India Venture Partnership (IVP), a leading early stage venture capital firm, today announced an investment of INR 100 million in Your Kids ‘R’ Our Kids® (YKROK) Education Private Limited. YKROK is a day care and education centre that offers a truly premium experience in early learning and care. With a capacity of serving more than 2,000 children in India across 12 centres today, and a growth strategy to create a network of 65 centres in the next three years serving more than 10,000 children in 10 cities across India. The new infusion of funds will fuel YKROK’s pan- India expansion plans.
With a strong vision to deliver quality services and education, YKROK curriculum is on par with international standards as that of enhancing the child’s English language development, cognitive development in math and science and socio-emotional development. Focussing on delivering quality child care services and education, all the YKROK centres follow stringent Standard Operating procedures with world class methods & techniques of educational childcare. YKROK centres are in the process of getting certified and awarded with a gold seal by leading American Training Institute Teaching Strategies.
“One of our key areas of focus has been education and we have been looking for high-end service providers with a differentiated edge. We found YKROK’s concept of workplace day care centres to be unique that directly addresses the huge demand gap for employee sensitive service provisions enabling retention and corporate growth. We hope to help YKROK grow to a national presence with this capital infusion” said Navneet Gosal – Advisor, India Venture Partners.
YKROK has exclusive tie-ups with 20+ Corporate giants including IBM, Accenture, Deutsche Bank, Infosys, CGI, Dell, Fidelity Investments, ANZ, Amarchand Shroff amongst others. YKROK’s ability to provide consistent, high performance delivery of quality education across India was recognized with the recent NASSCOM award won by client IBM for best child care services in Indian IT industry.
“IVP brings extensive investing, operational and transactional experience in both India and US that will be invaluable to our company as wecontinue to pursue our strong growth trajectory. The funding received from IVP will act as an impetus to fulfil YKROK’s vision is setting up a 65 center Pan-India network by the end of 2013. Over the next three years, we will continue to innovate to find creative ways to meet the needs of children, employers, and families. This partnership combined with strategic stakeholder relations to manage corporate operations will enable us to achieve our vision of YKROK’s measured rise in the Education Services Industry” said Bharat Kapoor– Co-Founder & Managing Director, Your Kids ‘R’ Our Kids.
Anupama V- Program Manager, Work Life Integration, IBM India/South Asia said, “Work-Life integration is a key priority for IBM as it touches the morale, productivity and satisfaction levels of employees. The child care centres help IBM to achieve its commitment towards helping its employees achieve a perfect work-life balance and enhance career success”.
Voicing the urban parenting issue of childcare, Suman Kapoor- Co-Founder & Managing Director, Your Kids ‘R’ Our Kids added, “Majority of urban children today grow up in a nuclear family wherein working parents don’t have the luxury of extended support system akin the past. YKROK aims to address this need via innovative programs in conjunction with employee sensitive corporate. YKROK’s demonstrative corporate supported ecosystem enables parents to better balance the demands of work and family while allowing their young children to enjoy extraordinary childhood experiences”.
About Your Kids ‘R’ our Kids:
Your Kids ‘R’ Our Kids (YKROK) is the premier provider of corporate day care, pre-school and after school services in India. Established in the year 2002. Having 12 centers in Delhi, Pune and Bangalore since inception, each YKROK center is specially designed to ensure quality with stringent SOP’s followed at each center. YKROK offers employer sponsored child care program with nearly 20+ programs offered for corporate organizations including IBM, Accenture, JP Morgan Chase, Fidelity Investments, ANZ amongst others encompassing legal firms, hotels, real estate developers etc. With seed funding received from corporate partner IBM’s Global Work Life Fund in the year 2007, YKROK has set up 3 centers that offers IBM employees a complement of programs in one location, including child care, after-school care and summer camps. YKROK centres are in the process of getting certified and awarded with a gold seal by leading American Training Institute Teaching Strategies, recognized as the leading provider of high-quality early education resources in the United States today. Over the next three years, YKROK aims to continue to innovate creative ways to meet the needs of children, employers and families in the educational child care space via its unique model of employer-sponsored strategy and development of ground up quality centers.
For more information, kindly visit: http://www.ykrok.in/
About India Venture Partnership:
India Venture Partnership (IVP) manages funds capitalized at close to US $ 15 million fund and invests across next generation high end services companies in Clean Tech, Life Sciences, and Education sectors. IVP offers differentiated investment strategy by leveraging extensive experience, connections and partnerships to identify early stage ‘value’ investments in companies led by strong management teams. IVP takes a long term view on investments via investments in companies with proven business models and low intellectual property (IP) risk, which need capital to grow to the next level. The Fund expects to achieve profitable exits primarily through acquisitions of its companies by US and global companies. Over the year, India Venture Partnership has invested in Gensol Consultants Pvt Ltd recognized for expertise in generation, registration and trading of carbon credits. IVP potential co-investors include Indian Angel Network, Footprint Ventures, Zephyr India, Draper Atlantic India, Helion Ventures, Nexus Capital, SIDBI Ventures, Ventureast, Accel, Clearstone.Globally, India Venture Partnership is managed by India Venture Partnership Management, a Mauritius GBL1 company formed by Kenneth Tighe, who has started, managed and successfully exited a number of companies, in both the U.S. and India.
For more information, kindly visit: http://www.indiavp.com/
Source: PR