Realty developer-cum-education group DMC International Ltd, a New Delhi-based firm, is acquiring test prep firm Quest Tutorials, which offers coaching for IIT-JEE entrance exams. Quest Tutorials is a unit of Pragmatum Training Pvt Ltd, another city-based company, and has operations across Delhi-NCR region. The financial terms of the deal were undisclosed.
Realty player DMC International has largely opted for the inorganic growth to foray into education. This is the third acquisition of DMC International in the last eight months and second in the test preparation space. Earlier in October 2009, it acquired Trump & Gates, another Delhi-based firm offering solutions for various entrance and main examinations such as actuarial science, GATE, IES, PSU, MBA, GRE, GMAT, IELTS, TOEFL etc. It has also acquired Vsoft Services Pvt Ltd, a software developing firm in Mumbai early this month.
The board of directors of DMC International has already approved the acquisition, the firm informed the Bombay Stock Exchange. It, however, did not disclose the timeline to close the deal. The board has also decided to appoint an independent chartered accountant for due diligence, valuation and finalizing the equity swap ratio for the transaction.
Quest follows an approach which synergistically combines classroom learning with practice sessions that helps students prepare for their exams in an integrated environment. It claims total run rate of over 3,500 students in the last five years.
Pragmatum offers coaching for English, Mathematics and Science, and currently runs four business units. Besides Quest, Pragmatum runs Bpozitive, a coaching solution for students who want a career in life sciences while Gr8study is a solution for international study needs. The other solution, Gr8test, is a testing portal which offers tests for all career-oriented courses like IITJEE, Medical, CAT, MAT, GRE, GMAT etc. The firm was launched in 2004, and was co-founded by Gaurav Mittal and Praveen Tyagi, two first generation entrepreneurs. It plans to expand its operation vertically for students in class 9-12, according to the information available on company’s website.
In the education space, the test preparation segment has seen a number of deal activities in recent times in terms of PE/VC investments and M&As. Career Point Infosystems Ltd and FIITJEE Ltd were two such firms which raised private equity funding last year.
