In April 2023, Extramarks Education fired more than 300 employees and shut the consumer app business it had spent a decade building. A year later its revenue had fallen by 37% — and the company called that a win.
The Noida-based edtech firm, founded in 2007 by chartered accountant Atul Kulshrestha and roughly 38.5% owned by Reliance Industries since November 2011, posted ₹233 crore ($24.3 million at $1 ≈ ₹96.0, 18 September 2026) in revenue for the year ended March 2024, down from ₹369 crore the year before — a 36.9% decline in revenue from operations, as per its consolidated financial statements sourced from the Registrar of Companies and reported by Entrackr in February 2025. In the same twelve months, its net loss shrank by 85%, from ₹330 crore to ₹48 crore. Extramarks had chosen to earn less on purpose, betting that a smaller, all-schools business beats a bigger, bleeding one.
Quick facts
| Company | Extramarks Education (Extramarks Education India Private Limited / Extramarks Education Private Limited), Noida |
| Founded | 2007 |
| Founder | Atul Kulshrestha, chartered accountant, Chairman & Managing Director |
| Businesses | B2B digital classroom software and content licensing to schools (Smart Class, learning-management systems); test-prep and tuition apps; direct-to-consumer subscriptions discontinued in 2023 |
| Latest FY revenue | ₹233 crore ($24.3 million), year ended March 2024 (FY24), down 36.9% year-on-year |
| Latest FY profit/loss | Net loss of ₹48 crore in FY24, an 85% reduction from FY23’s ₹330 crore loss |
| Listed | Private (unlisted) |
| Market value / last valuation | Not disclosed — no valuation appears in the filings or press coverage reviewed as of September 2026 |
| Key shareholders / CEO | Reliance Strategic Investments Ltd (~38.5% stake since November 2011); Atul Kulshrestha, promoter and Chairman; Ritvik Kulshrestha, Chief Executive Officer |
What they do
Extramarks sells digital-classroom software and licensed content to K-12 schools, plus a smaller line of test-preparation and home-tuition apps aimed at students preparing for board exams, NEET and JEE. Its original and still-core product is Smart Class: interactive lessons delivered through classroom hardware and a learning-management system that a school buys and renews on an annual subscription, not something a student downloads directly. By July 2022 the company said its Smart Class screens were installed in more than 16,000 schools, of which over 12,000 were private schools, according to chief executive Ritvik Kulshrestha in comments reported by newsdrum.in. Extramarks also runs The Teaching App, aimed at independent tutors and home-tuition educators, and previously sold a consumer subscription app and physical learning kits directly to families — the business it shut down in 2023.
The origin
Atul Kulshrestha is a chartered accountant who spent close to three decades in services and advisory work, including promoting an international BPO company and launching two internet portals before turning to education. His insight, as he has described it, was that Indian classrooms had plenty of curriculum content but no structured way to deliver it digitally at scale — schools needed a system, not just a CD-ROM of lessons. He founded Extramarks in 2007 in Noida on a business-to-business model: sell schools a packaged combination of classroom hardware, digital content and a learning-management system, rather than try to sell directly to parents from day one. That B2B-first sequencing — build distribution through institutions before chasing consumers — shaped every major decision the company made for the next sixteen years, including the one that nearly unmade it.
The struggle years
Extramarks was a profitable company as recently as the year ended March 2020, posting ₹326.8 crore in revenue and a net profit of ₹4.5 crore, figures cited by Inc42 from the company’s financials. The COVID-19 school closures ended that. Revenue fell 29% to ₹230.5 crore in FY21, and the company swung to a net loss of ₹104.8 crore, a reversal Inc42 attributed to schools shutting down and to Extramarks offering free subscriptions on some products to keep users engaged through the disruption. India Ratings and Research downgraded the company’s long-term issuer rating to ‘IND BBB+’ from ‘IND A-‘ with a negative outlook, citing EBITDA losses through FY21 and the first nine months of FY22 — and in May 2023 it went further, moving Extramarks to its non-cooperating category and withdrawing the rating altogether after the company stopped sharing information with the agency.
