Veranda Learning Solutions Limited (VERANDA) Earnings Call Transcript
January 16, 2025
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
So hi, everyone. And my name is Soumya Chhajed, and I'm working as research analyst at Go India Advisors. From our team, we also have Mr. Rakesh Arora and Sheetal Khanduja. So a lot of you must have been knowing that we introduced these CDs, featuring our small and mid-cap companies, which has the capability to scale up as the industry changes and has a very differentiated business model. And just to continue with that, we -- in today's session, we have a client Veranda Learning Solutions Limited. It's an emerging leader in the education sector, providing end-to-end solutions in the diverse segment with a staggering 124% Y-o-Y revenue growth and an impressive EBITDA of INR 62 crores and EBITDA margin of 17%. The company is redefining the future of education in India. So let me take a moment and give you a brief introduction about the management. So first, we have Mr. Suresh Kalpathi, the Executive Chairman of Veranda. He holds B.Tech. Degree from IIT Madras and MS from Clemson University with expertise in software development, education and business integration. He has been recognized as an Outstanding Entrepreneur of the Year in 1999. He is also an active venture capitalist, an angel investor, and a very inspirational motivator. And he always thinks out of the box, and so we welcome you, sir. Next up, we also have Ms. Saradha Govindarajan, the CFO, holding more than 11 years of experience in the areas of finance, strategy and operations. She has also completed MBA from XLRI, Jamshedpur. And last but not the least, we have Mr. Aditya Malik, the Group COO, whose operation and excellence and the focus in this -- on the scalability are the key drivers, expanding the Veranda's success. So let me give you a brief introduction about the company. So with its diversified education platform, Veranda delivers its services through online, offline and in blended formats across different segments, as you can see over the screen. This strategic approach has contributed to an impressive revenue CAGR of 397% over 3-year period from FY '21 to FY '24. Now talking about the diverse segments, including Academics, Commerce Test Prep, Government Test Prep and Vocational. So basically, you can see they're catering to the entire student life cycle, which is K-12 to post-schooling education to professional development, et cetera. And what's really setting them apart is the brands that they own. We have a diversified platform with the marquee brand name and they are leveraging a strong educational foundation and skilled workforce. They have turned their vision to reality. And with an outcome-oriented approach helping 100 students to secure ranks each year. So for better understanding and discussion, let's open the floor for the questions. And I request Rakesh sir, to moderate for the further session.
Thank you, Soumya. Welcome Suresh ji and the team. Suresh ji, first of all, I'd like to start with how did you really think of this initiative? And what was your thought process about establishing Veranda?
Thank you. Thank you, Rakesh ji. I started actually my career in software education. So my earlier company was SSI Limited, started in '91, built it very significantly, acquired Aptech subsequently and exited in 2007. During all those years of experience, one of the things that really stood out for me and especially after what we saw the dotcom bust that happened in 2000. While we were market leaders in software education, because we had a single point focus, when the software industry took a hit, we took a broad side hit though we were industry leaders. Veranda was set up as a platform, as your person mentioned, in diversify fields, predominantly to do twrite-off key things. The first was to extend the lifetime value of a customer. So today, we exist from almost from school to college to coaching to professional upskilling post job and during their job for career upgrading. The second one was, because we are present in multiple areas of education, the company has got a lot more resilience to any changes that happen. So when the software industry went soft about a couple of years ago, when even bellwethers and market leaders stop accruing to their existing workforce, one part of our business was challenged, but the rest of the business was doing fundamentally very well. And that ensures Veranda from an overall perspective continue to grow and deliver to its promise. I think those are really the key reasons. Of course, education has always been my passion. So it's great to be engaged in building something where your passion is also coinciding.
Sir, let's talk about a little bit about the whole scope of things. We saw in the presentation that we are covering the whole gamut from lower KG to colleges to vocational training to government test preparation. So what is the opportunity size according to you? And do we have any kind of market share currently that we can talk about?
Saradha, do you want to take it?
Yes. So the first segment that we operate in, which is government test prep, as you rightly pointed out, Veranda K-12, it's our academic segment. And we are now catering to six schools in this segment. And the market size is about 45,000 to 50,000 schools persist in CBSE matriculation, private-run State Board, IB, and Cambridge. So as a service provider, as you would appreciate, we have a huge headroom for growth in the Veranda K-12 space. We also cater to colleges. We have about 16 colleges that we are a service provider to in Bangalore and Hyderabad, and I don't even need to go into the number of colleges that exist in India. The next segment that we operate in is the government test prep segment, which is basically SSC, UPSC, railways, banks, government banks, so on and so forth. In that, the market study that we did, the commercial diligence places the market size upward of INR 3,000 crores to INR 4,000 crores. And today, our target in this -- our market share, as you would speak is about, we are at about INR 100 crores, INR 150-odd crores in revenue out of this market size. So again, a huge scope of growth there. Then we talked about government test prep. You had also combined in the $1.5 billion that you were showcasing here, Mr. Rakesh, you've combined government and commerce test prep, I was just trying to split it up and give you the exact market size. The other market that we operate in, which is the higher education market, vocational, which is as you have here, in this you're showcasing the presentation, it's about $50-odd billion. But again, this market is very segmented. And we are present across all these segments and the opportunity size at this point is upward of $50 billion.
Market that we are targeting -- Tell us a little bit about the USP that we have as compared to our competition. And what is our competition actually in these segments?
