It is setting up new centres in cities like Udaipur, Pune, Akola and Indore while doubling down on cities like Mumbai, Bengaluru and Delhi. It is also expanding to new regions such as Jabalpur, Pulwama, Baramulla and Chennai.
The edtech firm, which closed a $210 million financing round on September 20, currently has 124 offline centres across 94 cities. With 75 more centres being added, this will take its offline footprint to around 200 centres, primarily in North India, with plans to expand into South India.
Ankit Gupta, chief executive of the WestBridge Capital-backed firm’s offline centres vertical, told ET that the offline business revenue till now in FY25 has grown by 52% from last year. The offline business, which started in 2021, now contributes around 45% of the overall revenue for the edtech firm.
“We still believe that there is a huge space where we can also set up our physical centres because we want to make education accessible to the entire country,” he said.
Students once had to travel to a few cities like Kota, Lucknow, and Delhi for coaching, incurring high costs beyond just fees, said Gupta. “To make quality education more accessible, the idea was to open more centres in smaller towns and cities.”
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In FY24, the company’s consolidated revenue stood at Rs 2,000 crore, marking a 2.5x increase from the previous year. In FY23, its net profit dropped to Rs 16 crore, down from Rs 98 crore in FY22, due to a significant rise in employee costs and provisioning towards certain non-cash expenses.Its offline centres offer a curriculum for engineering and medical entrance examinations. In the test prep segment, it competes with the likes of Byju’s-owned Aakash Institute, Bodhi Tree-backed Allen Career Institute, and SoftBank-backed Unacademy.
Several edtech companies, including Unacademy, have shifted to an offline model to expand their business after seeing a slowdown in their online operations after the surge driven by the Covid pandemic.
The Noida-based startup has invested around Rs 400 crore in its offline and hybrid centres, Vidyapeeth and Pathshala. Vidyapeeth centres offer tech-enabled offline classes, while Pathshala provides an offline setting where students are guided by two teachers—one delivering lessons online and another present physically to address doubts and queries.
The company plans to invest in Vidyapeeth and Pathshala models to expand in tier II-tier IV cities, for which it will invest another Rs 100-150 crore next year.
“The idea behind Pathshala is that in tier III and IV cities, there is not much access to quality education. None of the good offline infrastructure or coaching facilities are available, so we want to make education accessible to those towns as well,” Gupta said. Out of the 77 centres, 30 will be Pathshala centres and 45 will be Vidyapeeth.
Founders Alakh Pandey and Prateek Maheshwari had told ET that the recently raised funds will be used to expand its offline presence, diversify into new regions, and potentially look at acquisitions.
In 2022, the startup raised its maiden institutional round of $100 million at a valuation of $1.1 billion. The Indian edtech sector in 2024 has raised $215 million in funding so far, compared to $321 million last year.