Being one of the India’s largest leading companies, Pearson announced about its partnership with a funding firm village capital. It aims to support education entrepreneurs who serve less privileged students throughout the world in education. Pearson also announced its investment in this project. After peer review and assessment by fellow entrepreneurs, the selected entrepreneurs will get funding up to $75000 funding.
The Pearson learning fund (PALF) was set up last year is formed to work with the village capital in providing aid to the Indian entrepreneurs who helps the education to reach the zenith’s height. The Pearson learning mainly targets to invest their funds in low-cost private schools and other affordable educational institutes and programmes. It also lets the Indian entrepreneurs receive the chance to get seed investment in their work.
In this partnership programmes, up to 16 starts up companies will participate in the workshops. It is scheduled to take place in this autumn. The startup entrepreneurs will be offered free mentoring advices from other experienced entrepreneurs, investors and professionals. The total work has been planned in such a way that these entrepreneurs will further help each other against six divided criteria. The top two ranking companies will get $75000 each from $100,000 and $50,000 of capital. This is promised to be given by the Affordable Learning Fund and Village Fund respectively.
This programme is only for those Indian entrepreneurs who are determined to serve students whose families are at the bottom of the society in terms of wealth. These entrepreneurs are open for seeking market based solutions regarding education for the poor students. The serving companies can be both technological and non-technological companies.
The executive director of the Affordable Learning Fund, Katelyn Donnelly, said, “We are thrilled to bring this programme to entrepreneurs striving to develop businesses that enhance outcomes and access for low-income learners in India. We’ve seen a lack of early support and risk capital in the low cost education space and we are pleased to take the lead in creating a robust ecosystem for impact-oriented entrepreneurs and incubate innovative models of education to dramatically improve learning at scale.”
But sometimes identifying the best startup for investment seems difficult and much more costly process. Therefore US based Village Capital specializes in utilizing the mentoring advices and support from the entrepreneurs or investors to invest during peer selection. Village Capital has covered operating 20 programmes all over the world. In almost four years, it had invested in 30 companies and served 350 entrepreneurs.
Ranu Kawatra, CEO and President Of Pearson Education India say,” Pearson is proud to announce this unique initiative in collaboration with Village Capital. The program underscores our commitment to quality education in the country. Through this we hope to reach out to the brilliant minds who have the knowledge and the dedication to make a substantial difference in the domain of education and learning at the grass-root level”.
More detailed information about this partnership will be available shortly. The application forms for the entrepreneurs will be available by the end of august and the workshops are scheduled to start in late September or late November this year.