Startup Deep Dive : Teachmint — it spent Rs 187 to earn Re 1, then abandoned the business that raised the money

In the year Teachmint posted its first rupee of operating revenue, it spent ₹187 (about $1.95 at $1 ≈ ₹96.0, 18 September 2026, Trading Economics) to earn every ₹1 — a burn rate that would sink most companies inside a year. Three years later, in FY25, the same company earned ₹1 for roughly ₹2 spent, cut its loss by 57%, and did it all by walking away from the very business it was funded to build.

Teachmint raised its money as a free, mobile-first app for tutors and coaching institutes streaming live classes during the pandemic. By 2023 that business was gone. What survives today is a school-facing software and hardware company selling AI-powered interactive panels bolted to classroom walls — a pivot so complete that the company that hit a $500 million valuation on the strength of one product no longer sells that product at all.

Quick facts

What they do

Teachmint sells software and hardware to schools and, to a shrinking extent, coaching institutes and universities. The core product today is a bundle: a learning-management system that handles attendance, fee collection, admissions, timetabling and report cards, sold alongside Teachmint X and X2 — Google EDLA-certified interactive flat panels with built-in AI tools (branded EduAI) that a school buys once and mounts in a classroom. The pitch has moved a long way from where the company started. It no longer runs a consumer-facing live-class app for individual tutors; it now positions itself as infrastructure for the institution itself, competing for a school’s annual technology budget rather than a tutor’s monthly subscription.

The origin

Teachmint was founded in May 2020 by Mihir Gupta, Payoj Jain, Divyansh Bordia and Anshuman Kumar, a group of IIT Bombay and IIT Delhi alumni who had worked at OYO, McKinsey, Swiggy and Roposo before starting the company, as per YourStory’s company profile. The founding insight was simple and pandemic-shaped: India’s lakhs of small coaching institutes and individual tutors had no way to take their classes online without either building software themselves or handing their student relationships to a third-party marketplace. Teachmint offered a free, mobile-first app that let a tutor run a live class, mark attendance, share notes and collect fees, keeping the tutor in direct control of their own students — the opposite of the marketplace model that companies like Byju’s and Unacademy ran. That free-and-fast approach worked: Teachmint said it became the fastest edtech startup in India to raise more than $20 million within ten months of launch, according to YourStory.

The struggle years

The first crack showed in the unit economics almost as soon as real revenue appeared. FY22 (year ended 31 March 2022) was the first year Teachmint booked any operating revenue at all — ₹77.45 lakh, against a net loss of ₹131.70 crore, a 24-times surge from the ₹5.52 crore loss in FY21, as reported by Inc42 citing regulatory filings. Employee costs rose 45 times to ₹73.1 crore and advertising spend rose 14 times to ₹36.76 crore in the same year. Put plainly: the company spent ₹187 to generate every ₹1 of operating revenue in FY22.

The second and more consequential setback was strategic, not financial. In December 2021, Teachmint had acquired Teachmore, a course-selling startup, to extend into paid content. By FY22’s end, it pulled the plug on that business. “We want to focus all our energy on institutionalised school offerings and decided to pull the plug from Teachmore,” CEO Mihir Gupta told Entrackr in April 2023, when the company confirmed it was walking away from the coaching-institute and individual-tutor market altogether to focus solely on K-12 schools. Gupta framed it as an extension rather than a retreat — “we realised that we could make a large(r) dent by offering softwares to schools” — but the practical effect was that Teachmint’s original, pandemic-era product line was being wound down.

The restructuring showed up in headcount within months. Teachmint laid off 45 employees, close to 5% of its workforce, in December 2022, across sales and operations, as part of what it called an effort to build long-term efficiency amid the funding winter, per Inc42 and BW Disrupt. Five months later, in May 2023, it let go of more than 70 additional employees across marketing, tech, product and operations, offering three months’ severance, as reported by Entrackr, Inc42 and Business Today. In between the two rounds of layoffs, co-founder and chief technology officer Anshuman Kumar quit in April 2023 to start a new venture, Duolop, saying on LinkedIn he wanted to build something “more technically aligned” with his own vision, as reported by YourStory and Inc42. Losses kept climbing through this period: FY23 net loss came in at ₹180.7 crore, per Inc42, even as operating revenue reached only ₹8.1 crore.

The turning point

The clearest before-and-after split in Teachmint’s numbers sits between FY23 and FY25. In FY23, operating revenue was ₹8.1 crore against a ₹180.7 crore net loss — spending roughly ₹27 to earn every ₹1, per Inc42’s analysis of the company’s filings. By FY25, operating revenue had grown to ₹74 crore, a 4.3-times jump year-on-year, while the net loss fell to ₹46.6 crore, a 57% reduction, as reported by Entrackr. The swing wasn’t driven by the software subscriptions the company was originally funded to sell — it was driven by hardware. Teachmint’s product revenue (interactive flat panels, biometric devices, GPS trackers) went from about ₹11 lakh in FY23 to ₹4.6 crore in FY24, and by FY25 the AI-powered Teachmint X and X2 panels had become, in the company’s own framing reported by NewsBytes, its “top moneymaker.” The company that raised money as a software business now earns most of its growth from selling boxes.

