Education

Hippocampus Raises More Capital amidst 3x Growth for Affordable Rural Pre-schools in India

Capria Admin January 21, 2014

Rural parents looking for high-quality pre-school programs flocking to Hippocampus 20 January 2014 — Bangalore, India. Hippocampus Learning Centres Pvt Ltd (“Hippocampus”), a Bangalore-based leader in affordable private rural pre-school programs in India, announced that they have raised an additional INR 3.5 crore (US$600,000) of equity capital from Unitus Ventures, Acumen,…

Contrasting Education Attitudes in Rural Zambia vs. India

Capria Admin October 5, 2013

On a recent vacation in Zambia I had the opportunity to visit two schools in rural villages, one elementary school and one middle school. As an investor in Hippocampus Learning Centres (HLC) in South India and a long-time student of rural education interventions, I was excited to explore whether it might…

iSTAR’s Surga Thilakan on the Role of Women Entrepreneurs

Capria Admin September 23, 2013

Surga Thilakan is the founder and CEO of our portfolio company iSTAR Skill Development. She also happens to be a female CEO, which is still relatively uncommon in India. In the past few weeks USF has blogged about why we want to invest in more women entrepreneurs, so we thought it…

Unitus Ventures invests in skills training company iSTAR

Capria Admin April 11, 2013

Unitus Ventures is excited to announce that we’ve made a seed investment in iSTAR, based in Bangalore. iSTAR is a vocational skills training company that provides unemployed graduates with additional skills training to make them readily employable in the BFSI and ITeS sectors. iStar employs carefully-selected faculty and a unique…

Opportunities for India's Un-employable Millions

Capria Admin April 9, 2013

India is at a unique position of being able to meet both its internal skills demand while at the same time fulfilling requirements of other countries and growing its economy. How? Much of the developed world has an aging population, while India has one of the youngest populations with about…

Bridging the Rural-Urban Divide

Capria Admin March 25, 2013

Kusum (name changed) hailing from a village in Bihar contacted Bodhicrew expressing her interest to work as a domestic worker. She was initially placed with a nuclear family in Delhi. When she quit, her parents suggested that she stay back in Delhi with her maternal aunt until her brother came…

India's Rural Education – An opportunity for BoP Startups

Capria Admin February 25, 2013

Huge demand for affordable, quality education options in rural India are creating opportunities for capable entrepreneurs Education in rural India is plagued by many problems. Poor infrastructure, access difficulties, lack of financial support and poor quality of educators are a few of the most pressing of problems.The state and central…

Living at the Edge of Poverty (and the Ayeyarwady)

Capria Admin February 8, 2013

Along with seven others on a photographic trip through Myanmar, I recently received a first-hand lesson in “bottom of the economic pyramid” (or “BoP”) family finances and life. The experience was informative to my continued efforts in thinking through what is needed to improve the lives of those at the…

Bodhicrew provides safe migration to urban jobs

Capria Admin August 22, 2012

Unitus Ventures investee Bodhicrew Services was written up in Outlook Business magazine in India. The business profile, “Blue Collar Genie: Bodhicrew helps unemployed rural youth gain employment as domestic help in upmarket Delhi homes” explains how migration for rural unskilled youth to urban environments usually ends up badly … with…

Driving change through rural education in India

Capria Admin May 23, 2012

This is a guest post by Alexandra Tsiolas, a college student at the University of Oslo, Norway. Alexandra visited an after school village kindergarten program in Mandya near Bangalore, India operated by Hippocampus Learning Centres (HLC). Alexandra also caught up with HLC’s CEO to hear more of his journey to…

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