Startup Deep Dive : Adda247 — the vernacular test-prep giant whose revenue stalled on the road to IPO

Adda247 reaches roughly 40 million learners a month and has raised about $67 million, yet in the financial year it should have been building momentum for a stock-market debut, its top line went backwards. Operating revenue slipped to ₹217.10 crore ($22.6 million; $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026, Trading Economics) in FY25 from about ₹219 crore in FY24, even as the company kept spending like a business chasing scale.

That is the contradiction at the centre of India’s largest vernacular test-preparation platform. Run by Gurugram-based Metis Eduventures Private Limited, Adda247 built a genuine moat in small-town India by teaching government-exam aspirants in their own languages at prices between ₹2,000 and ₹5,000. It then spent four years acquiring rivals and burning capital, only to find that in FY25 revenue stopped growing and losses inched up again, forcing a 20% headcount cut in May 2026 ahead of a planned IPO. This is the story of how a blog for bank-exam aspirants became a group of brands, and why the road to a listing now runs through cost discipline rather than growth.

Quick facts

What Adda247 does

Adda247 sells structured preparation for India’s competitive examinations to aspirants who mostly live outside the big metros. It is, on the company’s own description and third-party coverage, the country’s largest vernacular learning platform, and it packages the same material in several formats so a student on a slow connection in a Tier III town can still study.

• Courses for more than 500 exams, spanning banking, SSC, railways, teaching (CTET/state TET), defence, UPSC and state PSC, plus school-linked tests such as NEET, JEE and CUET (Inc42; company site).
• Content delivered in more than 12 Indian languages, engineered to work at low internet bandwidth (Inc42; company site).
• Formats include live online classes, on-demand video, mock-test series, quizzes, performance analytics, e-books and physical books.
• Most courses are priced between ₹2,000 and ₹5,000, aimed at affordability for smaller-town learners (Inc42).
• Reach of about 40 million learners a month, with roughly 2 million enrolled in paid courses; about 85% of users come from Tier II, III and IV cities (Inc42).

The origin

The founding insight was not a technology one. It was that millions of Indians chase a small number of government jobs each year, that most of them do not study in English, and that good coaching for them was scarce, expensive and concentrated in a few cities. Anil Nagar, an electronics engineer from IIT-BHU, and Saurabh Bansal, a chartered accountant, started with the offline answer first. In 2010 they launched Career Power, a classroom-coaching brand that grew to a pan-India network of more than 150 centres.

Alongside the centres, the founders built a cluster of free content blogs that became the real distribution engine: Bankers Adda for banking aspirants, followed by SSC Adda, Defence Adda and Teachers Adda. These sites pulled in the exact audience Career Power wanted, at almost no acquisition cost. By 2016, with mobile data getting cheaper by the month, Nagar folded that audience into a single online platform, Adda247, betting that the internet could deliver affordable, exam-focused teaching to the remotest districts. The offline coaching business had taught them what aspirants needed; the blogs had shown them how cheaply those aspirants could be reached. Adda247 was the merger of the two.

The struggle years

Moving a coaching business online is easy to describe and hard to fund. Adda247’s chosen customers pay little per course by design, so scale had to come from volume, and volume meant heavy spending on content, technology and, eventually, acquisitions long before the revenue caught up. The financial record shows what that cost.

• In FY23 the company reported a net loss of ₹296 crore against operating revenue of just ₹129.65 crore, a loss more than twice its top line (Inc42; BW Disrupt).
• The losses reflected the price of the vernacular, low-ticket model: a large teaching and content workforce, and marketing to reach dispersed Tier II-IV users who convert at low ticket sizes.
• Even after the FY24 recovery, FY25 revenue stalled at ₹217.10 crore and the loss widened slightly to ₹103.6 crore, showing the model had not yet found durable operating leverage (Inc42).
• In May 2026 the company cut about 20% of its workforce, roughly 200 people across product, design, content, the CUET vertical and teaching staff, as it restructured for an IPO (Inc42; Business Standard).

The through-line of the struggle years is that Adda247 never had the luxury of high prices. Every rupee of margin had to be manufactured from operating efficiency, and for several years there was none to spare.

The turning point

The single event that reshaped Adda247 was not a funding round but an acquisition: the purchase of UPSC and state-PSC specialist StudyIQ Education on 17 December 2021 for about $20 million (roughly ₹150 crore) in a mix of cash and stock. UPSC preparation carries some of the highest average revenue per user in Indian test-prep, a segment where Adda247, built on banking and SSC exams, had been weak.

