Info Edge (India) Ltd, which owns job portal Naukri.com, has invested Rs 5.66 crore (about $872,000) in Delhi-based NoPaperForms Solutions Pvt. Ltd, which runs an enrolment management platform for educational institutes, stock-exchange filings show.
The all-cash deal saw Info Edge pick up a significant minority stake of 27.92% in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) firm. The investment helps Info Edge diversify into a new line of business within the Internet services industry, the filings said.
The investment in NoPaperForms comes just a week after Info Edge put $5.87 million in Meritnation, one of its ed-tech portfolio companies.
NoPaperForms, incorporated in February this year, was originally part of online career counselling and education services firm Careers360, which acquired it in 2015. In June, Careers360 sold the venture to its chief strategy officer Naveen Goyal in a cash-and-equity deal worth around $3 million.
NoPaperForms’ SaaS platform enables colleges to go online and sell their application forms. It also helps them manage the entire enrolment process—right from application to admission—online by collecting money, creating a payment gateway, passing on the money back to them, and more.
The firm also provides machine learning-enabled smart data analytics modules to help institutes interpret data, benchmark performance, and measure return on investment on a real-time basis.
Info Edge operates a slew of Internet properties, including real estate portal 99acres.com, matrimonial website Jeevansathi and education services portal Shiksha. Besides, it holds stakes in several technology firms such as restaurant search platform Zomato, coupons site Mydala, online insurance aggregator PolicyBazaar and e-learning firm Meritnation.
The company has been actively making follow-on investments in other portfolio firms as well. In September, it had increased its stake in Bengaluru-based online photography startup Canvera Digital Technologies Pvt. Ltd by investing Rs 8.6 crore ($1.35 million).
In July, it made a follow-on investment of Rs 8 crore in Green Leaves Consumer Services Pvt. Ltd, which runs beauty services marketplace BigStylist. It had also invested Rs 3.5 crore in Surat-based sales catalogue aggregation app Wishbook, picking up a 21.88% stake.
In the second quarter of 2017-18, Info Edge reported a 7% increase in revenues from operations at Rs 225.2 crore, up from Rs 209.9 crore in the year-ago period. However, net profit fell marginally to Rs 78.6 crore from Rs 80 crore in the year-ago period due to some tax-reversal gains in the previous fiscal.