Startup Deep Dive : Camp K12 — revenue fell 61% in FY25 yet stayed profitable

Camp K12 says it has taught more than 200,000 children to code across over 30 countries. In the financial year that ended March 2025, the company behind that claim reported revenue of just ₹6.5 crore (≈$0.68 Mn at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026, Trading Economics) — down 61% from the year before.

The gap between the brand’s reach and its balance sheet is not new. In January 2023, Camp K12 laid off roughly 70% of its staff and, according to reporting at the time, stopped paying salaries the month before. Two and a half years on, the company is still private, still small, and — on paper at least — still profitable. This is the story of how a coding school for children went from a pandemic-era funding favourite to a company running on a fraction of its former headcount.

Quick facts

What they do

Camp K12 runs live, instructor-led online classes that teach children between the ages of five and 18 to code, along with adjacent skills such as artificial intelligence, robotics, game design and English communication. Classes run in one-on-one and small-group formats over video, with a gamified layer on top — daily quizzes, real-time multiplayer challenges and a leaderboard — built to keep children engaged through a subscription-style course structure rather than a one-off purchase. The customer is the parent; the product is delivered to the child. The company has marketed itself as a global offering rather than an India-only one, with its own company profile on the review platform G2 claiming reach across more than 30 countries.

The origin

The corporate shell behind Camp K12, K 12 Innovations Private Limited, was incorporated in New Delhi on 14 June 2010, long before “coding for kids” became a funded category in India. The business that carries the Camp K12 name today was built on top of that shell only in 2020, when co-founders Anshul Bhagi and Sandeep Bhagi relaunched it as an online coding school as the pandemic pushed Indian parents and children onto video calls for everything, including after-school learning.

The founders came from outside education. Anshul Bhagi holds degrees from MIT and Harvard Business School and had worked at McKinsey, Google and Microsoft before starting Camp K12. Sandeep Bhagi’s background was in consumer hardware distribution — he had been responsible for bringing Apple to the Indian market and served as Apple India’s country manager. Neither had run a school before; the pitch to investors was that live, gamified coding instruction could be sold and scaled the way a consumer tech product is, using the same playbook of demo classes, funnels and month-on-month growth tracking that the founders knew from their corporate careers.

The struggle years

Camp K12’s difficulties are not spread across a decade of quiet grinding — they are concentrated and dated.

The first was structural: the entire business model depended on a pandemic-era shift in parental behaviour that was never guaranteed to hold. Camp K12 was built and funded in 2020 specifically because children were stuck at home; when schools reopened and screen-time fatigue set in, the tailwind that had justified the original valuation thesis for the whole coding-for-kids category began to fade. Camp K12 was not alone in this — the sector included at least half a dozen well-funded rivals at the time, among them WhiteHat Jr, Toppr, Vedantu, Cuemath, Lido Learning, Coding Ninjas and Uable, all competing for the same pool of parents.

The second setback was concrete and severe. In January 2023, Camp K12 laid off roughly 70% of its workforce. According to Inc42’s reporting, the company’s LinkedIn page listed 433 employees at the time, meaning the layoff could have affected as many as 300 people. The same report — citing an investigation by The Morning Context — said Camp K12 had not paid salaries since December 2022, that the laid-off staff received no severance, and that employees who wanted to leave voluntarily were, according to their own accounts, not being allowed to resign or issued relieving letters.

The turning point

If there is a single hinge in Camp K12’s story, it is the 18 months between its Series A close and the January 2023 layoffs. On one side: in August 2021, Camp K12 raised $12 million in a Series A round and told the press its US business had grown 2x month-on-month over the prior three months, while its Middle East business had grown 3x month-on-month over the same period — the kind of numbers that justify aggressive hiring. By the company’s own account at the time, that capital was earmarked for hiring leaders “across functions” and scaling operations, marketing, engineering and product teams.

On the other side, seventeen months later: roughly 300 of an estimated 433 employees let go in one month, no salaries paid for the preceding month, and remaining staff describing conditions former employees called akin to being trapped. A company that had been pitching hypergrowth to investors in August 2021 was, by January 2023, unable to meet its wage bill. Whatever cash cushion the Series A and the debt raised alongside it were meant to provide had run out well before the funding environment for consumer edtech recovered.

