US-based nonprofit education services provider Educational Testing Service (ETS) has formed a corporate venturing subsidiary dubbed ETS Strategic Capital to back and partner education technology developers.
ETS Strategic Capital will have offices in US states of California, New Jersey and Washington DC. Its primary aim is to expand ETS’s services for kindergarten, primary, secondary and tertiary education.
The unit will target companies based in regions including the US, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa at series B, C and beyond, while early-stage startups will exceptionally be considered.
In addition, ETS Strategic Capital will carry out mergers and acquisitions (M&A) transactions, focusing on middle-market companies, with the possibility of larger and smaller deals.
It will also form strategic alliances with other companies with arrangements including joint ventures, channel-partner and distribution agreements, intellectual property licensing and technology transfer.
ETS Strategic Capital has already backed five companies including cross-border student recruitment platform ApplyBoard, student’s reading diagnostics and support company Capti and EdAgree, an ETS spinout which helps international university students with admissions and learning processes.
The portfolio is filled out by Gradschoolmatch, which has developed a software tool that matches prospective graduate students with graduate programmes, and Pipplet, which provides a language fluency assessment service.
ETS vice-president of corporate development Ralph Taylor-Smith will assume the managing director role at ETS Strategic Capital, having had prior experience in private equity investing, M&A and growth partnerships and joint ventures.
