Public listed company Veranda Learning Solutions Limited on Monday, April 25 announced that it has signed an agreement for 100% acquisition of TIME (Advanced Educational Activities Pvt Ltd) institute at a consideration of Rs 287 crore. The acquisition will be in a phased manner with 80% of the outstanding capital along with management control in phase 1, followed by the purchase of the remaining 20% at the end of two years (subject to the fulfilment of closing conditions).
TIME is one of India’s leading test-prep institute with a pan-India presence operating through 188 centres including franchisees spread across 98 cities in India and is headquartered in Hyderabad. The institute claims to have trained around 22 lakh students since its inception in 1992 and has around 37,000 unique test takers for its flagship online CAT test series – AIMCAT.
TIME offers training programmes for national and state-level entrance exams like CAT, MAT, CMAT, CLAT, IIT Foundation, JEE mains & advanced, NEET, IPM, BBA, CUET, GATE, Bank PO, SSC, State-level admission exams and international exams like GMAT, GRE, IELTS and TOEFL including campus recruitment training.
“The acquisition of T.I.M.E. allows Veranda to expand its national footprint with an asset that has known to have sent around 50% of all students admitted into the IIMs. T.I.M.E. which was one of the pioneers of online testing methodology in India also gets to leverage Veranda’s core-engineering skills to make it the best in hybrid offering which will now include best-in-class products for each of its programmes,” said Kalpathi Suresh, Executive Director cum Chairman, Veranda.
“We are delighted to be partnering with Veranda on the journey ahead that T.I.M.E. will be undertaking. We are confident that this will be a synergistic relationship and that much benefit will accrue to both partners. More importantly, we believe that it will also help us provide an even better product offering to our students,” said Manek Daruvala, Founder & Director, TIME.