The damage did not stop at the balance sheet. On 18 April 2023, Extramarks fired more than 300 employees — across sales, customer support, HR, marketing, technology and content teams — as it wound down its consumer-facing B2C business, according to Inc42’s reporting at the time, which quoted the company citing “very high losses” and falling post-pandemic demand for online consumer learning as schools reopened and enrolments in the app dried up. Even that cut was not the end of it: reporting later in 2023 pointed to a second, larger round of roughly 500 layoffs in September as the consumer wind-down continued. And the FY23 numbers, when they surfaced in filings, showed just how bad it had gotten before the cuts bit — revenue recovered to ₹369 crore, but the net loss ballooned to ₹330 crore, according to the RoC-sourced financials reported by Entrackr.
The turning point
The turning point was not a single announcement but the decision, executed across April and September 2023, to exit the direct-to-consumer business entirely and put the company’s full weight back behind schools. The before-and-after in the filings is stark. In FY23 — the last full year carrying the B2C business — Extramarks reported ₹369 crore in revenue against a ₹330 crore net loss and ₹694 crore in total expenses. A year later, in FY24, revenue had fallen to ₹233 crore, but the net loss had collapsed to ₹48 crore, an 85% reduction, as total expenses were cut nearly in half to ₹372 crore, per the RoC filings Entrackr reported in February 2025. Extramarks did not grow its way out of trouble. It cut its way out, accepting a smaller top line in exchange for a business that no longer needed hundreds of crores a year to keep running.
The money behind it
- Reliance Strategic Investments Ltd, a wholly owned Reliance Industries subsidiary, acquired a 38.5% stake in Extramarks through Infotel Broadband Services in a deal announced 8 November 2011; the investment amount was undisclosed, as per Reliance Industries’ own press release and reporting by Moneylife the same month. The deal came as Reliance built out content and services ahead of its broadband push and gave Extramarks a large, deep-pocketed anchor shareholder rather than a typical venture round.
- Nepean Capital, a Mumbai-based investment firm, has been an early backer and holds a board seat through co-founder Anand Trivedi, per Tracxn’s and LinkedIn’s investor and leadership listings.
- Total disclosed funding is limited to the 2011 Reliance transaction; no subsequent primary funding round or valuation was found in the RoC filings, credit-rating notes, or business press reviewed. The company has not disclosed a valuation, and no market-cap figure applies since it remains unlisted.
How it makes money
- Subscription and service revenue — live classes, test series, school licensing deals and corporate training — brought in ₹179 crore in FY24, up 18.5% year-on-year, per the RoC-sourced figures Entrackr reported in February 2025.
- One-time product sales — learning tablets, test-prep kits and printed study material, the tail end of the discontinued consumer business — fell 75.2% to ₹54 crore in FY24 from a year earlier, the same source shows.
- Total FY24 expenses were ₹372 crore, down 46.4% from ₹694 crore in FY23; employee costs fell 39.75% to ₹144 crore and cost of materials fell 78.6% to ₹34.5 crore, tracking the shutdown of the consumer unit and its associated headcount.
- Finance costs moved the other way, rising 71.4% to ₹36 crore in FY24 even as the company shrank, per the same filings — a sign that debt servicing did not shrink in step with the business.
- Despite the cost-cutting, Extramarks was still unprofitable at the operating level in FY24: Entrackr calculated an EBITDA margin of -11.6% and return on capital employed of -24.2% for the year, and put the company’s unit economics at roughly ₹1.60 spent for every rupee earned.
- What people get wrong: Extramarks is often assumed to be a consumer learning app in the mould of its erstwhile B2C rivals. It is now, by its own restructuring, almost entirely a business-to-business software and content licensor to schools — the money comes from annual institutional contracts, not app downloads or family subscriptions.
The numbers
Figures below are as reported for each fiscal year in the sources cited; FY22 figures were not available in the filings or reporting reviewed this session and have been omitted rather than estimated.
| ₹ crore | FY20 | FY21 | FY23 | FY24 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | 326.8 | 230.5 | 369 | 233 |
| Net profit/(loss) | 4.5 | (104.8) | (330) | (48) |
FY20 and FY21 figures are as reported by Inc42, drawing on the company’s financial statements; FY23 and FY24 figures are as per RoC-sourced consolidated financials reported by Entrackr in February 2025.
Where the money comes from
- Subscription and services: ₹179 crore, roughly 77% of FY24 revenue — live classes, test series, school licensing and corporate training (Entrackr, RoC filings, February 2025).