The money behind it

• Seed round, April 2020: $4 million led by Matrix Partners India and SAIF Partners, announced as Camp K12 pivoted to live online coding classes (Inc42, 2 April 2020).
• Series A, August 2021: $12 million, again led by Matrix Partners India and Elevation Capital (the renamed SAIF Partners), earmarked for hiring and international scale-up (Entrackr, 26 August 2021).
• Total disclosed equity raised: $16 million across two rounds — consistent across Inc42’s company database and Entrackr’s original reporting.
• Secured debt: a ₹9 crore charge against the company was created on 1 April 2021 in favour of Axis Trustee Services Limited, modified in January 2022, and closed in January 2024 — a debt facility that ran alongside the equity raise and was wound down two years after the mass layoffs began (ZaubaCorp, MCA filing record).
• Valuation: not disclosed in any of the funding announcements reviewed for this piece. No priced round has been reported since August 2021.

How it makes money

Camp K12 is a direct-to-consumer subscription business, not a marketplace, so there is no published take rate or platform fee to point to — the company sells course access directly to parents and keeps what it charges, minus the cost of instructors, technology and customer acquisition.

• Revenue line: course fees paid by parents for live, scheduled classes, sold in one-on-one and small-group formats across coding, AI, robotics, game design and English.
• Cost base: instructor pay (the largest cost in any live-tutoring model), platform and content development, and customer acquisition through demo classes and marketing — the same cost structure that forced peer companies into deep layoffs when growth slowed.
• What the FY25 filing shows about margin: Camp K12 reported total expenses of just ₹91.5 lakh against revenue of ₹6.5 crore for FY25 (Inc42 Datalabs, sourced from MCA filings) — an unusually thin cost base for a company that once ran a 433-person workforce, consistent with an operation that has been sharply downsized since the 2023 layoffs rather than one still running at its earlier scale.
• The part that surprises: despite the 61% revenue decline, Camp K12’s FY25 filing shows a positive profit after tax of ₹5.6 crore. A shrinking, leaner Camp K12 is, on the available filed numbers, more profitable per rupee of revenue than the fast-growing, heavily staffed version of the company that raised its Series A.

The numbers

Camp K12’s most recent audited-style disclosure, via Inc42 Datalabs’ reading of its MCA filings, covers FY25 in absolute terms and gives year-on-year change against FY24. Earlier years’ absolute figures were not available in any public filing or press source opened for this piece, so they are not presented as numbers here — only the disclosed FY25 figures and the disclosed rate of change.

• Every line item fell in FY25, but expenses fell faster (-74%) than revenue (-61%) — the arithmetic behind the positive profit-after-tax figure.
• ZaubaCorp’s own record of K 12 Innovations Private Limited shows its last Annual General Meeting on 30 September 2023, referencing a balance sheet filed for the period ending 31 March 2023 — a reminder that private-company financial disclosure in India lags well behind the reporting period, and that FY22–FY24 absolute figures are not independently verifiable from the sources available for this piece.
• Employee count has fallen from roughly 433 (per the company’s own LinkedIn page, as cited by Inc42 in February 2023) to 162 (Inc42 Datalabs, as of September 2026) — a reduction of about 63% from the pre-layoff level.

Where the money comes from

Camp K12 has never published a formal revenue split by geography or product line. The clearest public data point is operational, from around the time of its Series A.

• United States: business reported to have grown 2x month-on-month over the three months to August 2021 (Entrackr, 26 August 2021) — the company’s stated priority market for international scale-up.
• Middle East: business reported to have grown 3x month-on-month over the same period (Entrackr, 26 August 2021) — growing faster than the flagship US market at the time, the kind of detail easy to miss given how much edtech coverage of this period focused on the US and India alone.
• Reach claim: more than 200,000 students across over 30 countries, per Camp K12’s own company profile on G2 — a company-stated figure not independently verified in any filing reviewed for this piece.
• Product line: no separate revenue disclosure exists between coding, AI/robotics and English-language offerings; all three are sold under the same live-class subscription model.

