Narayana Group to invest ₹125 cr to set up 25 schools.

Narayana Group of Educational Institutions, which has an estimated annual revenue of ₹3200 crore and operates schools, professional colleges, and coaching centres among other educational facilities, plans to increase its offline presence by opening 25 more schools by the academic year 2024–2025 with an investment of ₹125 crore. 

It currently operates 649 educational institutions across 20 states, of which 354 are schools. Puneet Kothapa, President of the Narayana Group of Educational Institutions, told businessline that its target segment is the aspirational class-the middle and upper middle class- and it is their demand that drives its choice where and how to locate schools. 

“For us, it is the population base. If there is a decent-sized population of around 3 to 5 lakh people, we will start a school in that place. Of course, we do a location survey to find our market. Currently, our goal is to start one school in every district in India. In fact, after Covid-19, we started schools in 12 new cities, including Madurai, Indore, Ludhiana, Amritsar, and Jammu.” 

Describing Narayana as an aspirational brand, he added that they realised the need to be located where there is an aspirational class, which is also the largest segment in the country. In terms of employee strength, it has a headcount of 40,000 people—20,000 teachers and 20,000 non-teaching staff. 

HBL