Assessment conduct and reporting platform Learning Outcomes gets acquired in an all cash deal

Bangalore based Learning Outcomes (LO) helps schools measure learning and teaching outcomes. Started in 2011, the company has announced that it has been acquired by Liga Edutech Pvt. Ltd. A Morpheus Gang company with seed investments from Aakrit Vaish and Miten Sampat, LO was one of YourStory's Edustars in 2013. LO had diluted 17% of equity in the previous rounds and the current acquisition gives the company an exit in an all cash deal. The five member team including the founders move to Liga.

LO was founded by Rishi Kar and Aditya Kulkarni in Pune (later moving to Bangalore) and the team has built an assessment conduct and reporting platform on tablets to help institutes successfully gauge and improve their students' learning process. It captures granular data from routine school assessments and then analyses it to present the story behind the grade. Instead of reporting that a student has secured grade B1, the focus is on highlighting the skills developed in that subject, personalizing the concept pathway for the child and helping the child focus on the areas where he/she can improve the most. "We aim to create better assessments in schools, and ensure that parents, students and teachers understand and become more aware of the learning process," says Rishi.

In 2013, LO launched their online diagnostic content that is built from the ground up by analyzing the misconceptions and teaching gaps captured by their system. The assessments have in-built remedial content and identifies the gap in the thinking process if a student answers the question incorrectly. "This has been especially successful for classes 3 to 8.Teachers to get a report in which they can identify learning groups in their class and how they should modify their lesson plans," adds Rishi.

LO has worked with over 35 schools across 7 cities. Their schools are board agnostic and hence, they have worked with CBSE, ICSE and IB schools in Tier1, 2 and 3 cities. LO charges an annual subscription fee per student. This fee includes the cost for hardware and software.

LO first met team LIGA during a sales call to a school. "Initially, we just hit it off cribbing about the absolute lack of professionalism in education sector as such. We were also working with a common sales affiliate group and hence kept in touch occasionally," says Rishi about how the acquisition deal came about. During September of last year, LO was planning their next move and were wondering if raising a series A would solve their problems. It was at this time when they met Liga and they seemed to have larger resources and a wider distribution reach apart from the obvious product synergy.

LO was scholastic, LIGA were co-scholastic. LIGA addresses the growing emphasis on Co-Scholastic assessment and behavioral development of students. In most schools coscholastic assessment is looked at from a mere recording and documentation perspective. "To remove the drudgery and bring in involvement from both the teachers as well as the students side, Liga provides fun and engaging activities for teachers on tablets. The activities are built on the proprietary Social Behavior Framework (SoBeTM) developed in collaboaration with National Institute of Advanced Studies and Banjara Academy. The activities are deep linked with rubrics and outcomes as mandated by the National Curriculum Framework and CBSE," says Naren Koduvattat , co-founder of LIGA.

LO had an almost 9 month long 'live-in' and due-diligence process and finally the deal materialised. "For both the founders, it seemed to be a good move because we were able to provide a return to our investors and also we could focus more on product and leverage their resources," says Rishi. Interestingly enough, the entire deal, right from initial discussion to negotiation to actual signing, all took place at Costa Coffee , Koramangala. The coffee shop has certainly been witness to many a startup deals in India.

Liga has worked with over 30,000 students in over 50 schools across 5 states and raised a series A from Gana Yantrika Systems. The two companies will now come together and build a more holistic system.

Website: Learning Outcomes and LIGA