India Educational Investment Fund (IEIF) Makes New Investments in ChipperSage and Select Jobs
-The US-based fund is an initiative of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation-
New Delhi, January 23, 2017 – The India Educational Investment Fund (IEIF), an early stage impact investment fund focused on the education sector, announced two new investments in ‘ChipperSage’ and ‘Select Jobs.’ ChipperSage offers high impact English proficiency solutions aimed at significantly transforming English comprehension and communication for school students. Select Jobs is a job placement company that uses its extensive distribution network to provide employment opportunities to a vast majority of India’s population that do not have stable internet access. With these two investments, IEIF’s investments in India have crossed $ 2 million USD (approx. INR 13 crores) across five companies.
Established and funded by Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, IEIF is a single member, US-based fund designed to be part of a larger effort of the foundation to facilitate early-stage investing, incubation and mentoring support to social enterprises in the education sector. These enterprises provide high quality, K-12 education services and skill training to children and youth from urban, low income families in India. Since 2014, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation has also committed investments to Unitus Seed Fund and Menterra Social Impact Fund.
Vishal Bharat, Director of Corporate Business Advisors, which is the investment manager for IEIF, said, “We believe in long-term value creation for our portfolio companies, offering strategic and operational guidance along the way. The two new investments align perfectly with our focus on identifying and working with high impact, early stage companies in the education and skill training sector targeting less privileged children and youth. Tapping synergies within the portfolio multiplies the chances of success manifold. Our intent is to help all our investees reach the requisite sustainability and scale to create a larger social impact.”
Latha Srinivasan, founder and CEO of ChipperSage, said, "IEIF brings a strong understanding of the education sector and the target audience of low fee schools we work with, which we believe would help us in our journey. With English increasingly becoming a pre-requisite for better employment and educational opportunities, and a significant demand from schools and parents to improve the language skills of children, ChipperSage is well positioned to bridge this gap in the market of vendors supplying products to schools. It uses technology as an enabler in classrooms and its innovative products enhance quality and capability levels for students.”
Amit Saxena, founder and CEO of Select Jobs, said, "IEIF recognized the strength of the last mile approach in our solution. With a current database of six million candidates, we are creating real value for our clients and delivering strong social benefits to jobseekers. Companies are keen to hire such people, but do not have cost effective ways to seek them out. Select Jobs uses a unique approach of combining last mile retail connectivity, integration with "Skill India" and light mobile technologies to reach such candidates.”