- One-time product sales: ₹54 crore, roughly 23% of FY24 revenue — tablets, test-prep kits and study material, the residual tail of the discontinued consumer business (same source).
- The surprise: a business the company says it exited in 2023 still generated close to a quarter of FY24 revenue. Winding down a consumer product line took longer, in revenue terms, than the layoff headlines suggested.
- Geographically, the disclosed financial figures are for the India entity; Extramarks separately states it serves schools and users outside India, including the Middle East, but no country-wise revenue split was found in the filings or press reviewed, so no figure is given here.
The risks
- School-cycle concentration: Extramarks’ core revenue depends on schools renewing annual licensing and hardware contracts. When schools shut during the pandemic, revenue fell 29% in a single year (FY21) and the company swung to a ₹104.8 crore loss — a demonstrated sensitivity to disruptions in the school calendar, per Inc42’s reporting on the period.
- Rising finance costs against a shrinking base: finance costs grew 71.4% to ₹36 crore in FY24 even as revenue fell 36.9%, per Entrackr’s RoC-sourced figures — debt servicing is moving in the opposite direction from the business it is meant to support.
- Reduced external visibility: India Ratings downgraded Extramarks’ issuer rating in the FY21-FY22 period citing EBITDA losses, then moved the company to its non-cooperating category and withdrew the rating entirely in May 2023 after it stopped providing information — leaving no independent, ongoing credit assessment of the company since.
The takeaway
Extramarks’ most recent chapter argues against a habit most founders and most coverage of startups fall into: treating revenue growth as a proxy for company health. For years Extramarks chased scale on both sides of its business, in schools and with consumers directly, and the consumer side dragged the whole company into a ₹330 crore annual loss. The fix was not a bigger idea. It was subtraction — cutting a unit that could not pay for itself, even though it meant reporting a smaller number the following year. The lesson travels beyond edtech: a shrinking top line can be the more disciplined outcome, if what is being cut was never generating a return in the first place, and if the business left standing can actually fund itself.
Frequently asked questions
What does Extramarks Education do?
Extramarks sells digital-classroom software, learning-management systems and licensed content to K-12 schools on an annual subscription basis, alongside test-preparation and tuition apps; it discontinued its direct-to-consumer subscription app and product business in 2023.
Who owns Extramarks?
Reliance Strategic Investments Ltd, a Reliance Industries subsidiary, has held roughly 38.5% of Extramarks since a November 2011 deal done through Infotel Broadband Services. Founder Atul Kulshrestha remains Chairman and Managing Director, and Nepean Capital holds a board seat as an early investor.
Is Extramarks profitable?
No. Extramarks reported a net loss of ₹48 crore in FY24 (year ended March 2024), though that was an 85% improvement on its ₹330 crore loss in FY23, according to RoC-sourced financials reported by Entrackr in February 2025. It was last profitable in FY20, with a ₹4.5 crore net profit, per Inc42.
Why did Extramarks shut down its B2C business?
The company cited very high losses and cash burn in its consumer-facing vertical, compounded by falling demand for online learning as schools reopened after the pandemic; it laid off more than 300 employees in April 2023 and wound the business down further later that year, according to Inc42’s reporting.
Is Extramarks a unicorn or does it have a disclosed valuation?
No. Extramarks has not disclosed a valuation, and none was found in the RoC filings, credit-rating notes or business press reviewed as of September 2026. Its only disclosed funding event is the 2011 Reliance stake purchase, for an undisclosed amount.
Sources
Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).
- Entrackr, “Extramarks losses drop by 85% to Rs 48 Cr in FY24, revenue slips 37%” — February 2025
- Inc42, “Exclusive: Reliance-Backed Edtech Startup Extramarks Fires Over 300 Employees, To Shut B2C Biz” — April 2023
- Reliance Industries Limited, press release “Infotel Broadband Acquires Stake in Extramarks Education” — 8 November 2011
- Moneylife, “Infotel Broadband acquires 38.5% stake in Extramarks Education” — November 2011
- newsdrum.in, “Extramarks aims to double revenue to Rs 1,000 cr this fiscal” — 17 July 2022
- India Ratings and Research, press release on Extramarks Education India Private Limited rating action — accessed September 2026
- Tracxn and LinkedIn, Extramarks and Nepean Capital company/investor profiles — accessed September 2026
Found an error? Write to us and we’ll correct it in the open, dated, on the piece.