Aditya Birla Group in talks to take over IL&FS education arm
MUMBAI: The Aditya Birla Group is in talks with struggling infrastructure financier Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services Ltd (IL&FS) to buy out its education and training arm, IL&FS Education and Technology Services (IETS), according to two people aware of the development who did not want to be named as the discussions are in their preliminary stages.
IETS, a fully-owned subsidiary of IL&FS, operates computer labs in government schools under the build-own-operate model. According to the 2018 annual report of IL&FS, IETS manages 16,000 schools in 11 states. It also offers vocational skills training to youth funded by governments and corporates, the latter through individual corporate social responsibility programmes. The company trained nearly 300,000 candidates last year and was the biggest such trainer under the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana, the government’s skill development programme.
IETS is present in 17 countries in the Middle East and North Africa and South and South East Asia. The company said in its annual report that it had received growing interest from foreign governments and private sector companies in these countries for the IETS portfolio. In its 2017 annual report, IETS disclosed that for the year ended 2017, IETS reported income of ₹427 crore and net profit of ₹20 crore. The company’s total debt stood at ₹606.83 crore, the document said.
The Aditya Birla group runs a gamut of learning, development and skill training programmes under separate businesses and as part of the Aditya Birla Skills Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that offers vocational education and skills training to job-seekers and runs multi-skills training centres at several locations. The company has been attempting to enter the forprofit education space for a while. One of the two people mentioned above said that the group had approached IL&FS two years ago as well, expressing interest in buying the latter’s education business.