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HT Media acquires 23% stake in SchoolOnWeb

Editorial Team — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 02:57:58 +0000

HT Media’s Internet business Firefly eVentures (under which are jobs classifieds site Shine.com and social networking portal DesiMartini.com) has bought a 23% stake in School On Web Pvt Ltd for Rs. 25 million, according to its annual report. No additional details were available in the report. School Onweb is awebsite design software package for educational institutions. It has [...]

Call for Application for India Innovation Initiative 2010 – Last date 15th July 2010

Abhay — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 02:56:10 +0000

Call for Application for India Innovation Initiative -i3-2010

Objective
The objective of the India Innovation Initiative project is to create an innovation eco-system in the country by sensitizing, encouraging and promoting innovators and facilitating commercialization of the innovations.

Who can participate ?
Participation is open to all innovators in the age group of 18 years and above.

This includes :

All colleges, universities and Institutes.
Innovators from R&D Institutions and Labs.
Entrepreneurs, Industry professionals and Freelance Innovators.
Grassroot Innovators through NGOs and Rural development organizations.

Important dates in snapshot

1. Start Date of Registration May 2010
2. Last date for receiving entries 15th July 2010.
3. Announcement of shortlisted names for the regional Fairs 3rd week of August
4. Regional Fairs 15-30 Sept, 2010
5. i3 National Fair End of October, 2010

To promote and inculcate a spirit of innovation in India, many steps have been taken by both the government of India as well as by Industry leaders to encourage application of breakthrough technology ideas in the society.

Addressing the need to expand the young innovators initiative to those above 18 years & include a wider scope of participation from all potential innovators, CII & DST have now joined hands with Agilent to launch the nation-wide innovation competition for all innovators above the age group of 18+, “India Innovation Initiative – i3″.

i3 aims to capture the innovative ideas from the Indian innovators in the age group of 18 years and above, including students, innovators from R&D Institutes & Labs, Industry professionals and individual innovators/Entrepreneurs, grassroots innovators etc.

After the last year’s great response i3 this year has decided to have four regional fairs for preliminary selection of innovations which it will receive from all over India. Each region will shortlist innovations based on creativity, innovation, implementation strategy and relevance.

We expect to receive over 500 innovations per region. Innovations will be selected by a Novelty search which will be conducted by APTDC and TNTDPC .Only those innovations which are patented or have the high potential of being patented will be selected for the Regional Fairs.

Further the most potent and relevant innovations ( approx.40 ) will be selected for the national i3 fair by a panel of expert jury. The winners will be chosen at the National Fair once again by a panel of eminent jury.
Their will be cash prizes, awards, recognition and support to winners.

Evaluation will be based on:

i) Maturity level of the innovation
ii) Business Potential

To participate and know more about this registration procedures visit - http://bit.ly/b2lUCY

Childs play now a big business.To touch USD 1 Billlion in 2 years

Abhay — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 07:02:57 +0000

Play schools are scouting for Private equity investors in India

Rishi Navani, co-founder and managing director of Matrix Partners India, says what the organised retail sector went through in the past five years, education will go through in the near future.

Matrix Partners India has invested Rs 59 crore in Tree House Education, a pre-school and K-12 education entity. The investment was done in two tranches — Rs 50 crore in 2008 and Rs 9 crore recently.

Matrix Partners India had also invested Rs 100 crore in FIITJEE, a company which helps students prepare for the IIT-JEE test, crucial for seeking admission into top engineering colleges.

Play schools in India

In the past five-six years, the pre-school market has seen a shift toward organised players. KidZee (renamed Zee Learn) — India’s largest pre-school chain — has set up 623 pre-schools in just five years since inception and plans to add another 1,000 over the next two years.

Read more in the Economic Times… HERE

The concept of preschool or playschool, as they are also known, is relatively new in India, but the trend is fast growing, due to increasing, awareness that 40% of learning takes place before the age of four.