Let me sort of -- the first is a K-12, in taking in an asset-light model, existing schools, but helping them improve significantly on their performance. The initial set of more than 500 people driving our growth into the school space, where we are seeing the big opportunity for the last so many years, especially post COVID in the last 5 years, the expectations of parents have significantly changed, where schools used to be very sticky businesses as people saw, where kids get promoted from fourth to fifth and fifth to sixth, and it was happening periodically, today the expectations have completely changed. Parents want to know if you teach them artificial intelligence and design thinking from first standard onwards. They want to understand what type of different types of sports would my kid be exposed to? Do you do career mapping? Do you do counseling? Do you do integration for different career progression for me? What used to be just NEET and JEE for becoming a doctor or an engineer, today people want to know if you do plan to become a lawyer, a CA foundation, if I want to become a finance professional, if I want to become a diplomat. The expectation of the parents is not just stops here, but they also want to know if you will give them counseling on how they can go abroad, if my child should pursue undergraduate education overseas. And all of them have become base expectations even in Tier 2 and some of the Tier 3 towns in India. So schools, which are stand-alone schools that we are finding, with trustees who thought it was business as usual are finding it very challenged. Some of the trustees have become old. They are not able to find transition on to their children, who are no more interested in running a stand-alone school. And these are schools where we go in and help them operationally significantly improve efficiencies to the benefit of themselves and of course, accruing benefits to us. So for us, in the K-12 segment, that's a big USP because we have almost nationally leading brands in each one of the space. So if somebody wants to do CA Foundation, it comes to them from J.K. Shah classes, who are arguably the best and the most leading in the country. So we go into small towns, we give them the complete suite of things that meets the parent's expectations. And it is not just an ensemble of very mediocre products that covers the entire range, but these are some of the nationally leading products that comes to the smallest of towns. So in the K-12 space, we see huge opportunities. That's our significant USP of having built such a diversified model for business. The second one is government test prep. Today, we are leaders in most of the southern states. The government test prep market, just to give in terms of size, while the number of people who write NEET and JEE in India amounts to probably INR 25 lakhs to INR 30 lakhs nationally. The number of people who write the State Public Service Commission exam in a state like Tamil Nadu alone, is about 27 lakhs. So it's a very large market that we can grow into. Today, we are leaders in most of the southern states, and we want to expand this going national. Because if you look at the government test prep, it's a market that's got lots of regional players, no national players. Similar is the case with our commerce test prep, which is being led by a brand -- iconic brand like J.K. Shah classes and today, there is no #1 player nationally for commerce. And we come with a nationally leading brand in each one of these spaces. So that's pretty much our USP and it plays to a strength of having built a diversified platform.
Wondreful, sir. So basically, we have very credible brands and we are taking them to various parts of the country. So we are very strong in Southern India, but slowly and surely, we are going to be pan-India player. And that is what I think the initiative is. So Suresh ji, let's start with the Academic first. I just want to understand the K-12 initiative that we have. How many schools are there that we are currently managing? And if you can give us some a little bit about the economics of this business?
Currently, we manage five K-12 schools which are CBSE, two Cambridge International schools. We also manage close to 20 of junior colleges, which is 11th and 12th.
This is under Tapasya brand, right? Or is it under the K-12?
It's under the Tapasya brand. And this is all in the southern states, predominantly in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra. As I mentioned, currently, our team in the K-12 space is over 500 people. We are one of the associate partners for Cambridge in India apart from British Council themselves. We are the only other partner for Cambridge for their international school expansion in India. So that gives us another strength as we go and discuss with partners having been chosen as the only one in India to associate with Cambridge. The demand, as I mentioned earlier from parents across that it has spread nationally, given with the levels of affluence and the development in the country, today it requires such a diversified player to be able to provide all of them from a single operating company. And that's what we bring to our K-12. Again, most of them are stand-alone schools. Today, we're being challenged, because there are other brands or schools like K12 Techno, or VIBGYOR, or an Orchid or Narayana or Chaitanya, all of whom are expanding and all of them are expanding off a fairly strong and credible academic base. And they need partners, and we basically go in, help them revamp, rejuvenate and make them cutting edge. So that's -- we currently have multiple schools in the pipeline where the trustees are willing to come on board and some of them we expect and people wait for this good time to sign and stuff like that. But we are standing -- we are finding these pipelines across the country.
Suresh ji, can you just take us through the economics? So when we go to a school, what are the economics that we are looking at per school?
So typically, I'll give you an example of a school that we've been talking to in Jaipur. Fantastic piece of land. The trustees own the land and the building. They make about INR 2 crores of profit. But that's a profit that's been coming down. The occupancy is about 50%. What we go in to them is they are not able to take the risks of the business. So we allow them to hold the property. We run the school as an operating school. We give them a lease rental of INR 2 crores, which is their current profit that they are making. So from that perspective, the business risk goes away, from an operator they become a landlord. We give them a lease rental of INR 2 crores. We give them a deposit of 6 months, which is about a INR 1 crore. We spend roughly about INR 75 lakhs, INR 80 lakhs a year for the next 3 years to basically to upgrade the school on soft CapEx, digital dashboards and bring them up to our standards. Typically after paying them the lease rental of INR 2 crores, over a period of the next 3 years, we increased our profitability beyond the INR 2 crores, which stays in Veranda's books to about INR 2 crores by the fourth year. So we typically look at targeting about INR 40 lakhs to INR 50 lakhs of profit over and above this INR 2 crores in the first year. We make about INR 1 crore in the second year, about INR 1.5 crores and make about INR 2 crores of profit from the fourth year onwards. And what this allows us to do is that we would have created this on a very, very investment-light model, where typically, we get back all the money invested by the fourth year, and we have a very profitable school as part of our network.
so Veranda, we currently -- in K-12, we have five schools, which is CBSE and two schools, which are Cambridge. So how many schools are we targeting for, say, current year or next year? If you can give us some idea. What is the pipeline of schools looking at the moment?
