CL Educate’s completes 100% acquisition of Accendere

New Delhi: CL Educate Limited (CL), India’s leading education & knowledge services provider, has completed 100% acquisition of Accendere Knowledge Management Services (AKMS). AKMS is a knowledge management company specializing in incubating research programs for universities and corporates and consulting for admissions abroad.
CL Educate had initially acquired 51% stake in AKMS in September 2015 with a call option for the remaining stake to be exercised on or after April 1, 2017. Since then, AKMS has witnessed: 2.5x revenue increase, growth from 2 universities to 6 plus 1 marquee corporate customer including its first IIT in the form of IIT BHU, 4X increase in the number of researchers (students + faculty) to 2,500+ as well as successful launch of collaborative research platform (www.wainconnect.com) in 2016. Given the poor state of innovation and research in Indian universities, AKMS is emerging as a high growth pioneer in a sunrise and fast growing segment.
The National Institute Ranking Framework (NIRF) launched in 2016 by the Ministry of HRD defines broad parameters for ranking universities and institutions and is acting as a major impetus for universities to invest and grow their research cells. Added emphasis has been laid in NIRF on Research, Productivity, Impact and IPR parameter (overall weightage being 40% at the university level), making Research Incubation necessary for the success of any educational institution.
CL is targeting 5x revenue increase in 2 years from universities and corporates with 33-35% EBITDA margins leading to expected payback in just 3 years.
Satya Narayananan, Chairman and Executive Director of CL Educate said, “India is currently witnessing a new era of transformation in higher educational space. The NIRF and the focus on increasing research capabilities will be pivotal in increasing the number of world-class institutions in the country. Our completion of AKMS acquisition is a well-planned part of our strategy to be in asset-light knowledge services. We are excited and fully convinced about its potential.”
Added Nikhil Mahajan, CFO, CL Educate, “We are pleased to fully acquire this high-growth and high-returns business in line with our asset-light tech-enabled strategy with firm focus on quick payback periods. We are confident of achieving an EBDITA of 33 -35% and ROE of 35 % on incremental investments as we scale up the business in the next 3 years.