India Investment Blog

MSDF

Gray Matters India Private Limited (http://www.graymatters.in) has received funding from Michael and Susas Dell Foundation (http://www.msdf.org). Gray Matters, founded in 2006, is a Gray Matters Capital incubated firm and focuses on assesments and educational analytics for K-12 schools.

The capital raised by MSDF will be used for developing products, building analytics framework, and will also be used to cater to the operational losses till the company hits break even, said Pradeep Sharma, chief executive officer of GMI.


The company which includes a couple of students from ISB in its top management, operated as a non-profit organisation earlier and decided to change its model to a for-profit company only a year ago. It aims to reach break-even by 2015-16.

The company aspires to reach more than 5,000 schools, 2 million students and 100,000 teachers in the next five years. At present it caters to about 650 schools. GMI plans to to increase the role of assessments and analytics in K12 education and help improve educational quality by making data actionable to schools.

Gray Matters India

“Assessments and school ratings are a big unmet need of schools that target low-income communities and this is a great opportunity for GMI to create industry suitable assessments and a market of quality conscious schools in this segment,” said Prachi Windlass, Lead, Education, at MSDF.




The foundation recently invested in LabourNet Services India Pvt Ltd along with social VC fund Acumen.

Here's a comparison of returns given by listed education companies since October, 2013

Returns Since October 2014

• Shares of Education companies have outperformed the broader markets, including the IT sector since October 13
• The sector had faced strong headwinds over the last two years as the sector's performance and valuations had taken a hits, disappointing many investors
• Interestingly Tree House and MT Educare, which have been reporting good results, witnessed a moderate decline in share prices as their share prices had massively outperformed the sector. 
• Even after this correction the companies are available at a fraction of their peak valuations over the last few years 
• While the companies have been taking strong steps to deal with the challenges, the questions is whether this is merely a correction or a sign of turnaround

Market Cap of Listed Education Companies