Currently, we have a pipeline possibly of about 30 to 40 schools.
30 to 40 schools? That's huge. Because we have only 5 to 7 schools right now.
Correct. We have a significant team and a large academic team. And that's what we have been building over the last 2, 3 years, is to build, as I mentioned, a very strong foundation from which we can grow. Today, we have built a platform. So we expect to be able to continue our momentum. Our target, at least from a business perspective for this segment, is to see if we can get into over the next 4 to 5 years if we can get into close to 200 schools in a similar asset-light model.
Okay. So you think there's enough market for 200 schools for us to target in 5 years?
Saradha, do you want to comment?
Yes. So Mr. Rakesh ji, it goes back to my first comment on how the market sizing is. If you leave out the government and government-aided schools, private schools alone, we have more than, as I was pointing out the number, about 50,000 schools in India at this point. So we are managing 6 and sir talked about 30 in the coming year. So even if you take a very conservative market share of about 5%, and we are talking about trustees who are growing old, whose children have settled abroad. So they have -- they don't have the next generation to continue. As you would appreciate, a talent pipeline in the school business is also a little constrained. Third, there are people who open the school as another -- just another business, good to have. They have -- they are mainstream in other businesses. So what happens after running it for a few years, they realize they've been able to take it to 30%, 40% occupancy. And once you cross the 50%, 60% occupancy is when it is a windfall in cash. So it takes some time, and they don't have the ability to progress it. And then, you look at competition, right? Now you have a lot of PE-funded schools and many people participating in the school business, going back to sir's point of Chaitanya, Narayana, there are many guys trying to provide a lot more services. So the individual stand-alone schools are very constrained in what they can offer to the children. Today, parents expect, right from STEM learning to sports development all coming under one umbrella. So when we come in as a service provider, the ability to take even a 5% market share is very easy, because we have the team, we have the services that we can provide. And the market size that's available is large.
Understood. Meaning, 200 would be even less than 0.5% market share. So we have enough headroom out there. So moving to.
Sir's idea in the next few years would be 100 and 500. I have comfortably covered 5% in that, just to be a...
Let's come to the second segment, which is Tapasya. You mentioned, we have few colleges at the moment. So what is our strategy there? And what are the economics? Is it similar to the school economics? Or is it different? And what are the opportunities there?
I'll answer part of it, Aditya would probably be able to come in, in terms of how the unit model works in the commerce space expansion. Again, we have a fairly large team through Tapasya, where we typically take them through commerce education in 11th and 12th and into college education and commerce through programs of BCom predominantly. Where our strength comes in is today, in terms of BCom, people look at it as a basic graduation qualification, people look to professional qualification like a CA, CMA, ACCA to really get those cutting-edge job. We combine it with J.K. Shah classes, to today, kids can go through a BCom, but have a faculty who is as good in teaching CA to help them teach the basic BCom subjects itself. So we sort of become the most premium BCom provider because today, almost everybody who does a CA or an EC CA or a CFA invariably looks for doing a graduation of BCom on the side just to ensure they can say that they are graduate, not so much in terms of learning. So the combination of top and cutting-edge CA coaching organization like J.K. Shah combined with the regular program like BCom, offers an integrated way in which the kids not only complete BCom, but also become professionally qualified in parallel. Aditya, you want to go through a unit economics of a new college?
Sure. I'll go through that. And also, parallelly, apart from what Suresh just mentioned, we have a huge opportunity to be the leading player in the commerce college segment. See, people are chasing a Btech or BE and Btech Computer Science, which has been a go to course for quite some time. Commerce space is vacant. So this is why one of the reasons why we are going aggressively in that space, because that gives us a runway and an early mover advantage to move forward. In terms of unit economics, we have 15 campuses today for both junior college and the undergrad degree, Bcom degree across Bangalore and Hyderabad. Clearly, there's a plan to expand more in Karnataka and a couple of other places, especially in Maharashtra and the other southern states so that we are able to leverage the trend of commerce education. In terms of unit economics, it takes us 3 years to recover the full capital investment, whatever we make. These are asset-light model. We don't own the buildings. We don't own the real estate. These are typical city colleges. We go in and run the colleges ourselves. And with -- 3 years is the payback period where we recover the entire investment what we have made. And fourth year onwards, it starts giving us the EBITDA.
