Pearson Education Services, the K-12 education services provider arm of global education company Pearson is eyeing buys in the tutoring and school management space to expand its footprint across the country.
The company has its sights trained on acquisition that will be valued lesser than the company?s previous buy out of TutorVista.com of R577 crore, which was one of the largest acquisitions in the Indian education sector.
?Our inorganic growth plans will focus on adding tutoring centres and managing more number of schools. We expect to close at least one acquisition in this financial year. We are evaluating four to five targets at present,? said Meena Ganesh, CEO and MD, Pearson Education Services.
PES? current market offerings include school management services,by way of which they manage, operate and build high quality schools across the country, online tutoring that offers quality online tuitions to students across the world at very affordable prices, ICT solutions known as DigiClass for both schools and higher education institutions and technology aided coaching classes and test preparation services for various entrance board exams and entrance exams like CET, AIEEE, IIT-JEE and AIPMT, among others.
The company has 60 centres offering tutoring services in India which are located in Kerala and Karnataka and the expansion plans will look at adding 2-3 states to its portfolio to offer education services through VSAT.
In India, it specialises in publication of academic and reference books in the fields of computer science, engineering, business and management, trade, higher education and competitive examination. In the school management space, the firm is managing and operating 23 schools and intends to take the number to 100 by its inorganic growth plans. ?We are also looking at launching online tutoring in India soon to provide affordable online tuition to students as this market is growing rapidly,? Ganesh added.