Gaja Capital Acquires Minority Stake In Edtech Company KOOH Sports For $10.17 Mn

Mumbai-based mid-market private equity firm Gaja Capital has made its second bet on the edtech market as it has reportedly acquired a significant minority stake in sports education and training company KOOH Sports for $10.17 Mn (INR 75 Cr).

According to reports, Gaja Capital will invest via a mix of primary and secondary stake purchase in KOOH Sports. Some of the existing investors of KOOH Sports are expected to make a partial exit in this investment round.

KOOH Sports was founded in 2010 by Susir Kumar and Prabhu Srinivasan. The platform provides sports training to children.

The company mainly focuses on the concept of ‘Kids Out Of Home’ and works with different schools in order to provide grassroots programmes to schoolgoers. KOOH claims to provide sports education to 200K children across India and have a presence across 50 cities.

Also, as part of this deal, the KOOH Sports investment will be a part of the Gaja Capital-owned SportzVillage, which provides integrated sports management services to schools and corporates.

SportzVilage, which was founded in 2003, operates via two business divisions — EduSports for the schools business and SportzConsult for the corporates business.

An email query sent to Gaja Capital by Inc42 didn’t elicit any response till the time of publication of this report.

Gaja Capital has been majorly focusing on education, financial services, consumer, and healthcare sectors. The capital firm manages assets worth about $500 Mn across its three investment vehicles. It has also marked two exits from its $180 Mn Gaja II fund — TeamLease and RBL Bank — in April and June, respectively.

In July, Gaja had invested $25 Mn in Ahmedabad-based edtech company Educational Initiatives from its third fund— the $240 Mn Gaja III. KOOH Sports is reportedly the ninth investment from Gaja III.

According to a May 2017 report by Google and KPMG of May 2017, the edtech market is expected to have a significant impact on the online education sector, which has a potential to touch $1.96 Bn by 2021 from $247 Mn at present.

BYJU’S, Toppr, NeoStencil, Unacademy, and Englishleap among many others are some of the major players in the edtech space. However, there are a few players who are catering to sports education in India. Here’s a quick look at them:

• Bengaluru-based Edusports, which was launched in 2009, works with schools to train students by providing physical education and sports programmes
• Delhi-based Sports Flashes is a multi-sports content app that was launched in 2016. Backed by the Times Group, the platform offers content in seven languages

According to an IBEF report. the education sector in India is estimated at $ 91.7 Bn in FY18 and is expected to reach $ 101.1 Bn in FY19.

[The development was reported by ET.]

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