus on outcomes and affordability,” Suresh Kalpathi, co-founder and CEO, Veranda, told BusinessLine.

‘On an average, 30 lakh students take up TNPSC exams every year. Even at a fee of ₹7,500, it is potentially a ₹2,250-crore market,” he added.

In FY20, Chennai Race recorded sales of about ₹45 crore and trained over 2 lakh students across Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and Punjab. Its students have filled 60-80 per cent of Tamil Nadu’s vacancies in the past 4-5 years, the company said in a press release.

Last week, Kalpathi told BusinessLine that Veranda will offer training programmes in test preparation across 12 verticals including competitive exams spanning college admissions, recruitment exams and IAS.

Other verticals

“This is one of the six verticals that we wanted to launch this year. Going forward, Veranda, as a holding brand, will announce verticals which will focus on other target markets while Veranda Race will continue its own expansion by offering PSC exams in other States,” Kalpathi said.

He added that the launch of other verticals will be a combination of Veranda's in-house products as well as acquisitions, which depends on alignment of philosophy and pricing factors.