‘UNIFORM JUNCTION’ to integrate supply chain for schools and provide the most comprehensive and widest range of school products and courses
Bengaluru, June 08 2021: The 116-year old Arvind Mafatlal Group, one of India’s leading business groups, today announced its foray into the fast growing education technology and services space. The group launched Uniform Junction, among India’s first, one-stop, integrated supply chain solution and platform for K12 schools. Mafatlal group will leverage its five plus decades’ of experience working with schools to supply uniforms (where it owns 85% market share in organized market) and extend its capabilities in school supply chain, to provide the widest and most comprehensive range of school products as well as academic and non-academic courses and empower schools to be future-ready.
Uniform Junction has already partnered with 500 schools across India and looks to triple this number by the end of 2021 and enable over 50,000 schools with the best and most futuristic K12 student solutions in the next three years. Mafatlal Group has made an initial investment of USD 3 million in the new venture, to build a robust technology platform and a partner network of the best school product and service providers from across the globe.
Announcing the group’s foray, Priyavrata Mafatlal, MD & CEO of Mafatlal Industries and
Co-founder & Director of Uniform Junction said, “Like many other companies, the pandemic and the lockdown last year provided ample time for us to look closer at our strengths and capabilities and how better we could leverage it, while addressing the most relevant needs of a fast changing world and society. At the same time we witnessed up close how a vast majority of schools, especially those in the non-metro and tier I & II cities, that were otherwise among the most effective and efficient, grappled with the new norm, online learning and a need to go beyond regular academic curriculum. This experience and the sudden stagnation of the uniform business is what set us thinking and led to the birth of Uniform Junction.”
“Uniform Junction’s offering will for the first time provide schools the choice of integrating all their requirements for effective education services to K12 students with a single partner and focus on delivering quality education to students. More importantly, it will enable and equip schools in non-metro cities to gain access to the best in global and futuristic education & also be better prepared to adapt to the new National Education Policy”, he added.
Gagan Jain, Co-founder & CEO of Uniform Junction further elaborated, “We have built a robust technology platform, which will empower schools digitally, simplify supply chain for them & enable them to offer world class products to their students. We are launching Uniform Junction with over 1000s of courses covering both academic and non-academic curriculum in the initial phase and we look to keep expanding this further. We also have a large and special focus on non-academic courses that allow for more holistic development of students such as mental health, physical wellness, sports team, soft skills, etc. that if inculcated early in students will make a marked difference to their early education and its outcome at a time when the teachers are also grappling with the new normal”
India prides itself on the world’s largest K12 school system with more than 1.4 million schools and 250+ million students enrolled. Access and quality are the two biggest challenges faced by the Indian K12 system. Lack of proper infrastructure facilities, high pupil-teacher ratio and lack of trained teachers severely impact the quality of education imparted to students. The pandemic has further disrupted the education system and brought to the fore structural gaps in pedagogical knowledge and infrastructure to support online and hybrid models of future education. This situation has therefore compelled Indian education system and the players therein to reimagine the future of education.
About Arvind Mafatlal group: The Arvind Mafatlal Group is a 115+ year old business house having interests in the diverse fields of Textiles, Rubber Chemicals, Information Technology, Real Estate, E-commerce and Healthcare. The Group holds a very strong ethos for values, technology, and adaptability, and has witnessed various stages of both consolidation and expansions over the years. Two of the flagship companies of the Group are Mafatlal Industries and NOCIL Limited, both of which are listed on the stock exchange.