Educational Initiatives (Case A): Balancing Purpose and Profits

Educational Initiatives (Ei) is an India-based education enterprise set up in 2001 with the vision of creating a world where children everywhere are learning with understanding. It was cofounded by a team of talented management professionals who shared the goal of making a positive difference in

the education space by using business and technology as instruments. It pioneered state-of-the-art pedagogical, information, and communication technologies in education much before the term EdTech became popular.

 

Case A on Educational Initiatives is set in 2018. By then, Ei had a well-established and profitable business model and was one of the best-performing EdTech companies in India. In 2018, some of Ei’s founders and initial investors were looking for an exit, and Ei commenced a search for a new investor

to buy out the existing investors.

 

The case serves to understand unique for-profit social entrepreneurship business models to tap the underserved bottom-of-the-pyramid segments in the education sector in developing economies. It can be used to explore how such enterprises can be valued and how they can scale up beyond first-generation entrepreneurs without compromising on the social purpose and mission.

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