Major US private equity house buys majority stake in Indian ECEC provider

US private equity company KKR & Co have purchased a majority stake in EuroKids, one of India’s largest education service providers in the pre school and private K-12 school sectors for a sum believed to be around A$400 million. 

 

As reported by the Economic Times of India the deal will see 92 per cent of the company purchased by KKR with the sellers being a domestic private equity fund (75 per cent) and Swiss private equity house Partners Group (17 per cent).

 

Partners Group is the current owner of Australia’s Guardian Early Learning. 

 

The EuroKids group consists of a collection of six different brands of which EuroKids Pre-school was the first, created in 2001. EuroKids Pre-school is operated as a franchise model and currently has a presence in over 350 cities with over 1,000 sites operating. 

 

The pre-school segment was then extended into K-12 in 2009 by the creation of the EuroSchool network which now has 11 schools in operation. 

 

In 2017 EuroKids purchased Mumbai based Kangaroo Kids Education Ltd which operated a chain of 79 preschools under the Kangaroo Kids brand and a chain of 16 schools operating under the BIllabong High brand. 

 

More recently EuroKids has started to offer corporate day care services and has also established a training organisation which offers a wide range of early childhood education and care (ECEC) qualifications.

 

EuroKids is now one of the largest operators in India’s growing organised pre school sector and operates alongside companies such as Amelio, Kidzee, Little Elly, Lily Candies, Little Einsteins, Modern Montessori International, Shemrock, Smartkidz, Sunshine Preschool & Daycare and TreeHouse.