The $300m preschool segment is expected to be a $1bn market by 2012 (36% CAGR) led by low penetration (1 out of 100 preschool-aged children enrolled) and further price discovery.

With low entry barriers, corporate activity has gathered pace and 11 major chains and ~10 smaller players are active in the space. While the scale-up has so far been on the franchisee platform, corporates are increasingly forming JVs with builders/ partners and moving up the value chain by upgrading to K12 schools.

The strategy imparts resilience to the model against high lease rentals besides ensuring scalability. With players planning aggressive rollouts, the organized segment is growing faster than the industry (50% vs 36% CAGR).
Playschools, more popularly known as preschools, traditionally cater to the 1.5-3 years age group. Increasing awareness among parents about the benefits of a quality preschool education has been driving penetration levels and price discovery in the segment.

Led by these factors, we expect the market to expand by more than 3x in size by 2012. While the market is currently highly fragmented and unorganized in nature, increasing prosperity is driving a shift towards the organized segment. A largely urban phenomenon, there has been rapid proliferation of organized preschool chains beyond metros and tier 1 cities in the last five years.

BUSINESS NOT A CHILD’S PLAY
There is enough demand for preschools (as reflected by the rapid proliferation) and capex requirements are also relatively lower, which means that it is play time for preschool chains. However, the model is fraught with risks including the inability to attract preschoolers beyond a catchment area of 2km, high lease rentals, intense competition from the unorganized segment (at considerably lower cost to customer) and increasing competition among organized players.

Limit to lever infrastructure for preschool children
Any preschool, however strong the brand, ideally has a customer pull within a 2km radius (parents prefer to send toddlers within a limited radius for safety/ comfort reasons). Also, the segment caters only to customers who can afford annual fees of Rs20, 000-45,000, which further limits the scope of the market.

Tail wags the dog – rental costs!
Preschools are currently being run primarily on the franchisee model, which has so far evolved largely on the back of two factors – low cost of setting up a franchisee, and housewife occupation that typically does not consider the opportunity cost of lease rentals (schools are being set up on existing premises which otherwise also do not generate returns). Considering the economics of the preschool business, lease rent forms the largest expense for running a preschool and can eat into profitability of the business.

The unorganized neighbor
With awareness levels still low, the unorganized market provides ‘the same’ care but at a much lower price. With more than 80% of the target market still with the ‘trustworthy’ neighbor, it may take some time before organized players are able to establish the importance of a quality preschool education.

A non-regulated market – low entry barriers
The preschool market is non-regulated and hence entails no regulatory barriers for new entrants. Given the relatively low investment required, competition is intensifying in this segment.

Previously we had also covered the emerging sector of Toy Libraries in this post here

Call for Cleantech ideas to be incubated at NSRCEL in IIMB

Abhay — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 04:33:37 +0000

N S Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL) at IIM-Bangalore has been formed with the mission to bring ideas to implementation through a structured mentoring programme which will help entrepreneurs see their idea taking shape into a planned Organisation which will render itself in a phased manner to be a successful business entity.

NSRCEL@IIMB has recently started a cleantech incubation cell. They are now inviting business ideas in cleantech which would include ideas to reduce carbon footprint, generate power using renewable resources, hybrids of solar, wind, biomass, biogas for rural distributed power, development and use of fuel cells , technologies for reduction of pollution in ground, sea, water and air and smart grid products and services.

Cleantech Ideas@NSRCEL

The NSRCEL parameters for selection of the Incubatee is based on the following factors -

* Unique technology or idea likely to mature into a viable business in 18 months
* NSRCEL / IIM B has resources to significantly support the Incubatee
* Incubatee is willing to be mentored & periodically reviewed
* Incubatee is willing to allot shares and/or pay nominal fees for the incubation
* High growth potential or high economic value add

For further details on Participation, please go through the website below.

http://www.nsrcel.org/home/incubation

How to Apply:
Contact at the given email-id with subject line as “Cleantech Ideas “

vasudev.avadhani@nsrcel.org