Startup Deep Dive : Vidyakul — the vernacular edtech betting on state boards, not English medium

Vidyakul has taken outside money only three times, for a combined $2.6 million since 2021 (about ₹21 crore, converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026, Trading Economics) — a rounding error next to the hundreds of crores that rivals like Physics Wallah and Unacademy have raised in single rounds. Yet in FY25 its revenue grew 57.0% to ₹17.9 crore, on a subscription that costs less than a family dinner out: ₹250-300 a month, per subject, for state-board students in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat who study in Hindi, Gujarati and Bhojpuri, not English.

The company’s own history runs against the edtech industry’s habit of burning venture capital to buy growth. Vidyakul’s founders spent 15 months building product before they launched, then tore up their own model within a year of going live because it was not working. What made that pivot necessary, and what kept the company alive on comparatively little capital while better-funded peers posted losses several times their revenue, is the subject of this piece.

Quick facts

What they do

Vidyakul runs a mobile-first after-school learning app for students in classes 9 to 12 who study under state education boards rather than the national CBSE or ICSE boards, chiefly in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat. The app delivers live and recorded classes, handwritten-style notes, sample papers, e-books, quizzes and mock tests in the language the student actually studies in — Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Bhojpuri or a Hindi-English mix — rather than the English-medium content that dominates most Indian edtech catalogues. It also carries preparation content for competitive exams such as JEE, NEET and CUET, sold as an add-on to the core state-board subscription. The company markets itself as serving Tier II, Tier III and Tier IV towns, where families own a smartphone but have limited spending power for private tuition.

The origin

Tarun Saini grew up in Pounti, a village near Ambala in Haryana. His local government school taught only the arts stream, so to study science in class 11 he travelled roughly 30 kilometres each way, an hour and a half by bus, to a school that offered it. He has said that a classmate who scored 93% in her class 10 exams was not allowed to take up science, because her family could not afford the distance or the fees involved (YourStory, April 2021). That gap between ability and access stayed with him. When he later looked at the numbers, he found that close to 70% of India’s school-going population studied under state boards rather than CBSE, and that the Uttar Pradesh board alone enrolled more students than CBSE did nationwide — yet most of the quality content built for Indian students, online or offline, was in English (YourStory, April 2021). Saini founded Vidyakul in 2018, bringing in Raman Garg, until then a developer at Klumpster Technologies, as co-founder and chief technology officer. The company itself had been incorporated a little earlier, in December 2017, as Vidyakul Learning Space Private Limited (Zaubacorp company record). The two spent about 15 months on research and product building before the learning app went live in January 2020.

The struggle years

The timing of that January 2020 launch turned out to be a double-edged sword: within weeks, India went into COVID-19 lockdown, and every household with a school-going child suddenly needed an online alternative. But Vidyakul’s first version of the product was not built to capture that moment well. It launched as an open marketplace, where any teacher or content creator could upload material for students to buy, on the theory that supply would sort itself out. It did not. Saini and Garg concluded that if they were going to be in the business of academics, they had to own the quality of what reached a paying student, not simply host it. In 2021 they abandoned the marketplace design entirely and rebuilt Vidyakul as a closed, in-house content platform, with material commissioned from local academic experts rather than crowdsourced (YourStory, April 2021).

That rebuild needed cash faster than expected. Vidyakul raised its first institutional round, $500,000 led by JITO Angel Network, in April 2021 (Entrepreneur India, April 2021). Five months later, in September 2021, it was back raising again: a further $500,000 bridge round led by We Founder Circle, with JITO Angel Network and Thinkuvate also participating, taking total funding at that point to about $1 million (Entrackr, September 2021). A bridge round within half a year of a seed round is not a sign of comfortable runway. The company’s own filings later showed why the pressure did not let up soon after: a net loss of ₹7.02 crore in FY23 against revenue of just ₹2.09 crore that year (TheKredible, citing Registrar of Companies filings) — a company spending more than three times its revenue to stay in business, years after its founding.