Just to add a bit more color to it. We are targeting colleges. We have made a sort of a list of the next set of 40 colleges where we can potentially go into. Our investment in each college -- in a school, we sort of target about INR 3 crores of investment. In a college, it's about INR 4 crores of investment for making the lease deposit, soft CapEx, which is basically the computers, the tables, chairs, the digital dashboards, all of them, and for working capital during the first 2 to 3 years. So unlike a school, which is about INR 3 crores, it's INR 4 crores in an asset-light Bcom College type of model. One of the key reasons for our excitement and aggressive growth that we are seeing is, if you go to -- and this is an experience right across the country, not just in southern states, but if you go to any state beyond the top 30 to 40 commerce colleges, which are fairly well known and sought after. If you go just below that, there will be hundreds, if not thousands of commerce colleges where you don't get great faculty to teach and somebody who is teaching is a student who just finished Bcom and who is only there because he didn't get a job. Moment he gets a job, he leaves. So the kids basically get a certificate of a degree, but really no knowledge transfer at all. And for them to be able to get a BCom that is now taught by somebody who teaches CA to come to their small town and do a BCom course for them, clearly a, positions that as the most premium commerce college in that location. And beyond that, I think it will significantly help improve our coaching revenues, because these programs will have the option of being integrated. The kids can do a Vanilla Bcom or a Bcom with CA or a BCom with ACCA, where we get significant exemptions on ACCA papers, if they do our Bcom, they can combine it with CS. They can combine it with CMA. So they also get an option to integrate for a professional qualification. They get fantastic faculty, the best of breed to teach them Bcom if that is really all they want to pursue. And our target over the next 4 years is to see if we can add about a 100 commerce colleges in India. We have identified 40 locations. And we will use potentially the brand of J.K. Shah College of Commerce in doing this expansion across the country. Typically, after 3 years once the payback is done, we expect them to be a profitability of between INR 2.5 crores to INR 3 crores per year. And we expect to add about 100 colleges over the next 4 to 5 years. I think the potential is much larger, but that's pretty much the bandwidth at which we would like to grow.
Saradha ma'am, do you have any offline number on how many colleges -- like 50,000 schools you said, how many commerce colleges were there within the country to give us some idea?
Yes, Mr. Rakesh, I don't have the number of commerce colleges. I tried, because of this university, the university issue, I don't have an offline number, I'll try. But Aditya ji, any idea? I'm sure it's more than schools for sure.
It's definitely more than schools. And BCOM and BA and BBAs are the courses, which are -- we definitely have more students than engineering for sure in India. So...
We will probably come up with a better answer the next time.
Yes, no problem. So I have a few more questions, but let's, [ Eswar ] has asked two interesting questions. One he is asking, is there any escalation in the contracts that we signed with schools and colleges. Obviously, there should be some escalation. So what kind of escalation do we agree to these schools and colleges?
From a school perspective, we typically sign an agreement which is like 20 to 25 years. That is also some of the requirement of CBSE itself. Typically, the model that we had spoken about, they typically become landlords. So the rent, the rental that we pay them escalates by about 10% to 12% every 3 years. We don't so much do revenue share. We make it as a lease rental model and it escalates by about 10% to 12% every 3 years. As far as commerce colleges are concerned, again, it's a pure rental model. From a revenue perspective, our fees typically when we take up the operations of a school with our branding, with our products going in, typically, we take the fee by up by about 10%. The intake moves up by about 5%, 6% in the first year. And that delivers to us that extra INR 50 lakhs of profitability that I mentioned in the first year in a school. In the college space, Aditya, you want to comment on the fees that we charge?
Yes. So we charge almost INR 75,000 to a INR 1 lakh per year. So that's close to about INR 2.5 lakhs to INR 3 lakhs over a period of the whole undergrad program. That's what we do. There is an escalation of the fees as well as we go further. And this is the plain vanilla undergrad course fee. If we club it with the CA coaching or ACCA coaching or a CMA or any other value-add course, there is obviously yield per student goes up, and that depends on course-by-course. So for example, CA will add about 25,000, 30,000 per year into this kind of model. That's how the fee structure for the undergrad colleges are.
The second question Eswar had was, do we have any examples which we can share some names about schools or colleges that we have turned around in the last 2, 3 years, if you can put out some names out there.
So the one that we can mention is BBM Global, which is the schools, those K-12 and Cambridge schools that we acquired. It runs under the brand of BBM Global. In the first year after we took up the operations of the school, we did a few things. We increased their intake by 10%. We generally target 5%, 6%. The intake moved up by 10%. And the average fees, which includes all fees put together to tuition, to books, to uniform, to all of them put together, we typically look at increasing it by about 10%. In this case, it moved up almost by 13%, 14% in the first year. So the revenue base moved up after we acquired from about INR 55 crores, INR 56 crores to close to INR 65 crores in the first year. This -- for the group of schools that we acquired, which was about six of them. But our target in terms of what I mentioned is typically lower than this. We don't expect to increase fees beyond 10%, and we don't expect our intake to go beyond 5%, 6%, especially after we come in and rebrand the entire school. In terms of the fee increase itself, it's also a fairly controlled, typically about 8% or fee increase in keeping with inflation is generally part for this industry.
Okay. Aditya ji, any college name you want to mention that people can relate to?
From a college perspective, Rakesh ji, we only run Tapasya as of now, which is our own brand. And we have, as I mentioned, 15 colleges. Instead of turning it around, I would like to share that in the last couple of years, we have expanded in Bangalore. Originally, Tapasya was started mostly in -- mainly in Hyderabad, which after successful opening about seven, eight campuses in Hyderabad, we focused on launching Bangalore. In last 2 to 3 years, Bangalore has taken off. In fact, this year, we have started two more campuses in Bangalore. So I would say instead of turning it around, we'll call it expansion in a different geography and that has started giving us good returns from Bangalore as well.
So Aditya ji, when is our first third-party kind of college is going to start, out of the 40 that we have identified or something?
