Lighthouse Learning said to be acquiring two schools in Hyderabad, Bengaluru

Millennium World School has already been acquired by EuroSchool, which Lighthouse Learning operates, according to its official website. Lighthouse declined to comment. Emails sent to Meru International and Millennium did not elicit a response by the time of publishing.

There is rising interest in school chains as a resilient asset class, with investors betting that brick-and-mortar K-12 education offers predictable cash flows, long-term demand and limited disruption from artificial intelligence.

Earlier this month, The Times of India reported that Pathways School in Gurugram was being acquired by Lighthouse Learning Group for about ₹1,500 crore. Mint reported that several private equity firms are in talks to buy stakes in K-12 assets, which is expected to translate into several transactions this year.

About two weeks ago, European private equity firm Vitruvian Partners closed a $100 million capital infusion in K12 Techno Services, which runs the Orchids The International School chain, while Blackstone bought a majority stake in Jaipur-based Globetrotters Educational Innoventions, the parent of Jayshree Periwal International School, last November.

Raising capital

Mint also reported that Vibgyor Schools is looking to sell a 20-30% stake to raise primary capital and has appointed Avendus Capital as its banker. The transactions signal a reversal from the pandemic years when investors shifted capital into fast-growing edtech companies.

Set up in 1997, the Lighthouse group offers education in the pre-primary and K-12 segments across India. A few years ago, the group bought the Heritage group and operates through core brands: Eurokids, Kangaroo Kids and Mother’s Pet in the pre-school segment and EuroSchool, Billabong High, Centre Point, and Heritage in the K-12 segment. It now has over 1,850 preschools and 60 K-12 schools, serving more than 190,000 students across major metros.

Its schools are affiliated to diversified education boards including the Central Board of Secondary Education as well as the International Baccalaureate Organization and, along with quality content delivery and staff, they have enabled high enrolments.

Over the years, the company has diversified its geographical presence and is currently located in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Thane, Hyderabad, Surat, Pune and Gurugram, maintaining an established presence in the premium and semi-premium segments.

Last year, global private equity firm KKR made a fresh investment in the company, along with a new investor PSP Investments. While KKR retains a majority stake, the investment will fund the growth of Lighthouse’s K-12 and preschool network and strengthen teaching, technology and operational capabilities.

Lighthouse reported revenue of ₹802.51 crore in FY25 compared with ₹632.48 crore a year earlier. Its net profit fell to ₹8.12 crore from ₹186.01 crore in FY24, according to filings sourced by Tofler from the ministry of corporate affairs.

Priyamvada is a Mumbai-based business journalist at Mint. She writes about the public and private markets with a key focus on venture capital, private equity, M&As and private credit. Her coverage also spans startups and emerging businesses.

Over the last two years, she has uncovered some of the largest deals and interviewed important decision-makers from India’s investment ecosystem. She likes to dabble across different formats like long forms and explainers. Her work has been consistently displayed on the publication's deals page, and she has also written multiple front-page stories.

Prior to joining Mint in 2024, she worked out of Reuters’ Bengaluru bureau where she extensively covered the travel, transportation, and logistics industries. Across both her stints, Priyamvada has displayed rigour for breaking news and analyzing interesting data-driven trends. She holds a postgraduate diploma from the Asian College of Journalism's Bloomberg programme. In her free time, she enjoys reading books and trying out different cuisines. She is keen to delve deeper into the various sectors she covers and is always up for a chat. You can reach out to her at priyamvada.c@livemint.com.

Sneha Shah is the editor for deals and startups at Mint. Starting off her career in India’s financial capital as a cub reporter for the Mid-day newspaper in the mid-2000s, she later moved on to decode balance sheets and follow the money trail for some of the leading pink publications in the country. She has been covering India’s deals ecosystem for nearly two decades now, closely tracking private- and public-market funding, startups, private equity, venture capital, and investment banking. From breaking some of the biggest deal stories of the past to doing some incisive deep-dives into the latest trends and turnarounds in the industry, she has witnessed the phenomenal growth and transformation of the country’s investment ecosystem from really close quarters. A graduate in journalism, she has worked with The Economic Times, Financial Chronicle, VCCircle and Mid-Day before starting her second stint at Mint in 2022. As a keen observer of India’s startups ecosystem, she aspires to write a book some day, chronicling some of the most inspiring stories the industry has seen so far in its remarkable journey.