The money behind it

Teachmint’s fundraising moved fast and then stopped. It opened with a $3.5 million seed round in October 2020 led by Lightspeed India Partners, with Better Capital and Titan Capital participating, as per YourStory. In May 2021, Learn Capital led a $16.5 million Series A, according to a Businesswire release — Learn Capital’s involvement mattered because the firm specialises in global edtech and brought credibility with later-stage US investors. Five months after that, in October 2021, Rocketship.vc and Vulcan Capital co-led a $78 million Series B, joined by Goodwater Capital, Epiq Capital, Learn Capital, CM Ventures, Lightspeed India and Better Capital, valuing the 16-month-old company at $500 million (roughly ₹48,000 crore at $1 ≈ ₹96.0, 18 September 2026, Trading Economics) — a figure confirmed independently by both TechCrunch and Entrackr in their October 2021 coverage. Notably, TechCrunch reported that Teachmint had turned down a $400 million acquisition offer from an unnamed large Indian edtech company just months before that round closed, choosing to raise equity instead.

That Series B remains, as of September 2026, Teachmint’s last disclosed priced funding round. Total funding raised sits at roughly $118 million across five rounds from 28 investors, per YourStory and Tracxn’s company data — a figure some databases show inflated by unverified or duplicated entries, which is why this piece uses the lower, cross-corroborated figure. Gupta has said the shift to schools was partly a capital-efficiency decision: “we have enough money and our burn is low as we cater to the B2B audience,” he told Entrackr in 2023, explaining why the company hasn’t needed to return to the market for a fresh round since.

How it makes money

Teachmint’s revenue today has two components. The first is services revenue — software subscriptions and support sold to schools for the management and classroom tools — which grew 56.2% to ₹12.5 crore in FY24 from ₹8 crore in FY23, according to Entrackr’s analysis of the company’s financial filings. The second, faster-growing component is product revenue: hardware sales of interactive flat panels and related devices, which rose from about ₹11 lakh in FY23 to ₹4.6 crore in FY24 and then became the dominant growth driver in FY25, when total operating revenue reached ₹74 crore. The part people get wrong about this business is treating it as a software company with hardware on the side — the cost structure says the opposite. Procurement of inventory was the single largest cost line in FY25, at 35.7% of total costs, per Entrackr, which is a manufacturing and distribution economics problem, not a software one. Margins on the hardware push are not disclosed, and neither is a take rate or per-seat software price, so this piece stops short of estimating either. What is verifiable is the direction: Teachmint is increasingly a device company that bundles software, not a software company that occasionally sells a device.

The numbers

Total expenses tell the other half of the story: they fell from ₹217.9 crore in FY23 to ₹160 crore in FY24 (down 26.6%) and to ₹148 crore in FY25, according to Entrackr’s reporting on the company’s regulatory filings. Employee benefit expenses were cut from ₹107.7 crore in FY24 to ₹48 crore in FY25 — a 55.3% reduction — which lines up with the two rounds of layoffs and the leaner, B2B-only structure the company has run since 2023. Total revenue including other income crossed ₹100 crore in FY25 (reported as approximately ₹102 crore by Tracxn), up from ₹49.8 crore in FY24.

Where the money comes from

By product line, the FY24 split was roughly 73% services (₹12.5 crore) and 27% hardware products (₹4.6 crore), based on Entrackr’s breakdown of the company’s filings; FY25’s 4.3-times jump, driven by Teachmint X and X2 sales, means the hardware share has almost certainly grown further, though the company has not published an exact FY25 split. On users, Teachmint says it serves more than 20 million users across over 50 countries, a figure it has used consistently in recent press materials, including NewsBytes’ August 2025 coverage — but this is a free-tier usage metric, not a paying-customer or revenue figure, and the company does not disclose what share of revenue is domestic versus international. Given that its hardware certifications (Google EDLA) and go-to-market are built around the Indian school system, the safest reading — and the one this piece uses, having found no disclosed geographic revenue split — is that India remains the overwhelming source of paying revenue, with the global user count reflecting free software reach rather than billings.

