In October 2025, the filing everyone read said Skillmatics had lost ₹2.5 crore on ₹103 crore of revenue. Eleven months later, the consolidated accounts for the same company showed a ₹17.57 crore profit on ₹659 crore (about $69 million) of revenue in FY26. Both statements are true. The first describes Grasper Global Private Limited, the Mumbai entity that owns the brand. The second adds Grasper Global Inc, the US subsidiary through which most of the toys are actually sold. Roughly 87% of Skillmatics’ operating revenue is earned outside India, as per the consolidated statements filed with the Registrar of Companies and reported by Entrackr in September 2026.
That gap is the whole story. Skillmatics is one of the few Indian consumer brands whose home market is not India. Founded by two ex-consultants with ₹20 lakh, it sells card games and reusable activity mats to American parents on Amazon, at Walmart and at Target, and is now in talks to raise ₹600–700 crore at a valuation of ₹3,800–4,000 crore, according to Moneycontrol. This piece walks through how a business that looked like a small, loss-making Indian toy company on paper turned out to be a profitable ₹659 crore exporter, and what the filings say about the margin it is left with.
Quick facts
| Company | Skillmatics, operated by Grasper Global Private Limited (CIN U74999MH2016PTC285055), Prabhadevi, Mumbai; US subsidiary Grasper Global Inc |
| Founded | Incorporated 23 August 2016; brand launched 2017 |
| Founders | Dhvanil Sheth (CEO, ex-Boston Consulting Group, chartered accountant) and Devanshi Kejriwal (chief product officer) |
| Businesses | Educational games and toys for ages 1–12 (Guess in 10, Found It, Foil Fun, Write & Wipe activity mats); newer lines Nintara Baby (organic-cotton baby care) and adult games |
| FY26 revenue | ₹659 crore operating revenue, up 34.5% on FY25 (consolidated RoC filing, via Entrackr) |
| FY26 profit | ₹17.57 crore net profit, up 4.2%; EBITDA margin about 1.8% |
| Listed | Private. CEO told Mint in November 2024 that an India listing was likely within two to three years |
| Last valuation | ₹3,800–4,000 crore ($400–420 million) in a round under negotiation, as reported by Moneycontrol on 21 September 2026; previous round in 2022 at a reported $128 million |
| Key shareholders | Founders about 43–44%; Peak XV Partners (via Surge and its venture fund), Sofina, Jalaj Dani Family Office; ESOP pool about 4% (Tracxn cap table, September 2026; Entrackr, October 2025) |
What they do
Skillmatics designs and sells screen-free educational games and learning products for children aged one to twelve, and increasingly for older players. The catalogue runs to roughly 200 products as of March 2024 (The Hindu), across three categories the company defined in 2021: learning resources such as reusable write-and-wipe mats, educational games such as the Guess in 10 trivia card game, and STEM and craft kits such as Foil Fun. Prices in India sat between ₹299 and ₹999 at the time of the Series A (Inc42, June 2021). The buyers are parents, mostly in the United States, followed by the United Kingdom and India, purchasing through Amazon, the company’s own websites, and offline retailers including Walmart, Target and Hamleys. Products are manufactured in India, largely in Daman and Maharashtra, through a network of contract factories.
The origin
Dhvanil Sheth was a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group in 2015, working with consumer goods companies and retailers in North America on what an online-first world would do to their categories. Two observations stuck, as he later told Indian Retailer. Parents were moving their children’s shopping online faster than most categories, and were leaning on other parents’ reviews to decide. And the cost of building a global consumer brand was collapsing, because a marketplace listing could reach an American household without a distributor, a sales force or a shelf. The thesis he wrote down, as recounted in a September 2020 interview with the Amplify Tech newsletter, was blunt: India cost, US price, applied to physical consumer goods rather than software services.