So from college perspective, as Suresh mentioned, the intent is to expand wherever Tapasya brand is strong, we'll go with Tapasya brand. And otherwise, with a strong brand like J.K. Shah classes, which is the pioneer from a commerce coaching perspective, the intent is that in the markets like Gujarat and a couple of other markets where J.K. Shah brand is fairly strong in western part of the country, we will leverage on a J.K. Shah classes brand and set up those colleges in an asset-light model. But it's not going to be managed services college, but it's going to be an asset-light model of running the way we are running Tapasya today.
Just to add quickly -- just to add quickly, Rakesh. I think the fundamental difference between our school and college expansion as far as the schools are concerned, we are really looking at taking operating control of existing operating schools. As far as the college expansion is concerned, we are going to be setting them up, ground up, which means we basically rent out the space. It's a lease rental, but a pure lease rental. It's not an operating college that we take over, but it's a brand new location that we set up and run. We have multiple colleges with various levels of the degree. So we know exactly how it works. So what we have seen is typically a college and a junior college that we start together starts with about 200 to 250 admissions in the first year, roughly about 125 for 11th, about 125 for the first year of BCom. And because the model feeds in the same, the people go to second year, the 11th standard kids go to 12th. We have new intake coming in 11th and Bcom first year. And typically, by the fourth year, we would have crossed about 1,000 students in the junior college and BCom put together. We have some other colleges where the numbers have gone up to about 1,800, but these are 6-year, 7-year old colleges. So it's a ground-up expansion.
Okay. So let's move to the commerce test preparation segment. Obviously, J.K. Shah is a very well-known name. Do we have any other brands like online brands to supplement J.K. Shah or is it only one brand that we're operating in?
So as far as J.K. Shah classes is concerned, it's predominantly been an offline brand, with now over 100 locations in 15 states in the country. We have been in discussion. We have signed definitive agreements and that's part of the fundraise that's currently ongoing. For the majority controlling stake acquisition in BB Virtual, which is Bhanwar Borana, who is one of the leaders in online CA coaching. We are excited about it for a couple of reasons. Like J.K. Shah clauses, it's a very, very outcome-driven business that Bhanwar runs. So -- in fact, we are planning to have a small celebration on 28th of this month in Bombay, where we are felicitating our rank holders who came during this year, and we have over 250 rank holders this year, whom we are felicitating in Bombay between Bhanwar and J.K. Shah classes. So clearly, BB Virtuals will be our online platform. J.K. Shah classes will be our offline platform. And the most exciting for us is the BB Virtuals platform are leaders in about four or five subjects that they do predominantly of CA finals. With the coming together of J.K. Shah and Bhanwar, we will now have starting from CA Foundation to CA Inter to ACCA to CMA, all of these programs now will be available in the online platform. And that will significantly expand our target segment, both in terms of revenue and profitability. We have Navkar, who is the leader in Gujarat for CA coaching, who is now part of the broader commerce vertical of Veranda. We have Logic in Kerala who are the leaders in Kerala, who are, again, part of the J.K. Shah-led commerce vertical and Tapasya, of course, from our perspective of taking this education to junior colleges and colleges in the commerce space.
Aditya ji, can you take this question from Moksh. He's saying that on an average, Indian colleges charge INR 40,000, INR 50,000 a year for BCom program. We are saying INR 1 lakh. So can you just explain the difference? And also take us through how much does this cost to do a training in J.K. Shah?
Sure. So yes, Indian colleges, Indian universities, typically, government universities charge INR 40,000 to INR 50,000 per year. Private colleges fees, obviously, is much larger. See, our claim to say, and the fact that we have more than 15,000 students across Tapasya across all the -- some junior college to the undergrad course, which means people are appreciating the quality of education we are providing. To specifically answer your question, the government universities have that kind of a fees, private universities have a different range of fees. So specifically when brands like Tapasya, they offer a undergrad course at INR 75,000 to INR 1 lakh per kind of a year. Obviously, a lot of emphasis is played on the other aspects like industry guest lectures, other certifications, engagement with the best faculties and industry connects, even placement support, et cetera. And happy to say that, as I mentioned earlier, apart from Hyderabad, we have seen this success even at a higher scale at Bangalore. So we don't see personally that this kind of a fee point for a good BCom course from a private college is a challenge. In fact, we feel we have a runway to do more of this as we go forward. On the other aspect of the CA coaching from J.K. Shah, from Rakesh ji the question you asked, so a typical CA coaching is split between CA Foundation and Inter, Final kind of a model. And obviously, we offer three separately or we offer that you can take -- you can enroll for all three of them and do all of them together as we go forward. Depending on the scale and the size what you get in, the cost ranges between INR 60,000, INR 65,000 to about INR 90,000 across the segments from a CA coaching perspective for the whole this thing. Now for each of the modules, it's a INR 25,000, INR 30,000 kind of a course. And depending on the various payment plan, this ranges like this.
Aditya, while we're on the same topic, Pranay had an interesting question about the online coaching. What is the unit economics for online coaching revenue per student or revenue from YouTube subscription, anything that you want to say?
Saradha, would you want to take that one from a BB Virtual perspective?
