Exclusive: Kota-famed Allen Career Institute set to raise funds at over $1 Bn valuation

Offline coaching institutes have been witnessing keen interest from cash-rich edtech companies and this was validated with the acquisition of Aakash Educational Services by Byju’s in a deal of nearly $1 billion. And this isn’t going to be an isolated incident. According to Entrackr’s sources, several top-notch offline institutes continue to garner interest from edtech companies and investors.

One such firm is Kota-famed Allen Career Institute. Allen is in late-stage talks to raise a large round from Lupa Systems — investment firm of James Murdoch, according to two people aware of the details of the deal. 

“Lupa is likely to pick 30-35% stake in Allen at a valuation close to $1.2 billion,” said one of the people requesting anonymity. “The terms of the deal are finalised and the transaction could be announced in a few weeks from now,” the person added.

While four companies from the edtech space had attained unicorn status—valued at $1 billion or more—since 2021, Allen would probably be the first unicorn from the offline coaching space. “Consistent growth in scale with a strong collection in revenue has driven Lupa’s interest in Allen,” said the second person, also requesting anonymity. 

According to this person, Allen has closed the last fiscal with around Rs 2,500 crore in revenue. The company provides offline, digital and distance courses for IIT JEE, AIPMT, etc. Sources further said the company has around 200K students enrolled in its classroom programme across 36 centres. 

“A similar number of students (200K) are also taking up Allen’s distance course,” said the person quoted above.

Queries sent to Allen’s co-founder and director Govind Maheshwari and Lupa Systems’ India MD Nitin Kukreja didn’t elicit any immediate response. We will update the story in case they respond.

Founded in 2019 and led by James Murdoch—son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch—Lupa Systems has invested in Indian edtech companies such as Doubtnut and Harappa Education. The investment firm also invested in DailyHunt’s parent VerSe Innovation and was looking to raise $150 million from half a dozen family offices.