Omnia invests Rs 7 crore in early-stage education firms

Bangalore: Omnia Investments, the venture fund set up by the promoters of Spice Mobility, has made its maiden investment in two earlystage startups. The fund has invested Rs 7 crore in candidate assessment venture Single Stop and in higher education firm Sunstone for a significant minority stake. Omnia Investments was launched less than a year ago by Dilip Modi, Managing Director of the $2-billion (Rs 10,000 crore) mobility product and retail conglomerate Spice Mobility, with an initial corpus of Rs 20 crore. The fund will focus on education and technology. It is not part of the Spice Mobility group. "Corporates have long viewed education through the corporate social responsibility lens," said Modi, who is also the president of industry body Assocham. "But education provides a large business opportunity as well." India's rapidly growing education sector has attracted considerable risk capital in recent months. The education market in the country is projected to cross $50 billion (Rs 2.5 lakh crore) by 2015, said a study by Assocham. Last month, CLSA Capital invested over $20 million in test preparation company Resonance Eduventures. Venture fund Helion Advisors made a $3.5 million investment in affordable education provider Vienova Education in September. The same month, two other venture investments were made in education firms: Online education start-up Eduora Technologies got funding from early-stage fund Seeders and learning technology startup Sparsha raised money from Blume Ventures and Tempus Capital. A recent KPMG report said the test assessment market is poised for rapid growth. Govind Wakhlu and Prashant Pitti, founders of six-month old Single Stop, believe that companies will increasingly outsource the initial candidate assessment process to third-party vendors. Single Stop provides assessment tests for fresh graduates who are targeting entrylevel jobs in sales, backend operations and other support functions. The firm administers the Common Job Test, which is a standardised exam to understand a candidate's areas of strength, and sends out the scores to partner companies. "There is a huge gap in the entry-level job segment. Companies are not getting the right candidate and job seekers are not getting the right jobs," said Wakhlu, an Illinois Technology Institute graduate who returned to India in 2010. The test was launched last month and around 300 candidates have taken it so far. Omnia's other investment, Sunstone, provides a one-year MBA programme solely for techies. It was launched last year by Rajul Garg, the former co-founder of offshore R&D venture GlobalLogic. "With the growth of the IT industry, we need leaders who have a background in IT to run companies," said Garg. "Our aim is to create tech CEOs." The course is for working professionals and the first batch started five months ago. Spice Mobility's Modi said they expect to close more investments in two months. Modi has also launched a social fund, Ek Soch Mission, which will provide grants to entrepreneurs who want to set up ventures in mobile value-added services (VAS), education and clean energy.