Ebix a $2.5 billion company headquartered in Georgia, USA is all set to make its place in the digital education market. Having already staked $300 million to acquire various payments, forex, remittance and travel companies, Ebix is all set to acquire a majority stake in SmartClass Education, a leader in the digital education market for K12, its 11th subsidiary in the Indian Market.
Ebix is has emerged as the highest bidder for the Educomp Solutions Limited. The proposal for Educomp’s acquisition has been already cleared by its lenders and is awaiting approval of the NCLT. Once approved Ebix would be investing $60 billion in the digital education giant which has turned around to be having an enviable reputation of sparking on the digital education revolution in India.
The Smart class Educational deal is strategic because it would be providing Ebix a resourceful team of over 500 people which will be a boon for Ebix as it moves forward for its acquisition of Educomp. Educomp, if recalled, was filed for insolvency in May 2017 and since then they had practically stopped doing new business for the past two years and no new sales or distribution channels were made.
The toughest competition which Ebix will face is from its competitor Byju’s, funded by investors such as Sequoia, the Chan Zuckerberg Foundation, and China’s Tencent it would be hard for Ebix to go against Byju’s which is tapping the online education market of 250 million consumers. The current public report says that with the falling state of Byju’s the investors still poured a $240 Million Investment making the companies value to be $1 billion as of now.
A person involved in the negotiations on conditions of anonymity told that it will all depend upon the quality of educational solution and footprint into schools he added although Educomp may face debt related issues but it has a strong goodwill in the market and has acquired an early start in the digital classroom market, something which can grab the attention of Investors to a large extent. With Educomp acquisition, Ebix will get a ready-made sales and marketing team to push other Ebix from the U.S. to the Indian market.
According to a recent KPMG study, Digital Indian Education market is over $30 billion and will emerge as the largest education market in the world, surpassing China and the United States. Robin Raina, CEO of Ebix, recently announced that he expects a $500 million contribution into the company’s global revenues from India and this could be that one step in the vision.
The Indian Government has announced a $5 billion budget for smart boards in all government schools and Ebix is certainly going to have a cut above the edge for an early lead. This deal is also going to benefit schools like Seth M.R. Jaipuria school because they have been using Educomp as there Smartboard services provider and this deal will make Ebix hold their old customers which is indirectly going to help the school. So be fast and grab the opportunity, Seth M.R. Jaipuria Schools are providing franchises for their schools to apply Click here.