Startup Deep Dive : PlanetSpark — how a public-speaking edtech cut its loss 70% and chased break-even

PlanetSpark sells something most Indian parents were never billed for: teaching a child to speak. In the year to March 2024 the Gurugram company cut its net loss by 70% to ₹26.6 crore (about $28 million) even as operating revenue climbed 60% to ₹67 crore, a pairing almost no consumer edtech in India managed during the funding winter, according to filings sourced by Entrackr.

That single swing, from a ₹89.5 crore loss in FY23 to a far shallower one a year later, is the reason PlanetSpark is worth a closer read than its modest size suggests. This is not a story about scale. It is a story about a category most people did not know they wanted, a founding model that had to be torn up and rebuilt, and a slow, unglamorous march toward the rarest thing in Indian edtech, a profit. What follows traces the numbers on both sides of that turn, the money behind the company, how it actually earns, and where the risks still sit.

Quick facts

What PlanetSpark does

PlanetSpark runs live, one-to-one online classes that teach children how to communicate. The core catalogue covers public speaking, creative writing, storytelling, debate and podcasting, mostly for the K-12 age band, and is delivered by a distributed network of part-time teachers rather than a fixed salaried faculty. As per Entrackr’s reading of the company’s FY24 filing, education services income of ₹64.5 crore made up the overwhelming share of revenue, so this is effectively a single-product business: paid subscriptions to recurring live classes. The company has since begun selling a communication track to working professionals as a second wedge, which it says contributed a small slice of FY25 revenue (detailed later).

The origin

PlanetSpark was started in 2017 by Kunal Malik and Maneesh Dhooper, who had been friends since their days at XLRI Jamshedpur. Their backgrounds were not in classrooms. Malik, who runs the company as chief executive, had spent about five years across supply chain and sales roles at Hindustan Unilever. Dhooper had headed the education vertical at UrbanClap (now Urban Company), founded an earlier skilling venture, and worked at Novartis in Switzerland building an internal learning programme. The founding insight was narrow and, in hindsight, shrewd: Indian schooling drills content but rarely teaches a child to stand up and speak, and parents who could see that gap had no organised place to close it. The first version of the company did not look anything like the product it sells today, which is where the struggle begins.

The struggle years

PlanetSpark’s first model was an offline aggregation play, closer to an OYO for neighbourhood tuition. It signed up local tuition centres and home tutors and layered technology, apps and gamified worksheets on top of them. As YourStory reported, the network grew to roughly 250 tuition centres clocking about 10,000 learning hours a month before the founders concluded the economics of a physical, franchise-like footprint would not scale the way they needed. In October 2019, ahead of any pandemic, they pivoted the whole company to online delivery.

Then came the near-death that turned into a lifeline. When schools and local centres shut in March 2020, offline tuition collapsed as a category, and any version of PlanetSpark still tied to physical centres would have gone with it. The company had already jumped to online, and it leaned in hard, at one point pledging free upskilling for children of frontline pandemic workers, as reported by BW Education in 2020. But the harder struggle was financial and lasted years. The chase for growth burned enormous sums: total expenses ran to roughly ₹139.5 crore in FY22 and ₹133 crore in FY23 against operating revenue of just ₹30 crore and ₹42 crore respectively, per Entrackr, producing net losses of about ₹109 crore in FY22 and ₹89.5 crore in FY23. For every rupee of operating revenue in FY23, the company was spending roughly ₹3.14. That is the hole PlanetSpark had to climb out of.

The turning point

The turn is visible in one year of accounts, FY24. Revenue and losses moved in opposite directions at the same time, which is the hard trick most cash-hungry edtechs never pulled off. On one side of the line sat FY23: operating revenue of ₹42 crore and a net loss of ₹89.5 crore. On the other side sat FY24: operating revenue of ₹67 crore, up 60%, and a net loss of ₹26.6 crore, down 70%, as per Entrackr’s analysis of the filing. The improvement did not come from a magic new revenue engine. It came from cutting the cost of chasing growth. Employee benefit expense fell about 25% to ₹47 crore, the teacher salary line fell about 59% to ₹11 crore, and marketing and branding fell about 38% to ₹18 crore, even as the top line grew. In other words, PlanetSpark proved the classes could sell without the earlier scale of spend behind them. That is the single event this whole piece hangs on, and the sections below test how durable it is.

