To strengthen its ‘Education for Human Potential’ movement by foraying into the Affordable Private Schools (APS) segment
BENGALURU 20th June 2018: Menterra, a social impact focused venture capital fund, has announced a new investment in Chrysalis, incorporated as EZ Vidya Pvt. Ltd., a Chennai based educational reform organization. The Artha Initiative, an impact investment initiative associated with Rianta Capital, has co-invested alongside Menterra. This investment, Menterra’s fourth in the education sector, reiterates its focus on K-12 solutions that focuses on students and teachers to facilitate impact at scale.
Chrysalis’ flagship solution is ThinkRoom, a child-centric academic programme based on Human Potential framework, which has been developed in-house through 16 years of intense pedagogic research. It aims to help every school student to discover his or her potential while developing academic excellence and replaces programmes and textbooks whose focus is limited to academic outcomes. Chrysalis’ ThinkRoom offers a comprehensive solution to schools, including learning material with child focused curriculum, teacher assistant tools, student assessments and tech-enabled teaching and home learning applications.
In line with its goal of ‘Education for Human potential’ for every child, ThinkRoom, which currently caters to over 2,50,000 students in 500+ schools spread across 11 Indian states, will be extending to Affordable Private Schools (APS), making it accessible to students across all incomes.
The amount raised will be used by Chrysalis to build on its research and development, and to strengthen its vision of bringing change in the education system – comprising of K-12 schools, which have 250 million children enrolled, of which 100 million are in the private school segment.
“The challenges of delivering quality education are well documented. We need organisations focused on the difficult trinity of learning outcomes, sound economic fundamentals and impact on underprivileged students. Chitra and team have built an outstanding organisation. They have demonstrated an impressive ability to go deep as well as scale broadly while delivering this. We are delighted to partner with them and strengthen their mission-driven approach of working with all students in all types of school,” says Maya Chandrasekaran, Education Lead at Menterra.
Speaking about the alignment in vision, Chitra Ravi, Founder and CEO, Chrysalis, said, “Our mission is to stand up for the child, by reforming the Indian education system in a way that every child realizes his/her human potential. Affordable Private schools constitute a large chunk of our school system, and we intend to reach out to every school in this segment with an inspired resolution to make education for Human Potential accessible to every child. We are committed to this cause and we are grateful to have found the right fit in Menterra & Artha both of whom have a vision to transform human lives using education as a medium.”
Dr. Audrey Selian, Director – Artha Networks, says, “We are delighted to be part of this movement focused on reform in the education system to bring out the extraordinary human potential in every child. It’s a great learning opportunity as well for us to be able to partake in the journey of a more mature enterprise with such traction; forging their trajectory ahead both operationally and from an investment standpoint will be very exciting indeed.”
About Chrysalis:
Chrysalis is a Chennai based educational reform organization that is committed to bring a change in the current education system. It’s flagship solution, ThinkRoom is an academic programme for classrooms designed to bring out the Human Potential in every child. Chrysalis is currently present in 11 states, in 500+ schools and ~250,000 students.
For more information, visit www.chrysalis.world/
About Menterra Venture Advisors:
Menterra Venture Advisors manages a venture capital fund that invests in for-profit enterprises driving impact at scale in Agriculture, Healthcare and Education sectors. Alongside its incubation partner, Villgro, Menterra has built a holistic impact incubation-fund platform that has been at the forefront of evolving impact space in India over last 18 years. Through the extensive experience of investing in impact businesses, Menterra believes that just providing risk capital is not enough. To deliver impact at scale, it has built a diverse team backed by a stellar network of advisors. Menterra’s deep sector focus is well aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and development priorities of the country and the government.
For more info: www.menterra.com
About Artha Initiative:
The Artha Initiative is an Impact Investment Initiative of Rianta Capital, an investment advisor to the Singh Family Trusts. As part of its initiative, Artha also operates the Artha Platform, a communitydedicated to increasing the flow of capital and resources to high impact social entrepreneurs operating in India. Menterra acts as the investment partner and manager for Artha in India.
For more info: http://www.arthaventurechallenge.com