Yes. So online coaching is done on a paper-to-paper basis. So I will talk about ARPU. So at J.K. Shah classes, the average revenue per student stands at about INR 50,000 to INR 55,000 depending on how they are taking. This is for CA Foundation and CA Inter. That's the major chunk of students that appear on J.K. Shah classes. When it comes to BB or online, it goes on a per paper module. So people -- so J.K. Shah classes, CA Inter, you take the entire group. You take both the groups, all papers together. So that's the way. Here, it's at about INR 20,000 to INR 25,000 average revenue per student. So online is very different from offline.
But for like-for-like basis, it is 50% cheaper. That's what you're saying?
It's not 50% cheaper, because it will be one or two courses is the average. So they would only take tax and financial accounting. So extrapolated, it would be expensive as well, but BB is the premium brand in the segment.
And so do we also get some revenue from YouTube for people?
Monetization? Yes, we do YouTube monetization. Not only in BB, even in brands like Brainforce, where we have a good amount of content and we are considered to be thought leaders even in the software education space. We have YouTube monetization that comes across the group. But at this point in time, it's not major, it's a INR 1 crore. With BB coming in, we will figure it out.
And how is the uptake in online segment? Is the competition increasing? Or are we able to grow? Any color on that online thing?
From -- again, from a BB Virtual's perspective, the online is a pretty profitable model, is in terms of just percentage is much more profitable for us unlike many of the online platforms that one does see. For instance, BB Virtual runs almost at 45% to 50% profit margins. And especially once we add all of the J.K. Shah courses and the quality of faculty onto that platform, those numbers could significantly go up in the years to come. From the other online business, which has a significant presence is our software training vertical. So there, again, it's a predominantly online platform. There our margins probably would be in the mid-teens.
Suresh ji, can you just tell us we have like 100-plus coaching centers for J.K. Shah. What is our plan for next 4, 5 years, how many centers we plan to open?
So when we came into J.K. Shah classes, our predominant goal was to become the leader in the top 15 states in the country. Now we have laid our presence in all 15 of these states. We currently are in the top 1, 2 or 3 in each of these states. And the plan is like, for instance, in Tamil Nadu, today, we would probably be a close second. And I suspect that next year, we'll go #1 in Tamil Nadu. This exercise started about 2, 3 years ago. In terms of expanding the number of coaching locations, typically, it works on a hub-and-spoke type of model. So a lot of concentration in the hub, like for instance, in Bombay. And then we would have centers which are spokes, which are in the smaller towns. Typically, these are situated around places where there are arts, science colleges and junior colleges that are there. Because this is natural for them to come on doing their BCom or junior college and doing the CA coaching in parallel. So we would expect to be able to double the presence of our coaching classes over the next 4 to 5 years. And this will largely also be in line with our commerce college expansion strategy.
Okay. So now let's move on to the government preparation segment. We have Veranda RACE, we have our Sreedhar, and Talent. Can you just take us through this segment, what exactly it is? And how do we go about it?
As I mentioned, the government test prep market is characterized by a very large number of people who write these exams. The numbers will typically run into crores, if not tens of crores of people who write this exam nationally. The second one that characterizes this space and also ends our interest is a lot of them are regional players. So you will have somebody like a VANIK, who is very popular in Odisha, but unknown, for instance, in Kerala, and Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, elsewhere in the country. Then there are other similar popular brands that are good in a particular location, but really unknown elsewhere. We think there is a significant play available if we can consolidate, because across the State Public Service Commission exams or Central Government Exams like the premier IAS coaching itself, but apart from that for railway recruitment, staff selection, banking exams, curriculum is common, except for possibly the regional, the state-wise variations. But otherwise, 80% of the curriculum is the same. Language changes from state-to-state, but that's a capability that we already have in many of our other verticals. So we think there is a very interesting play available to be able to create a first national player in this space. We currently are leaders in the South. We are looking at establishing our first locations in the west and north in the coming months. Large space.
These are all offline programs?
We offer them both online and offline. Currently, we have almost 20% of our business coming from online, 80% is from our offline locations.
Okay. So the plan is to go pan-India and to try to consolidate. When you say try to consolidate, you mean merging with some other brands or acquiring brands? Or what do you exactly mean by consolidate?
Veranda has been a platform that's been built largely through acquisition and then aggressive organic growth after that, Rakesh. With the recent acquisitions that we announced, both BB Virtuals and Navkar, we are pretty much at the end of our acquisition sector. We are currently all the businesses that we need as part of the Veranda Tapestry to grow from here organically. So when I mentioned to create a large national player, is to actually organically grow into many of these states, basis the strength of our academics, which we already have and proven in the South. So just for some statistics. In a place like Tamil Nadu, two out of three people who get a banking job in a public sector bank are our students. So we hit outcomes very high in many of these locations. And I think in a test prep type of segment, that's the only parameter by which students make their choice. Of course, the fee is an important part of making choice in India. Our fees is very competitive in that space. But our testimonials are extremely strong. And we have delivered these type of numbers for over a decade. So it's going to be organically expansion, not so much through acquisitions.
Moksh had an interesting take. You were saying that CA teaching is more professor-driven brand name. So we have acquired like J.K. Shah is the brand name, BB Virtual. Are we going to onboard any more professors whose brands are more popular in some local areas?