The risks

The clearest risk is the one the pivot itself created: moving from software to hardware raised Teachmint’s cost base into inventory and manufacturing, where procurement now eats over a third of total costs, per Entrackr. A software business can shrink its way to breakeven by cutting people; a hardware business also has to move stock, manage component costs and hold working capital, all of which are more exposed to price competition from established interactive-panel makers such as Promethean and Smart Technologies, and from Indian rivals building similar bundles, such as LEAD School and Extramarks, the latter of which already serves more than 15,000 schools by its own account. Second, the company has not raised a priced round since October 2021; if the hardware-led growth needs fresh capital for manufacturing or inventory financing, it would be negotiating in a market where edtech valuations broadly have compressed since 2021, raising the possibility of a down round relative to its $500 million mark — a risk inherent to any five-year-old company sitting on a funding round that old, not one the company has commented on directly. Third, execution and leadership risk is visible in the record: two rounds of layoffs within six months (December 2022 and May 2023) and the exit of a co-founder and CTO in the same window are the kind of disruption that can slow product development at exactly the point a company is trying to build and certify new hardware.

The takeaway

Money raised for one business does not obligate a company to keep running that business. Teachmint took funding built on a free, consumer-facing, pandemic-era product, watched the unit economics of that product fail in plain sight — ₹187 spent per ₹1 earned in FY22 — and then did the harder thing: it shut down the product line investors had funded and rebuilt around something less glamorous, a physical panel a school buys once. The lesson transfers beyond edtech. A pivot that looks like a retreat from the outside can be the only route to unit economics that work, and the willingness to abandon the original pitch, twice — first dropping Teachmore, then dropping the consumer coaching business entirely — mattered more to Teachmint’s survival than any single funding round did.

Frequently asked questions

What does Teachmint do now?

Teachmint sells school-management software bundled with Teachmint X and X2, AI-powered interactive flat panels for classrooms, primarily to K-12 schools in India, having exited the coaching-institute and individual-tutor market it originally launched with in 2020.

Who founded Teachmint, and are all the founders still involved?

Teachmint was founded in May 2020 by Mihir Gupta, Payoj Jain, Divyansh Bordia and Anshuman Kumar. Kumar, the co-founder and CTO, left in April 2023 to start a separate venture, Duolop, as reported by YourStory and Inc42. Gupta remains CEO.

What is Teachmint’s valuation?

Teachmint was valued at $500 million (reported) in its October 2021 Series B round, per TechCrunch and Entrackr. As of September 2026, no subsequent priced funding round has been publicly disclosed, so this remains the last confirmed valuation mark.

Is Teachmint profitable?

No. Teachmint narrowed its net loss to ₹46.6 crore in FY25 (year ended 31 March 2025) from ₹110.1 crore in FY24, a 57% reduction, according to Entrackr’s reporting on its financial filings, but it has not reported a profit in any disclosed fiscal year since incorporation.

Why did Teachmint pivot from coaching institutes to schools?

CEO Mihir Gupta told Entrackr in April 2023 that the company found it could “make a large(r) dent” selling institutionalised software to schools than to individual tutors and coaching institutes, whose usage of Teachmint’s free app was not converting into durable revenue. The company shut its Teachmore course-selling unit and stopped serving the consumer coaching segment as part of this shift.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• YourStory, Teachmint company profile and funding history, accessed September 2026
• Businesswire, “Teachmint Raises $16.5 Million in Series A Round Led by Learn Capital”, May 2021
• TechCrunch, “Indian edtech Teachmint valued at $500 million in $78 million funding”, October 2021
• Entrackr, “Teachmint raises $78 Mn in Series B at a valuation of $500 Mn”, October 2021
• Inc42, “Edtech Startup Teachmint Spent INR 187 To Earn Every INR 1 In FY22”, 2023
• YourStory, “Teachmint co-founder and CTO Anshuman Kumar quits to pursue new venture”, April 2023
• Entrackr, “Teachmint pivots to focus solely on digitizing schools”, April 2023
• Inc42, “Edtech Startup Teachmint Lays Off 45 Employees As Part Of Restructuring”, December 2022
• Entrackr, “Edtech startup Teachmint lays off another 70 employees”, May 2023
• Business Today, “Startup layoffs: Edtech company Teachmint fires 70 more employees”, May 2023
• Inc42, “Teachmint Spent INR 27 To Earn Every Rupee In FY23”, March 2024
• Inc42, “Teachmint Cuts FY24 Loss To INR 110 Cr, Revenue Soars 111%”, 2024
• Entrackr, “Teachmint revenue grows 2X in FY24, losses down to Rs 82 Cr”, 2024
• Entrackr, “Teachmint’s revenue jumps 4.3X in FY25”, 2025
• Startuppedia, “IIT-Grads-Founded Edtech Platform Teachmint Reports 4.3X Revenue Growth to Rs 74 Cr in FY25”, 2025
• NewsBytes, “Teachmint’s revenue jumps 4.3x as AI tools become top moneymaker”, August 2025
• Tracxn, Teachmint company profile, financials and funding data, accessed September 2026

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