Pearson and Village Capital have entered into a partnership to support and fund EDUpreneur's in India

Pearson and Village Capital have entered into a partnership to support and fund education ventures in India. The initiative tries to support entrepreneurs who provide education solutions to the less privileged students. Winners would be entitled to $75000 and would be selected through the peer review model developed by Village Capital.

Pearson, had launched a $15 Mn Pearson Affordable Learning Fund which invests in quality education for poorest families in the world last year. It had made its first investment last year by investing in Omega Schools, a privately held chain of affordable, for-profit schools based in Ghana.

The fund in collaboration with Village capital will offer Indian entrepreneurs to receive seed investment through a programme. The programme involves participation by 16 startup companies who would be offered mentoring advice from other entrepreneurs, investors and professionals. These entrepreneurs will then assess one another against six criteria, with the top two ranking companies receiving up to $75,000 each.

The winners would receive the capital from the corpus created by Pearson and Village capital that have committed $100000 and $50000 respectively.

Village Capital, based in the US, specialises in using the power of peer support and mentoring to build investment-ready companies and to allocate capital through peer selection.Village Capital has supported nearly 300 mission-driven entrepreneurs across six continents worldwide. It has raised more than $30 million, created over 5,000 jobs, and served over four million customers. It has supported 60 entrepreneurs through four programs in India, investing in eight innovative enterprises.

Village Capital has also teamed up with Arohan Ventures to form the Centre for Innovation, Incubation and Entrepreneurship at IIM- Ahemdabad to accelerate ventures operating in 5 sectors namely mobile/IT, health, agribusiness, education and livelihood enhancing technologies.

Pearson is a global learning company, providing educational materials and services, business information through the Financial Times Group, and consumer publishing through the Penguin brand. Pearson serves learners of all ages around the globe, employing 41,000 people in more than 70 countries.

It publishes across the curriculum under a range of respected imprints including Scott Foresman, Prentice Hall, Addison-Wesley, Allyn and Bacon, Benjamin Cummings and Longman.

Recently in this space; Pearson had fully acquired TutorVista; Digital learning solutions provider - Learnpedia Edutech Solutions raised undisclosed amount of angel investment from Ixora Ventures and a consortium of angels; Kaizen and German Media Company – Bertelsmann co – invested R22 Cr in Authorgen Technologies which operates WizIQ.

Apruv Bhansali

apruv15@ediindia.org