Again, we would potentially look at growing the base of our faculty. I mean, that -- also the one that will be driving our growth into many of these locations that I mentioned, doubling the number of coaching centers, expansion in commerce colleges will be on the backbone of an extremely strong and growing expert faculty. But I think this is something that both me and J.K. Shah has had believed strongly is that we need to build a brand that's beyond a particular faculty. It is built on strong and expert faculty, but not a specific faculty. And if you look at the programs that the way the J.K. Shah classes is today designed is, if somebody should take an advanced accounting in a CA Final program, it's offered through multiple faculty, where a few chapters are delivered by each of the faculty. And so there is a rotation of faculty that happens. Each one of them is equally good and an expert in the subject. So the students get a very strong program, but not so much identified with a particular faculty. Now having said that, expert faculty-driven businesses are there in every local and regional location in all forms of the test prep. And that's something that will always be there. Our view is to create a national player, which represents significant expertise and quality of education that delivers outcomes. So we will continue to onboard great faculty to build our strength to have the ability to expand, but not so much having dependence on particular faculties.
We are a little bit tight on time. So let me ask some quick pointed question. So on this government test preparation, what are the economics that we work with, meaning it's 80% is offline. So costs are higher, the margins, how do we -- what kind of margins are we looking at?
Saradha, you want to take it?
Actually, the costs are not high. It is high volume, low-value business. But what happens in such scenarios you run at a relatively lower cost infrastructure, also, you run big batches, you would have seen a government test prep place. So I think the margins are pretty much comparable in the offline test prep segment space. So we go between 25% to 35% margins, depending on if it's franchisee run our own center. Own centers go at 35% margins and 25% EBITDA margins is what a franchisee would operate at, roughly speaking.
Okay. And now quickly coming to the vocational vertical, meaning we have Edureka brand, which is a massive. So what are the plans there? And what are the economics also if you can quickly cover that segment.
Edureka is predominantly an online software training organization. We are one of the top 10 players in the country in this space. Again, been there for over a decade. Combining this with our Higher Ed business, which is organically and homegrown where we work with many of the IITs, IIMs and many leading colleges in taking their programs nationally. Combining that with what we do at Edureka, along with our corporate training that we do in software to some of the leading organizations, where our customers include people like TCS, the World Bank, and many of the marquee software companies are our customers from a B2B perspective. We combine the knowledge of what the industry needs, because we actually train them and taking it into the B2C market to help people shape their careers to get jobs in these companies. We also work through another brand in over 300 colleges in the country. We are the largest in the south and the space, where we help colleges where the kids go through their final semester in preparing for campus interviews, and help them significantly increase the success percentage of campus interviews. And some of the campuses where these people get placed in jobs. Some of them get jobs with salaries as high as INR 30 lakhs to INR 35 lakhs. In some of these colleges, which are not the IITs or the RECs of this world. And those colleges really look up to us to provide the service. So we work with colleges. We work with corporates, and we work with some of the most leading academic institutions and we bring all this together and take it to customers. That's really pretty much is our occasional space.
Perfect. So let me come to some of the balance sheet kind of questions people have been asking. So Saradha ma'am, if you can help. So goodwill as we know, very high, because we had all this acquisition rate strategy. So what's our plan on this? What goodwill are we going to write it off? Or we are going to -- we are confident that the value is there, and we want to keep it on.
Yes. So Mr. Rakesh as on date, the goodwill on the books is about INR 85-odd crores and intangible assets, it's about INR 42 crores. I had seen a question about intangible as well. These two combined -- sorry, INR 850 crores and INR 420 crores, about INR 1,200 crores worth of acquisitions, what we have done. That's the 100% value of the acquisitions that we have done. The goodwill is not getting impaired, because we've generally bought positive assets. If one or two misses are there, we will look at impairing them then and there. So goodwill just tastes and it's an asset, because these are great businesses like J.K. Shah classes that we bought. The intangible, however, is getting depreciated. It is a non-cash expense. We've raised this money and paid those guys all of them. But this is still getting depreciated and hence, making it look like the EBITDA is not flowing into profits because of that. So there is a thought process with the company of relooking at the useful life and an accelerated depreciation. I will pause that thought process here on account of the upcoming financials. Once the company decides on it, we discussed with our auditor, we will suitably take it up. But we are constantly reassessing the need for this intangible and the non-cash depreciation that's coming on the books.
Also one question here. How frequently are we taking this impairment test and are our auditors on board with this impairment test? How does that happen?
So impairment is being tested every quarter. 95% of our assets or 98% of our assets, because we are EBITDA positive, profitable and pedigree is the mantra with which we acquire, we are not asked for impairment testing so frequently. But as a listed company, every quarter, irrespective, we have to certify, the auditors have to certify. Over and above that, we do a quarterly assessment of assets which either -- sorry, annual assessment of assets, which are external. So someone external looks at the impairment, if the asset is borderline. Say, for example, it's not as per projections, we even take adequate measures for an external valuer to value it. It is not needed as per Companies Act, but the company is doing it proactively as of this time.
Can we know -- are we comfortable paying the -- servicing the debt from the current [Technical Difficulty]
I lost. I didn't hear you fully, sir.
Was my question clear? I was asking what is our debt on the books? And are we comfortable servicing the debt? Anupam is asking also, interest rate on the debt that we have average interest cost. So if you can just take that question.