The money behind it

PlanetSpark has raised more than ₹260 crore across equity and debt to date, according to Entrackr, while Inc42 tallies roughly $31.3 million of equity across four rounds. Both point to a company funded steadily rather than lavishly. The notable rounds and backers:

• March 2024 round, about ₹141.8 crore ($17 million): a mix of roughly ₹91.8 crore in equity and ₹50 crore in debt, led by Prime Venture Partners, per Startup Story and Entrackr.
• Prime Venture Partners: the largest external shareholder and repeat lead investor, reported at about 32.6% ownership around FY23 (Entrackr).
• FIITJEE: the test-prep group is a strategic backer, which is why PlanetSpark is often described in coverage as “FIITJEE-backed” (Entrackr).
• Binny Bansal: the Flipkart co-founder is among the company’s angel investors (Inc42).
• Venture-debt lenders: InnoVen Capital and Alteria Capital have provided debt alongside the equity rounds (Startup Story).
• Founder skin in the game: the two co-founders together held close to 29.6% around FY23 and put fresh money into the March 2024 round (Entrackr).

On valuation the public record is soft and should be read with care. Entrackr put the company’s worth at about ₹620 crore around its 2024 raise, and Tracxn shows roughly ₹637 crore as of 30 April 2025. Both are third-party estimates; PlanetSpark has not publicly confirmed a figure, so treat the ₹620 crore to ₹637 crore band as reported rather than official.

How it makes money

The business model is a subscription over a gig-supply base. The mechanics, drawn from the company’s filings and Inc42 and Entrackr reporting:

• Money in: parents buy packages of live 1:1 classes; almost all revenue is education services income (₹64.5 crore of FY24 revenue, per Entrackr), i.e. recurring class fees rather than one-off content sales.
• Cost out, biggest line: people. Employee benefit expense was ₹47 crore in FY24 (Entrackr), the dominant cost, covering sales, operations and the platform team.
• Cost out, teaching: the teacher salary line was about ₹11 crore in FY24 (Entrackr). Using a distributed, part-time teacher network keeps this variable and low relative to revenue, which is central to the margin story.
• Cost out, demand: marketing and branding of about ₹18 crore in FY24 (Entrackr). Customer acquisition is the swing factor; the FY24 turnaround was largely a decision to spend less here.
• Where the margin sits: the model works only if the lifetime value of a subscribing family clears the cost to acquire that family. PlanetSpark’s FY24 result was, in effect, a demonstration that it could hold revenue growth while shrinking acquisition spend.
• The part people get wrong: “break-even” here has meant cash-flow break-even in the first half of FY25 (Inc42 feature), not an accounting profit. On an accrual basis the company still booked a net loss in FY25, covered next.

The numbers

Four years of accounts, in ₹ crore. FY22 and FY23 revenue is operating revenue; FY24 and FY25 figures are total revenue as reported by Inc42. Losses are net loss for the year.

Two things stand out. First, the loss reduction is real but not linear: after collapsing 70% in FY24, the net loss ticked back up to ₹28.8 crore in FY25 on total expenses of about ₹110 crore, per Inc42. Second, revenue growth slowed sharply, from 60% in FY24 to 18.6% in FY25. The company frames FY25 as the year it hit cash-flow break-even in its first two quarters and says it is targeting full accrual profitability in FY26 (Inc42 feature). The accounts say the profit was not there yet in FY25; whether FY26 delivers it is the open question.

Where the money comes from

The revenue mix is more international and more small-town than the “premium metro tutoring” label suggests. As reported by Inc42’s feature, drawing on company data:

• Geography: India accounts for roughly 70% to 80% of revenue; international markets, chiefly the US, Canada, the UK and the Middle East, make up the remaining 20% to 30%.
• Small-town base: about half of learners come from Tier 2 to Tier 4 towns, per the company, which is the surprise in a category assumed to be metro-led.
• Income profile: around 84% of income is stated to come from middle-income households, not the affluent top tier.
• New segment: the working-professionals communication track contributed about 12.5% of FY25 revenue, per Inc42, an early sign the company can sell beyond children.
• Reach: the company says it has run classes for learners across 13-plus countries (YourStory, January 2022).

A caution on scale claims: reported learner counts vary widely, from around 40,000 to 50,000 in some trackers to roughly 100,000 in Inc42’s 2025 feature. These are company-stated and not independently audited, so they are best read as directional.

