• To provide Progressive Education Solutions from K12 to Careers
• Plans to Invest Rs. 20 Crores in School Expansion

The company plans to expand its presence in the School segment in 3 stages, where by it will implement and incorporate the Industry Demand Alignment (IDEA), a trademarked education paradigm of EdServ, to support and guide every student from K-12 to careers in a Progressive Education Model.

Three Stage expansion

While in Stage I, EdServ shall be providing infrastructure and academic support, in Stage II there shall be implementation of Progressive Learning Model through content rich metrics. In Stage III, the company shall incorporate IDEA from K-12 to careers extending fully to Industry.

Over the next 6 months, EdServ will invest Rs. 20Cr into this school expansion initiative. The investments shall be for infrastructure as well as content procurement and development for K-12. While part of the expansion will be funded from its internal accruals, the company plans to use the debt route to fund the remaining part of the investment. EdServ will target around 50 schools in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh and will set up EdLabs in each of these schools. The revenue is estimated to be Rs. 30Cr out of the Stage I of the School project.

Commenting on the Foray into the Schools market, S. Giridharan, CEO, EdServ said, Our philosophy of education is to offer a holistic approach in honing skills of students, with an industry orientation so as to bridge the gap between the academics and industry. Real India, the bottom of the pyramid and a recession proof segment, requires support and guidance for education and employment in affordable equations. The objective of our expansion into the Schools space is to identify the latent talent of school students at an early stage so they can be oriented and fine tuned to the right career choice, which currently seems to be missing.

Offerings to Schools

As part of its foray into the schools market, EdServ will initially provide three different kinds of services to schools - Academic support, School management support, and Student performance management support services through which the company will enhance multi-dimensional skill development, leading to industry orientation of these students at K-12 itself. The company, which is already strong in placement services, will enable an Industry Demand alignment (IDEA) based career seeding in students to attempt 100% demand-supply match.

Commenting on the companys IDEA offering, Giridharan said, Our long term plan is to provide the career seeding to students in primary and secondary classes to create an Industry Demand Alignment (IDEA) for them. Through our IDEA paradigm, the behaviour and performance of students shall be studied over a period of time and a skill development programme offered based on their interests that will map their behaviour, flair, character and skills to a career / industry that is most apt to them with specific learning curve corrections integrated as part of the programme. This Progressive Learning approach, we believe, will fix the demand-supply mismatch, providing the much needed balancing act in the employment process of Industry.

Setting up 50 EdLabs in TN and AP

EdServ also plans to invest significantly in expanding the technology infrastructure in schools, apart from learning and assessment content. As part of this Stage I of IDEA, the company will set up EdLabs, a web enabled technology infrastructure, with 50-100 Internet enabled browser based multimedia compliant computer systems depending on the students strength in a school and fully loaded with smart learning content rich tools, for 50 schools, in TN and AP.

For students in class I-VIII, each of the 2000 sq. ft. EdLabs will provide extended learning classes for students through pre defined Fun-Filled Education (FuFE) content using web based technology to understand, analyse, and improve their performance. The company expects EdLabs to enable progressive learning for students and academic performance enhancement through clearly laid out metrics.

In addition to the above, Stage I of IDEA will also provide teacher procurement services as well as teacher training services to schools as part of its academic support. This would also include the EdClass based Virtual Class Network (VCN) to solve the sudden dearth of staff / teachers arising out of absenteeism and resignations in schools.

Revenue Target in Stage I

EdServ expects to generate revenues of Rs.30crores in stage I of its School expansion over the next 12 months.

Stage II and III Expansion Plans

Going forward, as part of the Stage II and III of IDEA, for classes IX to XII, EdLabs will provide EdServs trademarked Promptive Metrics based Learning (PML) method for exam support for students to progressively learn and perform well in academics.

EdServ will also provide smart learning processes with Real Life Instances (REALI) to get students interest and involvement into the learning and assessment so as to analyze students behaviour and his / her industry interest for career seeding and implementing IDEA and incorporating the demand-supply match.