The numbers on each side explain the logic. StudyIQ, founded in 2014 by Abhishek Jain and Gaurav Garg, brought more than 11 million organic subscribers, over 100 million monthly views, and FY21 gross revenue of ₹33 crore, itself up roughly threefold on the prior year (Inc42; YourStory). For Adda247, which was then doing well under ₹130 crore in operating revenue, buying an established, fast-growing UPSC brand was faster and cheaper than building credibility in that segment from scratch. The deal set the template for what followed: growth by acquisition of category-leading brands rather than purely organic expansion.

The money behind it

Adda247 has raised about $67 million in total across four disclosed rounds, a modest figure for a company of its reach and a sign of relatively capital-efficient growth compared with the edtech firms that raised hundreds of millions (Inc42; Tracxn).

• 30 October 2019: a secondary-market transaction of about $6 million (Inc42).
• 6 November 2019: a Series B tranche of about $6 million (Inc42).
• 29 November 2021: about $20 million, with Asha Impact among the participants (Inc42).
• 30 September 2022: about $35 million, the largest round, led by WestBridge Capital with Google as a new investor and existing backers Info Edge and Asha Impact participating (Inc42; BW Disrupt).

What each backer changed:

• WestBridge Capital led the 2022 round and anchored the company as a serious, IPO-track business rather than an early-stage bet.
• Google came in as a new investor in 2022, lending an edtech-focused strategic name to the cap table.
• Info Edge (the Naukri parent) and Asha Impact provided continuity, backing the company across rounds; JM Financial is also listed among investors.

The 2022 round valued Adda247 at about $172-175 million, roughly ₹1,400 crore at the time (Inc42; Tracxn). No larger round has been disclosed since, so that remains the last public valuation as of September 2026.

How it makes money

Adda247 earns from selling preparation, not from advertising. The free blogs and daily current-affairs content are the top of the funnel; the paid courses, test series and books are where money is made. The economics are a volume game built on a deliberately low ticket.

• Money in: paid course subscriptions and live batches, mock-test series, and sales of e-books and printed books, mostly at ₹2,000-₹5,000 per course (Inc42).
• The scale lever: around 2 million paid users out of about 40 million monthly reach; paid subscribers grew more than 60% in FY24 (Inc42).
• Costs out: the dominant cost is people, teachers and content, with employee-benefit expense the largest line on the profit-and-loss account; marketing and technology follow.
• FY25 cost lines: total expenses of ₹343.8 crore, of which advertising and promotion was about ₹27.9 crore (up roughly 8%) and IT costs about ₹18.6 crore (Inc42).
• Where the margin sits, and what people get wrong: the surprise is that marketing is small, around 4% of revenue in FY24, because the owned blogs do the acquisition. The gross-margin pressure comes from teaching and content salaries and from integrating acquired brands, not from ad spend.

The numbers

Three years of the profit-and-loss account tell a clear story: a sharp recovery in FY24 followed by a stall in FY25. Figures are operating revenue and net loss as reported by Inc42 from the company’s MCA filings; note that one Inc42 report cited FY24 revenue at ₹243.39 crore (an 88% jump on FY23) while its later FY25 report put FY24 operating revenue at about ₹219 crore, a gap likely explained by whether other income is included.

• Revenue nearly doubled from FY23 to FY24, then fell about 1% in FY25 (Inc42).
• The net loss shrank 66% in FY24 from FY23’s ₹296 crore, but widened 2.5% in FY25 (Inc42; BW Disrupt).
• Total expenses were essentially flat year on year at about ₹344 crore, so the FY25 loss came from revenue not growing while costs held (Inc42).

Where the money comes from

Adda247’s revenue is concentrated in its core government-exam categories and in small-town India, with a newer school-exam push still building.

• By segment: the K13 verticals (CUET, NEET, JEE) contributed roughly 15% of total revenue in FY24, meaning the traditional government-job categories (banking, SSC, railways, teaching, UPSC/state PSC) still generate the large majority (Inc42).
• By geography: about 85% of users come from Tier II, III and IV cities, the opposite mix to English-first metro platforms (Inc42).
• By channel: the owned blog network (Bankers Adda, SSC Adda and others) is the primary, low-cost acquisition engine, feeding roughly 40 million monthly learners into paid funnels.
• The surprise: despite the NEET/JEE/CUET marketing push, the school-exam K13 segment is still a minority of revenue; the money is in helping adults win government jobs, in their own language.

Growth by acquisition has broadened this base. Beyond StudyIQ, Adda247 bought Veekshaa (interactive learning modules) in 2023, and in FY25 added placement-prep platform PrepInsta and CA test-prep player Ekagrata Eduserv, extending from public-sector exams toward private-sector job and professional preparation (Inc42; MCA-based reporting).