The turning point

The clearest inflection sits between FY23 and FY24. Coming out of the marketplace-to-curated pivot and a July 2022 pre-Series A round of ₹12 crore, Vidyakul’s FY23 numbers looked precarious: ₹2.09 crore in revenue against a ₹7.02 crore net loss (TheKredible). A year later, in FY24, revenue had grown 5.4 times to ₹11.4 crore, while the net loss had narrowed to ₹5.1 crore, even as the company kept investing in content and reach (TheKredible; revenue figure independently corroborated by Inc42’s company financials tracker). That is the shape of a business that had gone from an unproven pivot to a repeatable one: growing revenue faster than it grew its losses, in the same stretch that its FY25 revenue went on to reach ₹17.9 crore, up a further 57.0% (Inc42). The pre-Series A capital did not chase growth for its own sake; it funded the year in which the model the founders rebuilt in 2021 started to show up in the numbers.

The money behind it

• April 2021 — $500,000 seed round led by JITO Angel Network (Entrepreneur India, April 2021)
• September 2021 — $500,000 bridge round led by We Founder Circle, with JITO Angel Network and Thinkuvate; cumulative funding about $1 million at this point (Entrackr, September 2021)
• July 2022 — ₹12 crore pre-Series A led by JITO Angel Network, joined by Nadathur Technologies (the family office of Infosys co-founder N.S. Raghavan), Indorama Capital Holdings, Tech Innovations, Veena Munganahalli and We Founder Circle (Entrepreneur India, July 2022; Elets digitalLEARNING, July 2022)
• Total raised to date: about ₹21 crore, roughly $2.6 million cumulative, across these rounds (Inc42, company profile and June 2024 report)
• What each backer changed, as reported: JITO Angel Network anchored the company through two of its three rounds and stayed the lead investor from seed to pre-Series A; Nadathur Technologies and Indorama Capital Holdings brought institutional and family-office credibility to the 2022 round that widened the syndicate beyond angel networks; We Founder Circle backed the company twice, in the 2021 bridge and again in 2022
• Latest valuation: not disclosed in any round announcement found for this piece

How it makes money

Vidyakul’s revenue is subscription income, paid directly by students or their families rather than by schools or government contracts. As of its 2021 funding announcements, pricing sat at roughly ₹250-300 per month per subject for live classes, notes, sample papers, e-books, mock tests and mentoring support (Entrepreneur India; YourStory, April 2021) — a price built around what a low-income, smartphone-owning household in a small town can pay, not what an English-medium, metro-city coaching brand charges. That low per-subject price is also the source of its central economic tension.

• Money in: monthly or term subscriptions, sold per subject, to individual students in classes 9-12, plus optional competitive-exam (JEE, NEET, CUET) content sold as an upsell
• Costs out: content production in multiple regional languages, teacher and academic-expert fees, app and streaming infrastructure, and customer acquisition in Tier II-IV markets where trust in a paid app has to be built from a low base
• Where the margin sits: content, once produced for a state board and language, can be resold to every subsequent cohort of students on that board at near-zero marginal cost — the same logic that eventually pushed the company away from an open marketplace and toward owning its own catalogue
• The part people get wrong: a ₹250-300 monthly ticket size looks negligible next to a metro coaching institute’s fees, but it is priced against local tuition alternatives, not against premium edtech; the business only works at volume and high retention across subjects and years, not on a handful of high-paying users

The numbers

Figures below are as reported in company filings and cited by TheKredible and Inc42; all figures in ₹ crore.

• FY23 revenue: ₹2.09 crore, net loss ₹7.02 crore (TheKredible, citing Registrar of Companies filings)
• FY24 revenue: ₹11.4 crore, up 5.4x over FY23; net loss narrowed to ₹5.1 crore (TheKredible; revenue figure also reported by Inc42)
• FY25 revenue: ₹17.9 crore, up 57.0% over FY24; profit/loss for the year had not been publicly reported as of this research (Inc42)

Where the money comes from

• Geography: core markets are Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat, chosen because their state boards between them enroll far more students than the national CBSE board (YourStory, April 2021)
• Board coverage: as of the company’s 2021 funding round, content spanned six state boards across the languages Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Bhojpuri and Hinglish (Entrackr, September 2021)
• Class range: classes 9-12, the years that culminate in board exams, with an add-on line for JEE, NEET and CUET competitive-exam prep sold to the same student base (Entrackr, September 2021)
• Reach as last publicly stated: around 1 million students across 10 states, reported at the time of the September 2021 funding round (Entrackr) — the company has not published an updated figure since
• The surprise: a company built to serve India’s most price-sensitive, non-English-medium student segment turned its FY23-FY24 revenue multiple (5.4x) faster than most venture-backed, English-first edtech peers managed in the same stretch, on a fraction of their capital