The risks

• Liquidity risk, already realised once: Camp K12 went from a Series A close and hypergrowth claims in August 2021 to being unable to pay staff by December 2022 — roughly 16 months. A company whose cost base is dominated by instructor salaries and marketing spend has little room to absorb a slowdown in new enrolments without repeating that sequence.
• Revenue-margin mismatch: FY25’s combination of a 61% revenue decline and a positive, if smaller, profit after tax suggests a business that has shrunk into profitability by cutting costs faster than it lost revenue, rather than one that has found a new source of growth. That is a defensible short-term position but not, on its own, evidence of a durable business model.
• Sector consolidation: of the seven named competitors Entrackr listed alongside Camp K12 in August 2021 — WhiteHat Jr, Toppr, Vedantu, Cuemath, Lido Learning, Coding Ninjas and Uable — at least one, Lido Learning, shut down entirely within six months, in February 2022, after failing to close a fresh funding round (Varindia, 22 February 2022). The category Camp K12 competes in has already produced one outright shutdown among its named peers.

The takeaway

Camp K12’s arc is a reminder that a growth story built entirely on a temporary behavioural shift — in this case, pandemic-driven screen time — needs a second act ready before the tailwind ends. The company raised capital and hired against month-on-month growth rates that were, by definition, measured during an unusual period; when that period passed, the cost base built to serve it did not shrink in time, and the correction, when it came, was abrupt and public rather than gradual. The lesson travels beyond edtech: growth rates measured inside an anomaly are a poor basis for a permanent headcount.

Frequently asked questions

Who founded Camp K12?

Camp K12 was founded by Anshul Bhagi and Sandeep Bhagi. Anshul Bhagi is an MIT and Harvard Business School graduate who previously worked at McKinsey, Google and Microsoft; Sandeep Bhagi is a former Apple India country manager (Inc42, 2 April 2020).

How much funding has Camp K12 raised?

Camp K12 has raised a disclosed total of $16 million in equity across two rounds: a $4 million seed round in April 2020 and a $12 million Series A in August 2021, both led by Matrix Partners India and SAIF Partners/Elevation Capital (Inc42 Datalabs; Entrackr, 26 August 2021).

Is Camp K12 profitable?

Its FY25 filing, as read by Inc42 Datalabs, shows a profit after tax of ₹5.6 crore on revenue of ₹6.5 crore, though both figures fell sharply year-on-year and the company’s headcount has been cut by roughly 63% since early 2023.

What happened to Camp K12’s staff in 2023?

In January 2023, Camp K12 laid off an estimated 70% of its workforce — as many as 300 of a reported 433 employees — and had reportedly not paid salaries since December 2022, with laid-off staff receiving no severance (Inc42, 22 February 2023, citing The Morning Context).

Is Camp K12 a listed company?

No. Camp K12, operated by K 12 Innovations Private Limited, is privately held and unlisted. Its last disclosed valuation-relevant event was the August 2021 Series A round; no valuation figure was disclosed at that time.

Sources

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

• Inc42 Datalabs, “Camp K12 — Funding, Revenue & Investors” (company profile), accessed September 2026
• Inc42 Datalabs, “Camp K12 Financials” (FY25 revenue, expenses, profit after tax, total assets), accessed September 2026
• Inc42 Datalabs, “Camp K12 Funding” (round-by-round funding detail), accessed September 2026
• Inc42, “Matrix, SAIF Partners Back Edtech Startup Camp K12,” 2 April 2020
• Inc42, “Edtech Blues: Camp K12 Fires 70% Employees, Refuses To Pay Salaries,” 22 February 2023
• Entrackr, “Elevation and Matrix lead $12 Mn Series A round in Camp K12,” 26 August 2021
• ZaubaCorp, company record for K 12 Innovations Private Limited (CIN U80903DL2010PTC204068), accessed September 2026
• G2, “Camp K12 Reviews” (company profile), accessed September 2026
• Varindia, “Lido Learning shut down its operations,” 22 February 2022
• Trading Economics, USD/INR exchange rate, 18 September 2026

Found an error? Write to us and we’ll correct it in the open, dated, on the piece.