Online career counselling and education services firm Careers360—which bought Mumbai Angels-backed enrollment management platform NoPaperForms in December 2015—is selling the venture to its chief strategy officer Naveen Goyal.
Goyal, who owned less than 10% equity in Careers360's parent company Pathfinder Publishing India Pvt. Ltd, has sold the majority of his stake in the firm and put in some cash to buy NoPaperForms.
The cash and equity deal is valued at around $3 million, a person close to the development told VCCircle.
"I am moving out from Careers360 and buying NoPaperForms," Goyal said.
"It makes more strategic sense for the two businesses to be separate entities as there is a fundamental conflict of interest in the nature of the companies," he said.
Goyal said he is moving out with 42 team members and 80 clients. "In a bid to bring more transparency, the government has taken steps towards digitisation, centralised exams and more. So, there is a huge opportunity for someone to crack this space more aggressively. Our target is to get 500 clients in two years," he said.
An email query sent to Careers360 did not elicit any response till the time of filing of this report.
Goyal joined Careers360 in 2012 and started the firm’s digital business division.
NoPaperForms, which was initially a division of Careers360, got registered as Nopaperforms Solutions Pvt. Ltd in February 2017.
NoPaperForms is a SaaS-based enrollment management platform for educational institutes. It enables colleges to go online and sell their application forms. It also helps colleges manage the entire enrollment process–right from application to the admission stage–online by collecting the money, creating a payment gateway, passing on the money back to them and more.
The firm is also working on advanced machine learning-enabled smart data analytics modules which will help institutions interpret data, benchmark performance and measure return on investment (ROI) on a real-time basis.
Founded in 2008 by Maheshwer Peri and Rajesh Jain, Careers360 is an online community and career counselling platform that assists students to take informed decisions through its prediction/recommendation engine.
Careers360 counts Ranjan Pai, chief executive and managing director, Manipal Education and Medical Group (MEMG), venture capitalist Mahesh Murthy and Satya Narayanan R, founder of education firm Career Launcher, as its investors.
In January 2016, it sold around 10% stake to education assessment firm MeritTrac for an undisclosed amount.
The company posted revenues of Rs 24 crore in FY2015-16 with earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) margin of 30%. Nearly 85% of its revenues comes through advertisements and 15% from students.
