Central Square Foundation's Ashish Dhawan, UNSW Global's Rob Forage to Make Keynotes at VCCircle Education Investment Summit 2013

NEW DELHI, November 19, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --

The summit will bring together more than 250 top CEOs, entrepreneurs, innovators, private equity & venture capital investors, regulators, investment bankers and consultants in the education sector. 

The VCCircle Network will host the 4^th edition of its highly successful VCCircle Education Investment Summit on November 20, at ITC Sheraton, New Delhi.

In the last three years, the forum has attracted India's top education entrepreneurs, CEOs, investors, and policy experts.

Indian education sector continues to offer huge untapped opportunities in the core as well as non-core segments, given the huge quality gap in a growing economy. The sector is growing at about 16% per annum.

Despite inherent concerns, the education sector in India continues to see interest from investors for emerging opportunities in segments such as schools, skill development, vocational training, and technology led plays among other high-growth areas.

In its fourth year, the summit, co-presented by UNSW Global, will discuss: Lessons learnt from investing in Indian education; opportunities for scalable entrepreneurship & innovation in Indian education space, emerging opportunities for assessments in India; enhancing 'quality' and 'growth' in Indian schools; developing excellent higher education infrastructure in India; future of skill development in India; and technology-led disruption for Indian education players, in panel and presentation formats. 

The summit will also host a special VCCircle Showcase session, where representatives of handpicked innovative education companies will present their offerings, in addition to VCCircle Lounge, where we connect select education companies and investors in a separate enclosure.  

The summit, over the years has attracted some on the best names of the industry to share their experience, thoughts and future plans. 

Some of the speakers for this year are: 

Amit Garga - Senior Principal, The Parthenon Group, Amit Kapur - Promoter, IIMT, Anand Sudarshan - Venture Advisor, TVS Capital, Ankur Shah - Head of Sector Strategies & Education Portfolio Lead, Acumen Fund, ArunKumar Pillai - COO, IL&FS Education and Technology Services Ltd, Ashish Dhawan - Founder & CEO, Central Square Foundation, Benjamin Grubbs - Head of Content Partnerships, YouTube, Dilip Chenoy - CEO & MD, National Skill Development Corporation, Imran Jafar - Partner, Gaja Capital Partners, Katelyn Donnelly - Executive Director, Pearson, Mohit Ralhan - Managing Partner, Indus Balaji, Manas Mehrotra - Managing Trustee, Greenwood High International School, Prabhat Jain - Co-Founder, Pathways Schools, Praveen Chakravarty - Board Member, Centre for Civil Society, Raj Grover - Chief Mentor, Kangaroo Kids Education Ltd., Rajeev Pathak - CEO, edreams Edusoft, Dr Rob Forage - CEO, UNSW Global, Sandeep Aneja - Founder & MD, Kaizen Private Equity, Satya Narayanan R - Chairman, Career Launcher India Ltd, Tonmoy Shingal - Co-Founder & COO, Mettl, Y V Rajasekhar - Co-Founder & MD, People Combine Education Initiatives Ltd. 

The day will start at 0900 hrs with Tea & Registration followed by the Introduction Note.

The first Panel of the day would discuss questions like; Why education is not the top priority for investors? What had made investors so careful when investing in the education space? What are the high-growth segments that are investible today? What are the average financial returns earned by PE investors? What are the lessons learnt by the investors where entrepreneurs are stuck in regulatory hurdles? Essentially, talking about Lessons Learnt From Investing In Indian Education

This would be followed by a Special Address on Opportunities For Scalable Entrepreneurship & Innovation In Indian Education by Ashish Dhawan - Founder & CEO, Central Square Foundation & a Presentation on Quality Assessment as an Essential Part of Educational Investment by Dr Rob Forage - CEO, UNSW Global

Enhancing 'Quality' and 'Growth' in Indian Schools has been an area of concern and it would be addressed in the next panel where the discussion would be on; Given that K-12 section is majorly dominated by private unaided schools, what are the emerging opportunities evolving in the Indian K-12 segment? How quickly is privately held K-12 undergoing through the process of renovation where consumers highly prefer private over public schools? What are the major initiatives taken by the industry players to include high quality content in schools? What are the prime steps undertaken to maintain requisite student teacher ratio, balanced infrastructure and mitigate the dearth of competent teachers & faculty? What are the investment opportunities in this space? How have private investors contributed in bringing changes in the way quality and access is analyzed?

