New Delhi / Mumbai: Avi Verma, 10 years old but looking small for his age and seated on the last bench of the class, is sketching a germinating seed. He is trying hard to keep pace with other students as they are bombarded with strange terms: cotyledon, embryo and photosynthesis.
Big dreams: Educomp Solutions CMD Shantanu Prakash. His company’s stock gained 323.7% in the last fiscal year. (Harikrishna Katragadda / Mint)
Then his teacher, Suchita Joon, shows a three-dimensional seed on a large plasma screen. At the click of a mouse, the seed germinates and grows a root and a shoot. In a pop quiz, Joon gets quick responses from students who almost out-shout each other. Verma, sitting next to the huge bag full of books he lugs to school everyday, hesitates to raise his hand. But, he says, he understands.
The wired classroom in the privately-owned Bal Bharti Public School in Delhi is a far cry from most classrooms in India—chalk and blackboards, benches and desks. Its upgrade and modernization, and of those in poor schools, are the reasons behind the success of billionaire Shantanu Prakash, owner of publicly-listed Educomp Solutions Ltd.
His company fills a market need, selling online lessons, as well as the hardware to run them, to schools. In a fiercely competitive education system, these modules sell well for their ability to help students who learn in different ways, including backbenchers such as Verma.
“When students see something, they are able to retain it,” said Joon, who has taught for 18 years—the last three with the aid of Educomp’s live classes. “Retention” is an important part of the Indian schools system which has long believed in testing students on memory rather than analysis.
Prakash’s company has wired classrooms in 655 private schools. More importantly, it has won lucrative contracts from eight state governments for various computer-related activities in schools. A single such contract—to provide computer education in secondary schools in Haryana—was valued at Rs18.3 crore. These contracts have given the company heft and made it a darling of the stock market, even as some of India’s largest companies witnessed the lion share of their market capitalization wiped out by the ongoing bearishness in the bourses.
Educomp, capitalized at Rs7,048 crore on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), is bigger than other listed firms focused on education such as information technology trainers NIIT Ltd and Aptech Ltd, as well as satellite-based education services provider Everonn Systems India Ltd.
High performer
That’s not all. Purely from an investor perspective, Educomp counts among one of the best performing stocks in Indian equity markets. Its stock gained a huge 323.7% in the last fiscal year. NIIT and Everonn gained around 20% each, Aptech stock added about 5%.
The soaring stock has made Prakash—and his company— draw attention, something he claims he does not relish.