Leading education software company, Educational Initiatives (Ei) recently announced that HCL Group has made an investment of INR 166 crore to acquire a minority stake in the Company.
Founded in 2001, Ei is a leading B2B education software company that provides schools with research-backed assessments and personalised adaptive learning solutions to help improve learning outcomes at scale. Ei has more than 1 million paid users for its two offerings: Assessments (Ei ASSET and Ei CARES) and Personalised Adaptive Learning (Ei Mindspark) and is present in India, UAE, South Africa, and Singapore.
“We have demonstrated our ability to improve learning outcomes and empower school teachers to achieve their intent of every child learning well regardless of their parent income. I’m excited to welcome HCL Group as investors who share our vision of leveraging the best of pedagogy & technology to improve learning outcomes for millions of students in India and around the world”, said Pranav Kothari, CEO, Ei.
Shikhar Malhotra, Director, HCL Group said, “We’re thrilled to invest in Ei; it is a great organization with technological prowess and a commitment to effecting positive societal change. The organization offers a distinctive blend of scalable technology, impactful social initiatives, and sustainable growth.”
Remarking on the investment, Gopal Jain, Managing Partner at Gaja Capital said, “Ei is a rare example of resilience, high growth, pedagogy and technology coming together in their vision of solving one of the biggest problems of our age – helping every child learn with understanding. ”
Ei stands at the forefront of education with 23 years of pedagogical research, analyzing 5 billion data points to understand student learning patterns. Leveraging cutting-edge research and technology, Ei has developed a suite of assessment and adaptive learning products for both students and teachers. These innovative tools have shown significant enhancements in learning outcomes across subjects.
Ei has a market leading presence in India and the UAE. The company is now looking to expand in South Africa, Kenya, Ghana and Saudi Arabia and is exploring business partnerships in these markets with companies that align with Ei’s mission. The company has also developed offerings like Ei ASSET Arabic to suit the local needs of these countries. Ei is looking to acquire Edtech product companies focused on improving learning outcomes in their respective regions.
Its adaptive learning product, Ei Mindspark, has undergone three independent third-party evaluations by researchers at J-PAL, IDInsight, Harvard and Oxford and is proven to deliver 300% to 700% improvements in learning outcomes compared to the respective control groups in these studies. The B2B Edtech company uses advanced analytics to identify learning gaps and has integrated generative AI into its products to improve students’ reading, writing and speaking experience. It is also investing in discovering how technologies like machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) can aid in student learning. Ei’s newest assessment product, Ei ASSET Computational Thinking and Ei Mindspark Computational Thinking help prepare students for critical 21st century skills. Ei continues to build content specifically for tackling Foundational Literacy & Numeracy (FLN) as part of India’s national mission to ensure children can read and do basic math in younger grades. As part of NEP, Ei has been a technical partner to strengthen assessments at CBSE, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Tripura, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Nagaland.
Educational Initiatives’ (Ei) products have garnered global recognition as among the most innovative and impactful in the field, with accolades from prestigious entities like UNESCO, the World Bank, Brookings Institute, and numerous leading publications, all highlighting EI’s cutting-edge technological contributions to education.
About Ei
Founded in 2001, Educational Initiatives Private Limited (Ei) is a first-of-its-kind pedagogy-tech leader. The company leverages the twin levers of cutting-edge pedagogical research and technology-based solutions, to help students across different economies and demographics, learn with understanding. With over two decades of experience in the edtech space, our vast pool of student-data enables us to identify learning gaps and create a systematic shift in the way teachers teach and students learn. https://ei.study/
About Gaja Capital
Gaja Capital is India’s leading growth-stage, private equity firm. Gaja Capital invests in technology and technology-enabled companies in high growth sectors such as Education, Software, Financial Services and Consumer. Its recent investments include Amber, a leading student accommodation platform; Signzy, a leading digital banking infrastructure enabler; LeadSquared, India’s leading high velocity sales execution software and Xpressbees, India’s leading e-commerce fulfilment company. To know more, please visit: https://www.gajacapital.com/
About HCL Group
Founded in 1976 as one of India’s original IT garage start-ups, HCL is a pioneer of modern computing with many firsts to its credit, including the introduction of the 8-bit microprocessor-based computer in 1978 well before its global peers. Today, the group has a presence across varied sectors that include technology, healthcare and talent management solutions and comprises three companies – HCL Tech, HCL Infosystems, and HCL Healthcare. The group generates annual revenues of over US$13.1 billion with 224,756 employees operating across 60 countries. For further information, visit www.hcl.com.
