Teachers and trainers are getting a special opportunity to participate in the initial public offer (IPO) for One on One Educational Services. 

One on One is an eLearning platform that provides personalised learning solutions to students, Governments and businesses across the Caribbean. 

The company is seeking to raise $358 million by offering 380 million shares through an IPO. If the capital raise is successful, the company will then apply to be listed on the Junior Market of the Jamaica Stock Exchange. 

The offer is scheduled to open on August 12 and close on August 19.

Speaking on Taking Stock with Kalilah Reynolds, Founder and CEO of One on One, Ricardo Allen said that teachers are the foundation of the company.

“One on One is not actually the one providing the tutoring, all we’re doing is providing our platform to the teacher so that they can create their courses and monetise their knowledge,” he noted.

According to the company’s prospectus, 30 million shares are reserved for trainers and teachers.

However, Allen noted that they will have to be a registered member of the Jamaica Teachers Association (JTA) in order to access the reserve pool. 

“We have actually been in contact with the Jamaica Teachers’ Association, and they have sent us a very extensive list of all registered members. So, we are using that list so that when a teacher applies we’ll be able to verify against that list,” explained Capital Markets Manager at Sagicor Investments, Theola Moore-Bruce. 

According to Bruce, the applicant would then have to indicate that he or she is a teacher/trainer during the application.

World-class EduTech

Meanwhile, Allen is stressing that while the company serves the education industry, its emphasis is on the technology side. 

“People look at our name and they see ‘Educational Services’. I can tell you we’re changing that because we’re really more of a technology company that serves the education industry than we are an education company that uses technology,” he explained.

To that end, Allen revealed that approximately 95% of the company’s business model is currently business-to-business (B-to-B). 

He explained that One-to-One leases access to its online platform to other businesses who use it for their training/educational purposes. 

“We get paid an annual license fee to lease our platform to them, based on the number of employees that you have,” he said. 

He said that procedure is the same for Government clients.  At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Allen said One to One was approached by several Caribbean governments to leverage its technology to facilitate remote learning. He said that both governments and corporate clients sign long-term contracts to secure the continued use of the company’s tech. 

The CEO said that although the company experienced a boom during the pandemic, its transformation began long before that. The company stopped offering face-to-face classes and went fully digital in 2017. 

“We went fully remote as a company very early on, before the pandemic and this has helped us keep revenue high and keep costs down,” he said.

Read: THE ANALYSTS: One on One IPO ‘a good look’

WATCH THE INTERVIEW HERE