SChand

completed

Founded in 1939 and incorporated in 1971, S Chand And Company Private Limited (“S Chand” or the “Company”) is one of the oldest and leading companies in educational publishing space in India, headquartered in New Delhi, India. The company publishes a variety of books catering to upto 12th standard (or K-12), higher education, competitive exams and children’s books. Besides publishing books, the company also provides digital learning solutions for schools and engineering colleges. S Chand owns a number of group companies, which are involved in the print and digital businesses. The company has also backward integrated to printing, with its printing facilities located at:(a) Sahibabad, in Uttar Pradesh, owned by one of the group companies - Vikas Publishing House Private Limited, having a capacity of 200,000 books/day. The press started production in September 2013in the same premises where the company had a warehouse earlier. The land for the press is on lease hold (99 years lease). (b) Rudrapur, in Uttaranchal, owned by another group company - Nirja Publishers and Printers Private Limited, having a capacity of 25,000 books/day. The press was established in 2009 and is located in a leased premises within a designated industrial area.The main operations at the printing presses include sheet fed thermal and violet offset printing, roll fed web-offset printing, cutting, folding, binding and lamination. The company has established three pre-schools in Ghaziabad (near New Delhi) (under RISEKIDS brand of one of its subsidiaries – DS Digital Private Limited). The biggest pre-school (visited during the appraisal) has 150 children and is located in a building with two floors (ground + first).For future growth, S Chand is focusing on organically growing key segments coupled with building new segments by leveraging the existing resources as well as evaluating mergers and acquisitions (M&A). As part of its expansion strategy, the company is evaluating opportunities in publishing, digital education and coaching classes. It also plans to open approximately 50 new pre-schools in next three to four years following a cluster based approach starting with Ghaziabad and later covering entire National Capital Region (NCR).The proposed investment is a straight equity investment of upto INR 1,200 million in S Chand in order to finance the expansion of the company’s education publishing and services network in India as outlined above (the “project”).