Ebix, a $2.5 billion corporation headquartered in Georgia, US, in a bid to gain significant reputation in India’s $30 billion digital education market has acquired majority stake in SmartClass Educational, its 11th acquisition in India in less than a year.
Ebix has already deployed around $300 million to acquire several payments, forex, remittance, and travel companies and is now close on acquiring one of the leaders in the digital education market for K-12 education in India.
Recently, Ebix emerged as the highest bidder for Educomp Solutions Limited. Acquisition of Smartclass Educational is important in many ways as the company has a strong sales and distribution team of over 500 people. A ready-made sales and marketing team will help the Ebix to operate well in India and to push its other products into the country from its US headquarters.
In digital education market of India, Ebix will go head to head with companies such as Byju – A renowned name in this sector with the market of over 250 million consumers.
“It will all depend upon the quality of the educational solution and footprint into schools. The fact is that while Educomp faced debt-related issues, it does have huge goodwill and acquired an early start in the digital classroom market, something an investor with deep pockets can turn around,” said a person involved with the negotiations on condition of anonymity.
The Indian government in the latest budget proposals has announced a $5 billion outlay for equipping every classroom in government schools with SmartBoards.