The risks

• Growth has stalled at the wrong moment. FY25 operating revenue fell about 1% to ₹217.10 crore while losses widened to ₹103.6 crore. A flat top line makes the IPO story harder to tell, which is precisely why the company cut 20% of staff in May 2026 to move toward profitability (Inc42; Business Standard).
• The IPO clock is running against unproven profitability. Reporting suggests a DRHP is likely in the first half of FY27 and that institutional investors will want to see EBITDA break-even or near-positive results across at least two consecutive quarters before a filing is credible, a bar the company has not yet publicly cleared (Inc42).
• Intense, better-capitalised competition. Adda247 competes with Testbook, Oliveboard, Pariksha, and larger edtech players including Physics Wallah and Unacademy for the same government-exam aspirants, pressuring both pricing and hiring in a low-ticket market (Inc42; company profiles).
• Integration and single-model concentration. Rapid acquisitions (StudyIQ, Veekshaa, PrepInsta, Ekagrata) must be integrated without inflating the cost base, and the business remains concentrated in Indian government-exam preparation, exposing it to shifts in exam calendars, recruitment cycles and any government hiring slowdown.

The takeaway

Adda247’s real lesson is about distribution, not teaching. The founders spent years building free content properties, Bankers Adda and its siblings, that reached exactly the audience they wanted to sell to, and that owned funnel let them keep marketing near 4% of revenue while rivals paid dearly for every user. A low-ticket, vernacular business can only work if customer acquisition is nearly free, and Adda247 engineered that before it ever tried to monetise. The harder lesson, now playing out in public, is that owning cheap distribution is not the same as owning operating leverage: when revenue stopped growing in FY25, the fixed cost of teachers and content turned a manageable loss into a reason to cut a fifth of the staff. The moat got the company to the edge of an IPO; only discipline will get it across.

Frequently asked questions

Who owns and runs Adda247?

Adda247 is the brand of Metis Eduventures Private Limited, based in Gurugram. It was founded by Anil Nagar, an IIT-BHU electronics engineer who is CEO, and Saurabh Bansal, a chartered accountant who is COO. Major outside shareholders include WestBridge Capital, Google, Info Edge and Asha Impact.

How much money has Adda247 raised and at what valuation?

Adda247 has raised about $67 million across four disclosed rounds. The largest, about $35 million led by WestBridge Capital with Google, closed in September/October 2022 and valued the company at roughly $172-175 million (about ₹1,400 crore). No larger round has been disclosed since, as of September 2026.

Is Adda247 profitable?

No. It reported a net loss of ₹103.6 crore in FY25 on operating revenue of ₹217.10 crore, after a ₹101 crore loss in FY24 and a ₹296 crore loss in FY23. It is restructuring to move toward profitability ahead of a planned IPO.

What did Adda247 acquire?

Its landmark deal was UPSC specialist StudyIQ Education, bought in December 2021 for about $20 million (around ₹150 crore) in cash and stock. It also acquired Veekshaa in 2023 and, in FY25, placement-prep platform PrepInsta and CA test-prep player Ekagrata Eduserv.

Is Adda247 planning an IPO?

Reporting from May 2026 indicates Adda247 is preparing for a public listing over the next 12-18 months, with a DRHP likely in the first half of FY27. Ahead of that it cut about 20% of its workforce, roughly 200 employees, to reduce costs and target group profitability.

Sources

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

• Inc42, “Adda247 Revenue Jumps 88% To INR 243.39 Cr In FY24” (April 2024)
• Inc42, “Adda247’s Loss Rises 2.5% To INR 104 Cr In FY25, Revenue Remains Flat” (September 2025)
• Inc42, “Adda247 Lays Off 20% Workforce Ahead Of IPO” (May 2026)
• Inc42, “Adda247 Acquires StudyIQ In $20 Mn Cash And Stock Deal” (December 2021)
• Inc42, Adda247 company funding and acquisitions profiles (2026)
• BW Disrupt, “Adda247 Posts Rs 296 Cr Loss In FY23” and “Adda247 Secures $35 M From Google, Others” (2022-2024)
• Business Standard, “Adda247 lays off over 20% employees amid restructuring and IPO plans” (May 2026)
• YourStory, “Adda247 acquires UPSC test prep platform StudyIQ for $20M” (December 2021)
• Tracxn, Adda247 company, funding and investors profile (2026)
• Inc42, “How Test-Prep Startup Adda247 Onboarded 2 Mn+ Paid Users By Focussing On Vernacular Education”
• Trading Economics, USD/INR reference rate (18 September 2026)

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