Dev Clever (DEV ) has secured its first material local contract win in India valued at US$1.5 million to implement the Company's immersive careers guidance and STEM-based virtual reality educational library at schools under central and state governments in the country.
The announced contract win follows a five-year exclusive partnership agreement agreed between Dev and the National Independent Schools Alliance ("NISA"), India's largest governing body for budget private educational institutions and Veative Labs ("Veative").
The company explained how this previously signed agreement included the localisation of the company’s launchyourcareer.com platform across India and its promotion as a complete career guidance and career-led learning platform recommended to NISA affiliated schools.
In line with this, the Company's platform has now gone live and is available to schools and students across the country, including via a complementary B2C subscription model, it said.
Dev said it has renamed the platform to ‘Launchmycareer.com’ in India in order to ensure a successful rollout to B2B customers (schools) and B2C customers (students and parents).
Dev has also incorporated Launchmycareer Pvt. Ltd., a wholly owned local trading entity in the country that has already recruited and on-boarded marketing and support resources.
In addition to the contract, the Company also secured a government funded pilot to deploy its platform and virtual reality learning services into one of India's 1,248 central government Kendriya Vidyalayas (KV). These schools are specifically known for innovation and can be rolled out to the rest of the central government school sector subsequently, the group said.
The ‘comprehensive’ pilot will assess the impact within the central government school system and if successful, roll-out further later in the year. Dev has described the trial as ‘exciting’ as its first entry into the large Indian public-school sector, which in total consists of around 1.1m schools.
"Despite the devastating and tragic pandemic impact that has hit India hard, I am pleased to announce our first material local contract win following the formation of our partnership agreement with NISA and Veative,” commented Chris Jeffries, CEO Dev Clever.
He said, “Our localised platform is now live and with the on-boarded marketing and support resources we expect to be able to report further progress during the coming months.”
"We have also received substantial interest in our proposition from KV schools which has resulted in a comprehensive pilot trial that, if successful, has the potential to open up the remaining KV public schools across India for our technology and services.
Furthermore, our teams continue to have productive and engaging conversations with other budget private schools in India and I look forward to updating shareholders about our continued India and companywide progress in due course,” Jeffries added.
View from Vox
Dev Clever announced back in April 2021 that it had entered into an agreement with Veative to acquire its wholly owned Indian subsidiary Veative Labs Private for around £54.75 million.
This new agreement includes an exclusive initial one-year IP licensing agreement for additional immersive educational materials that are ‘bespoke to the Indian market’ (Indian IP).
The recent news was described by CEO, Chris Jeffries as a “transformational” deal for DEV. Amongst other things, the dedicated resources and infrastructure in India will ‘maximise the opportunity with NISA affiliated schools and the wider BPS (budget private schools) sector.
Shares in Dev Clever have increased by over 80% in value since the beginning of 2021. The stock was trading 2.71% higher this morning at 26.19p following the announcement.
Reasons to DEV
Dev Clever Holdings is a software and technology group based in Tamworth, United Kingdom, specialising in the use of cloud-based VR and gamification technologies to deliver rich customer engagement experiences across both the education and commercial sectors.
Its educational division offers careers guidance and recruitment solutions to secondary schools, colleges, universities, apprenticeship providers and employers with digital products to recruit and develop applicants and skills within their institutions and organisations.
Through its VR Careers Experience, VICTAR, the group encourages ‘hard to reach students disengaged from the process as well as reaffirming students on their career journey.’
Focused on bridging this global skills gap, DEV offers technology designed to support schools globally and to embrace immersive technology and revolutionise career guidance programs.
Due to a new reality of distance learning in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic, the EdTech space has surged with analysts previously reporting an average increase in revenue of 335% according to an industry impact analysis by Rootstrap.
According to market data published by MarketsandMarkets, the EdTech and Smart Classroom Market size is expected to grow globally from $85.8 billion in 2020 to $181.3 billion by 2025.
In May this year DEV entered into an agreement with Intrinsic Capital Jersey Ltd, founded by serial entrepreneur and investor Chris Akers, to raise up to £10m (gross) through a subscription at 10p.
The fund raised in May enabled DEV to accelerate its growth plans with collaboration partners and clients whilst also funding the expansion of the Company into new territories.
The valuation multiples for EdTech Companies continues to rise as larger multinational companies acquire innovative players in the space to capture growth.
In recent weeks, the Company announced that it had entered into a five-year exclusive partnership agreement with Veative Labs (“Veative”) and the National Independent Schools Alliance (“NISA”), India’s largest governing body for budget private educational institutions.
The agreement saw all parties execute an implementation and rollout schedule from last month, which will result in Dev’s Launchyourcareer being utilised by NISA as the platform-of-choice to deliver a minimum standard of career guidance across its schools.
NISA represents over 70,000 budget private schools in India, attended by c.13 million students. Chris Jeffries, Chief Executive of Dev Clever, has described the agreement as “a significant opportunity to support the development of millions of young people in India.”