On August 14, the Greater Noida-based CL Educate Ltd (estimated revenue: Rs.200 crore in 2011-12) completed 17 years of operations and attained adulthood. Started in 1995 by a St. Stephen’s, Delhi and IIM-Bangalore alumnus Satya Narayanan R. as Career Launcher, the enterprise has since grown from a one-room test prep school into a multi-divisional company offering test prep, K-12, vocational and allied services corporate with an excellent reputation in the education services marketplace. Currently, CLE boasts an employee headcount of 1,000 providing education services to over 100,000 learners from its 225 learning centres countrywide  with a strong presence in the internet space. According to company sources, CLE is chalking up enrolment and revenue growth of 25-28 percent per year. A snapshot of the company’s diversified business mix.

Test prep. Still the company’s biggest division which contributes 60 percent of annual revenue, it prepares Plus Two school-leavers for competitive IIT, law schools, BBA, hotel management, AIEEE, chartered accountancy and SAT  entrance exams. Moreover the division coaches college graduates for the CAT, civil services, Gate, GMAT and GRE entrance exams. CLE’s test prep division claims that almost 5,000 of its mentored students have been admitted into the IIMs, 850 into the IITs and that almost 80 percent of the current batch in the National Law School University of India, Bangalore are CLE students.

Indus World Schools. Since the company diversified into K-12 education in 2005, it has promoted 14 IWS institutions in Hyderabad, Indore, Raipur, Bhiwani, Mandi, Ahmednagar, Gurgaon, Aurangabad, Jalgaon, Majitha, Nagar, Ludhiana and Dhampur. In various stages of completion, IWS has an aggregate enrolment of 4,000 students. The  unique sales proposition of IWS institutions is their in-house designed Ananda (joy of learning) preschool; Jigyasa (spirit of inquiry) upper primary and middle school, and Sadhana (career preparation and future mapping) class IX-XII curriculums. The company’s top management has set itself the goal of establishing 100 IWS institutions by the year 2020.

SkillSchool. In 2010-11 following the Union and state governments’ belated awareness that it had neglected formal vocational education and training (VET) of the great mass of the population for over half a century, and its promotion of NSDC (National Skills Development Corporation) with a mandate to facilitate VET for 500 million citizens by 2020, CLE launched CL SkillSchool. The objective of this venture is to provide low-priced, high-volume VET to various segments of the 400 million-plus workforce, as also to the rural self-employed. Working closely with several state governments in particular, this division trained, certified and placed 8,000 workers in its very first year of operations (2011).