VCCircle always attempts to offer a platform to innovative and emerging companies and enable them to Showcase their offering. Five emerging, exciting and innovative education companies will present on their business, product market opportunity and how they will disrupt existing ecosystem to create value.

Post lunch the focus would shift to discussion on Developing Excellent Higher Education Infrastructure In India and to find answer to questions like; What is the road ahead for running higher education businesses in India? What is the impact of recent growing initiatives such as RTE Act, bills & schemes on private sector investments in Indian Colleges? What is the role played by PPP in accelerating institutions autonomy & university education? Is Indian higher education ready to absorb lacking research culture into its system? What are the initiatives taken up by the regulators to unlock the dilemma of quality vs expansion in Indian colleges? What are the opportunities for investment in higher education segment?

This would be followed by Entrepreneur Address by Satya Narayanan R - Chairman, Career Launcher India Ltd where he will share details and insights on Career Launcher's inception, early days & business model, Significant milestones, How Career Launcher raised private equity funding and scaled & Growth path and projections

VCCircle Lounge provides a perfect networking platform for the companies seeking funding.
A special session, where 5 handpicked education companies will meet select 10 private equity investors in a structured format in a separate enclosure.

The summit will move further to a discussion on The Future Of Skill Development In India.
As the Indian non-core segment is shifting its focus from mere underserved delivery to building quality infrastructure. How can non-formal industry address the requirement of vital resources such as faculty, equipments, study material, and digitalize monitoring mechanism to enrich quality skills in the country? Is the growth fostering in non-core segments including multimedia/IT & vocational training? What are the factors that intensify competition in the non-core segment of education? What are the challenges in an ecosystem where university degree is more preferred? Is the sector losing industry appeal where it is tough to deal with employment issues and changing nature of industries? How effective are these measures such as capacity building, professional development, providing extended concessions and accommodating payment of instalments in scaling non formal segment?

This will be followed by a Presentation on "Technology-Enabled Learning: Opportunities in India" by Amit Garga - Senior Principal, The Parthenon Group

This will set the tone for the next panel on Technology-led Disruption For Indian Education Players. 
How is internet and technology disrupting education delivery, products and services in the formal and non-formal education segments? Is the Indian education ecosystem at a technology-driven inflection point? What are the cost effective new age infrastructure solutions? Deep involvement of technology is fascinating student's mind, but is it a viable option, considering the pattern of financing, size & strength of Indian masses?

The day would end with VCCircle Unwind where the participants can interact with each other on the various topics discussed over the day and more over cocktails.

The event is presented in association with our Co-Presenter: UNSW Global; Associate Partner: Brand Capital; Supporting Partner: Greenwood High, TVS Capital Funds, People Combine Education Initiatives, Kangaroo Kids Education; Session Partner: The Parthenon Group, Bertelsmann India Investments, Kaizen Private Equity; Networking Partner: TeachernI.com and Display Partner: Jointeca, MeraCareerGuide.com

For more details on the summit and to participate, you can write to us or call us.

About The VCCircle Network

The VCCircle Network, founded in 2005, is India's leading online financial media and data group. It's owned by Mosaic Media Ventures Pvt Ltd, and is headquartered in New Delhi with presence in Mumbai and Bangalore. The VCCircle Network is relied upon by an influential global community of deal makers, entrepreneurs and professionals for trusted content and information related to Indian investments, M&A, venture capital, private equity, investment banking, public equity, and emerging companies and sectors.  

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SOURCE VCCircle.com