Career Launcher Raises $8.25 Million From Gaja Capital Partners

Career Launcher has raised $8.25 million (Rs. 32.4 crores) from Gaja Capital Partners and affiliates, VC Circle has learned. The company is expected to announce the deal shortly. Sources said that the company will use the capital for its future expansion needs - probably its new business ventures like schools.Career Launcher had earlier raised external capital from Intel Capital, which exited the company couple of years ago. This is the second instance of private equity investment in a preparatory education company. In August, Mumbai-based Mahesh Tutorials announced $12 million investment from Mauritius-based India-focused fund Helix Investments.According to market sources, several funds like Actis and Sequoia Capital India had looked at Career Launcher as a potential investment opportunity, but the deal did not go through for valuation reasons.In a recent interview to Business Today, Career Launcher chairman Satyanarayanan R (pictured) said that his company’s aim is to become a start-to-finish education corporate. The company started with MBA preparatory coaching in 1995, and later forayed into other areas like medical, engineering and IIT coaching. They recently diversified into a play school chain called Ananda and a K-12 chain called Indus World School. They plan to set up about 650 play schools and 250 K-12 schools in the next few years, besides planning overseas presence in countries like Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea through a joint venture with Veritas, the third largest GMAT education company. Career Launcher is estimated to have revenues in the range of Rs 75-100 crore.It’s likely Career Launcher has IPO plans in the next year or two. Gaja Capital had made a pre-IPO investment of $1 million in Educomp Solutions, which gave the fund stellar returns of about 20-30 times. Gaja recently sold 100,000 shares of Educomp to net about Rs 30 crore or $7.5 million.