The risks

• Better-funded competition chasing the same underserved geography: Adda247 describes itself as India’s largest vernacular learning platform and competes for the same Hindi/regional-language, Tier II-III audience, while Physics Wallah and Unacademy have both built large low-cost, vernacular-adjacent test-prep businesses with far larger war chests
• Thin per-user economics: at ₹250-300 per subject per month, the model depends on high subject attach-rates and multi-year retention through classes 9-12; a student who buys one subject for one term generates too little revenue on its own to cover content and acquisition costs
• Continuing losses despite narrowing: the company posted a ₹7.02 crore net loss in FY23 and a ₹5.1 crore net loss in FY24 against modest revenue bases of ₹2.09 crore and ₹11.4 crore respectively; profitability has not yet been demonstrated in any disclosed fiscal year (TheKredible)
• Geographic concentration: the core business leans on three states’ board curricula (UP, Bihar, Gujarat); a curriculum overhaul or a shift in any one state’s board exam pattern would affect a large share of existing content and users at once

The takeaway

Vidyakul’s most transferable lesson is not about vernacular content or Tier II towns specifically. It is about what a founder does when the first version of the product is technically live but structurally wrong. The company did not try to fix an open marketplace with better moderation tools; it closed the marketplace and rebuilt the catalogue it was trying to avoid owning. That decision, taken in 2021 with modest capital and no guarantee of a second round, is what shows up two years later in a revenue line that grew 5.4 times in a single fiscal year. Small, underfunded companies rarely get to run two different business models back to back and survive both experiments. Vidyakul’s founders chose to spend their scarce early capital on getting the model right before spending it on growth, which is the harder and less fundable-sounding of the two options.

Frequently asked questions

What does Vidyakul actually sell?

A subscription-based learning app for state-board students in classes 9-12, mainly in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat, offering live and recorded classes, notes, sample papers, e-books and mock tests in Hindi, Gujarati and other regional languages, priced at roughly ₹250-300 per subject per month as of its 2021 funding disclosures.

Who founded Vidyakul and when?

Tarun Saini founded the venture in 2018 with Raman Garg as co-founder and CTO; the operating company, Vidyakul Learning Space Private Limited, was incorporated in December 2017, and the app itself launched in January 2020. Akhil Hari Angira, who joined as an intern in 2018, was made a third co-founder and chief business officer in June 2024.

How much funding has Vidyakul raised, and from whom?

About ₹21 crore (roughly $2.6 million) across three disclosed rounds between April 2021 and July 2022, from backers including JITO Angel Network, We Founder Circle, Nadathur Technologies and Indorama Capital Holdings. No valuation has been publicly disclosed for any round.

Is Vidyakul profitable?

Not as of its last disclosed fiscal year. It posted a net loss of ₹7.02 crore in FY23 and ₹5.1 crore in FY24, even as revenue grew from ₹2.09 crore to ₹11.4 crore over the same period; FY25 profit or loss had not been publicly reported at the time of this piece, though FY25 revenue was reported at ₹17.9 crore.

Who are Vidyakul’s main competitors?

Companies targeting similar vernacular or price-sensitive test-prep audiences, including Adda247, Physics Wallah and Unacademy, though each has a different core focus (competitive government exams, JEE/NEET prep, and broad test-prep respectively) compared with Vidyakul’s state-board classes 9-12 focus.

Sources

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

• Inc42, company financials profile for Vidyakul, accessed September 2026
• Inc42, “Edtech Startup Vidyakul Elevates Akhil Hari Angira To The Role Of Cofounder & CBO”, June 2024
• YourStory, “This village boy-turned-entrepreneur is building ‘Bharat Ka Online School’ for vernacular students”, April 2021
• Entrepreneur India, “Vernacular E-learning Platform Vidyakul Raises $500,000 From JITO Angel Network Investors”, April 2021
• Entrackr, “We Founder Circle leads $500K bridge round in Vidyakul”, September 2021
• Entrepreneur India, “Vidyakul Closes INR 12 Crore In Pre-Series A Round”, July 2022
• Elets digitalLEARNING, “Edtech company Vidyakul raises funding led by JITO Angel Network”, July 2022
• TheKredible, “Vidyakul Revenue Grows by 5.4x in FY24, Reduces Losses”, 2024
• Zaubacorp, company record for Vidyakul Learning Space Private Limited (CIN U80904HR2017PTC071241), accessed September 2026
• Trading Economics, USD/INR exchange rate, 18 September 2026

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