ICICI Bank said Tuesday it has signed an agreement to acquire a 9.09% stake in ed-tech company Myclassboard Educational Solutions Pvt. Ltd for Rs 4.5 crore (about $613,460) in cash.
The bank said in a stock-exchange filing it will buy 100 equity shares and 104,890 cumulative compulsorily convertible preference shares in Myclassboard.
The transaction is likely to be completed by the end of February.
Hyderabad-based Myclassboard was set up in December 2009 by Ajay Sakhamuri and Raveendra Choudary Adusumilli. It offers an online school management platform that it claims is used to manage 14 lakh students.
Myclassboard reported a net profit of Rs 1.26 crore on revenue of Rs 12.08 crore for the year through March 2020.
This is ICICI Bank’s second minority-stake acquisition in a company within two months. The bank last month invested Rs 2.33 crore in SLO Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which operates the fraud detection- and prevention-based financial technology startup AdvaRisk.
India’s second-largest private-sector has made some other investments and acquisitions over the last few years. In August, for example, it upped its stake in the GIFT City-based India International Exchange Ltd by investing Rs 4.46 crore. The move raised its shareholding from 7.7% to 9.9%.
In March, ICICI Bank invested a little over Rs 51 crore in education financing company Auxilo Finserve Pvt. Ltd. It picked up a 9.9% stake in the company in exchange for its investment.
Last year, the bank agreed to acquire a 9.9% stake in non-banking finance company Kisan Rural Finance Ltd for Rs 17.82 crore. It has also previously invested in fintech companies ePayLater, Fingpay and Tapits Technologies.