Meritnation appoints Suman Saha as head- franchisee operations, to open 100 offline learning centers in 24 months

K-12 focused online education platform Meritnation has appointed Suman Saha as its head-franchisee operations for its offline business Meritnation Centre for Excellence. This move is in line with the company's plans to expand its offline play and extend learning services via its centers. The company plans to launch 100 franchisee centers in next 24 months and Saha will lead this offline expansion.

"In this role, Saha will strengthen Meritnation's position as a preferred study partner among school students through trust-based long-term relationships," said Pavan Chauhan, CEO, Meritnation.

The pilot for offline learning centres was started by Meritnation in July 2012 when the first one was launched in Gurgaon. The technology-enabled centres enable students to get a self-learning kind of environment with teachers to help them out whenever required. The centers cater to students from grades 1-10.

Prior to joining Meritnation, Saha was leading channel management and project delivery at NIIT Ltd. Before that he had worked at companies like Birla Finance, Hero Mindmine and Videocon. "Over the next couple of months, we will be expanding our footprint in Northern India and focus on building a strong foundation for a nation-wide expansion later on," Saha stated.

In an interaction with Techcircle.in earlier this year, Chauhan had stated that expanding offline centers was going to be one of the core focus areas in the coming year. In addition to scaling up offline centers, Chauhan had shared that they would also be adding assessment tools for teachers.

Earlier this month, Info Edge (India) Ltd infused Rs 10 crore ($1.6 million) more in Applect Learning Systems, the company behind Meritnation. The funds are slated to be used for content creation and updation, brand building and increasing awareness both online and on television, as well as for the expansion of the sales team.