00:00 A quick update from Veranda Learning because they expect revenue growth of 100% in FY25
00:06 and presume in order to do that they are pulling out all stops including raising some funds
00:11 via NCDs, not a very large fundraise and again not an equity dilution but an NCD fundraise
00:16 but Mr. Suresh Kalpati joins in right now. Mr. Kalpati, thanks for joining in. Is this
00:21 the only fundraise that you would do or would you also do an equity fundraise at some point
00:25 of time? Thank you for the opportunity to be on your channel. First is for us it's a
00:32 reinforcement of faith, the resilience of the platform that we are building that Barings
00:37 Credit would lead this fundraise for us. This is an NCD, it's a debt instrument so there's
00:42 no dilution involved with this. This allows us to complete a couple of acquisitions. This
00:47 adds another set of 20 odd schools and 10 colleges that comes under the management of
00:53 Veranda Learning and also through an acquisition of SmartBridge would make us potentially the
00:58 largest online virtual internship platform for software training in the country. We will
01:06 continue to stitch the ecosystem together. There is also a green shoe option with this
01:12 that will hopefully part finance the next race that we would do which would be largely
01:17 equity like instruments, convertibles that will allow us to sort of complete this journey
01:23 of acquisition and fulfill our ability to completely stitch the platform together. So
01:29 we expect to complete the next one over the next three to four months and that will allow
01:34 us to take our profitability to with the acquisition that we are targeting to potentially about
01:41 400 crores of EBITDA for FY25 and we expect our sales to double to cross the 800 crore
01:47 mark for FY25. Sorry, did I hear you say 400 crores EBITDA for FY25 because from a 233
01:55 crore EBITDA in FY23 you're virtually guarding to doubling the EBITDA by FY25. The current
02:05 businesses that we have will expect us to double our EBITDA going from 24 to 25. Acquisitions
02:11 that we are targeting will allow us to reach the 400 crore mark. We have always believed
02:17 in acquiring businesses that are having pedigree and significant profitability in the markets
02:23 so that would add to the strength of what we are building and as I mentioned for the
02:27 next three four months we'll come to an end of our significant acquisition cycle and post
02:32 this it will all be organic. Got it. Mr. Kalpati, one more question. Did I also hear you say
02:37 that there will be some equity linked fundraise that you would do? Could you just clarify
02:42 what's the size of this equity fundraise if you will? It would be a compulsorily convertible
02:51 type of instrument. So there would be, it would be equity. We just want to ensure that
02:56 we keep our debt EBITDA ratio to probably about 1.5 to 1.75. So we want to stay under
03:03 leverage so the next fundraise will be equity like. This could potentially be anywhere in
03:08 the range of between 800 to a thousand crores of rates. Sir, hi. It's also Samina joining
03:15 in. Early this year there was news about you taking over Tapasya Education Institution.
03:23 Can you bring us up to speed with what's happening there? I guess you've already gone out. The
03:27 first stage is done or will be done in the next few weeks. When does this turn revenue
03:31 accretive? What are the couple of stages and when will this acquisition be completely done
03:36 and dusted with? We expect to actually complete the acquisition, Samina, by early next week.
03:45 And we expect the full benefit of the acquisition to show as part of our FY25 numbers. And again,
03:52 this year will allow us to include an additional 23 junior colleges that we would manage and
03:58 10 colleges that would come under the management over and other. Okay. Well, Mr. Kalpati, we
04:06 wish you all the best for this and more. Thanks for this quick update and all the best with
04:10 the tall targets. Hopefully do even better than that. Thank you very much for the opportunity.
04:14 [Music]
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