Our current interest rate -- so the debt that we carry is about INR 450 crores of debt in our books. Out of which INR 435 crores comes from bearings credit. They are the single largest lender in our books. The interest rate is about 17.23%. We obviously could not go to banks where we would have got a much lower rate given our rating, but banks cannot fund acquisitions, and these are largely taken to fund the acquisitions we have done. So it's structured credit. There are a couple of thought process and action items that the company is actively working on. One is to see if it can bank on the strength of the promoters, credentials and financials to see if the cost for the company can significantly come down where we are targeting single-digit percentage for the company. The second one that we are also targeting is to see if we at some point, we can refinance this with a low-cost debt from a regular financial institution. So both of them are ongoing. One is to leverage the promoter financial strength to bring down the cost of interest to the company to single digits. That's an ongoing effort. And the second one at some point is also to refi this to a much cheaper debt. In terms of servicing this, I think currently, basis, the acquisitions we have just announced, we expect even at these elevated levels of interest, the interest payout will potentially not even be 50% of our projected margins that we expect to make post these acquisitions. So from that perspective, it is -- I would rather want this money to go into growth. And that's the reason I mentioned a couple of efforts to bring down the cost of money to the company and to refinance this. But that's to provide more fuel to our growth. In terms of ability to service, I think we should be able to be comfortable with the acquisitions we have just closed.
Suresh ji, what is the ideal amount of money you need to grow every year? Is there a number in which you can say like INR 100 crores, INR 50 crores, INR 200 crores, that we -- how much do we really need to keep up with the growth, so that we are projecting for ourselves over the next 4, 5 years?
Saradha, you want to take it?
Yes. So see, the growth parameters right now, as we were talking about, the tools are going in finding about 30 schools every year, going up to 100, 150 schools is the initial thought process. In the test prep segment, yes, putting up centers, but we also have the ability to put our franchisees and these are not too CapEx heavy. So on an annual basis, I think about INR 30 crores to INR 40 crores kind of a CapEx investment is good enough for us to go into a double digit. It's an asset-light business. We're not looking at land building and all of that. If the bearing step isn't there, for example, I think the company is very adequately positioned to take up the yearly CapEx repairs and maintenance and growth. Right? So however, if we want to prepone certain organic items and launch a big phase growth, then we should look at something around a INR 100 crore kind of a raise. This is the next 2, 3-year plan, if we are doing an equity raise. So it can be looked in certain forms and manner. You can split it and the company can itself finance it, but then the growth will be slow and over a period of time.
Got it. I think that's it. Thank you so much. We are very excited to get this Veranda story. It's a huge market size that we are targeting. And we have built a strong base with iconic brands to really take us forward, and we are looking forward to some resolution on the balance sheet side, so that the growth can be even faster than normally, it would be with this kind of balance sheet. So thank you so much, Suresh ji, any last comments that you want to make before we close?
Yes, a couple of minutes. Education has been my passion from the moment I left IIT. Even in schools, I used to teach, I continue to teach on Children's Day in the schools. I love teaching. I know the type of difference it makes, and it's made such a significant difference in my own entrepreneurial carrier coming from an IIT myself. So for me, it's coming together perfectly in terms of creating business value, but also in an area where I'm absolutely passionate about. I love to teach, I couldn't have asked for a better business opportunity than to be in teaching. I think the potential in India to grow given that India has moved from a developing -- underdeveloped, developing and hopefully Viksit Bharat over the next 10, 15 years. I think skilling education in all forms need to be rebooked in India. And that's also a very strong passion coming from a national list, if you will. And I think Veranda is a case in question that can really make a difference to India's growth trajectory going forward. So very excited to be in this space to be able to give back, to be in a business, absolutely my passion. And I think, it's something that can create a lot.
Before we let you go, one last question from Pranay. I missed this question. He is asking the shareholder a promoter shareholding is going down. And a lot of it is pledged also. So [Technical Difficulty] there's against -- was I audible?
No, sir. Sir, we lost your voice for the last minute.
So I was saying last question, Pranay had asked about the promoter shareholding going down and pledge on promoter holding. If you can just take that question, I missed it earlier.
So the first is promoters holding is going down because we have raised money to build the business. Having said that, we've been continuing to take warrants to increase our stake, and this is something that you will find us doing on a continuous basis. The last time we took warrants to assist in the J.K. Shah acquisition, we had taken warrants at about INR 307, where we put in about INR 60 crores. Even in the current round, we have put in warrants to the extent of about 15%, INR 15 crores of warrants is coming from the promoters at about INR 320. So we will continue to take warrants, continue to increase our stake. The promoter stake, as he mentioned, rightfully so, is pledged. I'm very comfortable place pledging promoter shares if it will help the business grow. And all of it is pledged exclusively for the purpose of building Veranda and not for any other business opportunities for the promoter. So all of it is pledged or there is a non-disposal undertaking for the bearings debt that the company has got and the promoter stake is pledged only against that. And generally not ours to being pledging it with financial institutions exclusively for the purpose of building out a Veranda story. Would I -- am I comfortable with the pledge? Not necessarily. But is it required for Veranda? Absolutely. And if it is required for Veranda, we would rather put our stake first upfront. But you will -- you should see -- look forward our stake going up, because we'll continuously look at warrants to keep taking our stake up.
Thank you, everyone, for joining in. And if you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out, you can reach out to Soumya. Her e-mail ID is there at the presentation in the end or you can reach out to the company itself, Saradha ma'am's e-mail ID is also there. So please feel free to reach out, and we are looking forward to exciting the journey with Veranda and all the best to you, sir. I think it's a great, great opportunity. And hopefully, we'll come through successful at the other end.
Thank you very much, and thanks for all for participating.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Rakesh.
Thank you, everyone.
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