The risks

The turnaround is genuine, but the model carries specific, mechanical risks:

• Single-product concentration: almost all revenue is one thing, subscription communication classes for children. Any shift in parent willingness to pay, or a fashion swing away from “soft skills” spending, hits the whole business at once. The working-professional track is still only about 12.5% of FY25 revenue (Inc42).
• Growth-versus-profit tension: the FY24 improvement came largely from cutting marketing. FY25 showed the cost of that: revenue growth fell to 18.6% and the net loss edged back up to ₹28.8 crore (Inc42). Push marketing again and losses widen; hold it back and growth stalls. That trade-off is not yet resolved.
• Gig-teacher dependence: quality and delivery rest on a distributed, part-time teaching network. Keeping thousands of tutors consistent, retained and well-rated is an operational risk that scales with the business, and teacher pay is a line the company has already cut hard (down about 59% in FY24, per Entrackr).
• Thin cash buffer: the FY24 balance sheet showed current assets of only about ₹13.5 crore including roughly ₹7 crore of cash (Entrackr). For a company still posting losses, that leaves limited room for error before the next raise.

The takeaway

The transferable lesson from PlanetSpark is not “communication skills are a big market.” It is that a consumer-internet business can be rebuilt around discipline instead of growth, and that the market will often still be there when you stop overpaying to reach it. The company burned through an offline model, jumped online before it was forced to, and then, in a single year, proved it could grow revenue while cutting the spend that had driven its losses. The unfinished part is just as instructive: cutting your way to cash-flow break-even is not the same as earning a profit, and the slower FY25 growth shows the bill that discipline can carry. PlanetSpark has done the hard first half, turning a runaway loss into a manageable one. The second half, turning a manageable loss into a durable profit without smothering growth, is the one worth watching.

Frequently asked questions

What does PlanetSpark do?

PlanetSpark runs live, one-to-one online classes that teach communication skills, mainly public speaking, creative writing, storytelling and debate, to K-12 children, delivered by a network of part-time teachers. It has added a communication track for working professionals as a second segment.

Who founded PlanetSpark and when?

It was founded in 2017 in Gurugram by Kunal Malik and Maneesh Dhooper, who studied together at XLRI Jamshedpur. Malik previously worked at Hindustan Unilever; Dhooper had led education at UrbanClap and built learning programmes elsewhere.

Is PlanetSpark profitable?

Not yet on an accounting basis. It reported a net loss of ₹28.8 crore in FY25 after ₹26.6 crore in FY24 (Inc42; Entrackr). The company says it reached cash-flow break-even in the first half of FY25 and is targeting full profitability in FY26, but the audited accounts did not show a profit as of FY25.

How much has PlanetSpark raised and who backs it?

The company has raised more than ₹260 crore across equity and debt, per Entrackr, with Inc42 tallying about $31.3 million in equity. Prime Venture Partners is the lead and largest external investor; FIITJEE is a strategic backer and Flipkart co-founder Binny Bansal is among its angels.

What is PlanetSpark valued at?

There is no company-confirmed figure. Third-party trackers report a valuation of about ₹620 crore (Entrackr, 2024) to ₹637 crore as of 30 April 2025 (Tracxn), so it should be treated as reported rather than official.

Sources

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

• Entrackr, “FIITJEE-backed PlanetSpark trims losses by 70% in FY24” — FY24 revenue, losses, cost breakdown, valuation, backers (2024).
• Entrackr, “PlanetSpark posts Rs 41 Cr revenue and Rs 90 Cr loss in FY23” — FY22 and FY23 revenue, losses, expenses, founders, shareholding (March 2024).
• Inc42, “How Binny Bansal-Backed PlanetSpark Reached Break-Even And Beat The Edtech Blues” — FY25 break-even claim, geography and segment splits, IPO ambition, learners (2025).
• Inc42, PlanetSpark company and financials pages — legal entity, FY24 and FY25 total revenue and net loss, funding tally (2026).
• Startup Story, “PlanetSpark raises $17M led by Prime Venture Partners” — March 2024 round structure, equity and debt, lenders (2024).
• YourStory, “Fuelled by Tier-II India, how edtech startup PlanetSpark…” — early scale, 13-plus countries, model (January 2022).
• YourStory, “Here’s how Gurugram-based edtech startup PlanetSpark…” and BW Education (2020) — offline aggregation origin, 250 centres, online pivot, pandemic response.
• Tracxn, PlanetSpark company profile and shareholding — reported valuation of ₹637 crore as of 30 April 2025.
• Trading Economics — USD/INR reference rate, 18 September 2026.

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