He founded Grasper Global Private Limited in Mumbai on 23 August 2016 with Devanshi Kejriwal, a family friend; the two grew up, in the company’s telling, on competitive family game nights. The starting capital was ₹20 lakh (YourStory, May 2022). The first products, launched in 2017, targeted children aged three to six with purely physical, non-plastic learning aids. From the outset the company hired product teams that paired a designer or engineer with an educationalist, and later added full-time teachers and child psychologists, so that each game carried a defined learning outcome rather than just a licence or a character.
The struggle years
The Indian market did not reward the idea quickly. The Mumbai entity’s own filings show operating revenue of about ₹5 crore in FY19 and ₹14.82 crore in FY20, as reported by TechPluto from the Series A paperwork in June 2021. That is three years after incorporation, with a working product line, and still a business smaller than a single large toy store. Sheth has since said the company was “primarily based out of India and was exploring the US as a potential market in 2019” (YourStory, May 2022). In a May 2023 interview with the D2C Global community he dated the first US listings to 2018, and described a deliberate decision to stay focused on that one market for three years before touching any other.
The US entry carried its own mistake, which the founder has acknowledged in the same 2023 interview: the company initially went offline through distribution partners, gave away margin and control, and later rebuilt the channel with its own direct sales teams in major markets. The retail footprint claims in the record reflect that rebuild. The company spoke of 15,000 stores worldwide in June 2021 (VCCircle), 20,000 US outlets in November 2024 (Mint) and 30,000-plus locations on its website in 2026, while Entrackr’s reading of the FY26 filing puts it at “over 3,000 retail stores internationally”. Take the higher numbers as company-stated and the filing as the conservative floor.
The most recent setback is the one that generated the headline in the hook. For FY25, the standalone Indian entity reported a net loss of ₹2.5 crore against a ₹40 lakh profit in FY24, with expenses up 39% to ₹114 crore, advertising doubling to ₹18 crore, and, notably, international product sales booked through India falling 16% to ₹36 crore even as India sales rose 87% to ₹58 crore (Entrackr, October 2025). Read alone, it looked like an exporter losing its export business. Read against the consolidated numbers published a year later, it was the Indian arm carrying marketing and payroll for a group whose sales sat in a US subsidiary. The consolidated FY25 profit was ₹16.86 crore.
The turning point
The turn came in April 2019, when Skillmatics was picked for the first cohort of Sequoia Capital India’s Surge accelerator, alongside Khatabook, Doubtnut and ShopUp. Every company in that batch received a $1.5 million cheque (TechCrunch, 19 April 2019); YourStory later put the round at $1.8 million including angels. The money mattered less than the decision it funded: to stop treating the US as an experiment and make it the core market, with an Amazon-first launch, US-experienced managers, and paper-based products that fit the “climate pledge friendly” tags American parents were starting to filter by.
The numbers on either side are stark. Before: about ₹5 crore of revenue in FY19 from the Indian entity. After: the company told Amplify Tech in September 2020 that it expected roughly $7 million of revenue that calendar year, five times 2019; by June 2021 it told VCCircle it had grown five-fold year on year since the pandemic began and sold over 3 million products; and by May 2022 it put revenue at about ₹150 crore for 2021 against ₹50 crore in 2020, with the US as its core market and India contributing 15% (YourStory). The pandemic did the rest of the work: school closures pushed parents to buy screen-free learning products online, precisely the channel and category Skillmatics had already bet on. By calendar 2023 revenue was ₹290 crore, and the CEO told Mint in November 2024 that the company was on course for about ₹500 crore in calendar 2024. The consolidated RoC figure for FY25 (April 2024 to March 2025) came in at ₹490 crore.
The money behind it
Skillmatics is unusually lightly funded for its revenue. The public record supports the following rounds, with the total variously put at $23–24 million (YourStory 2022, Entrackr 2025) or about $28 million (Entrackr 2026):
- Seed, April 2019: $1.5 million from Sequoia Capital India’s Surge programme, first cohort; about $1.8 million including angels (TechCrunch; YourStory). Surge’s own partner, Harshjit Sethi, later cited the “rapid and iterative product development engine” and high US retailer ratings as the reasons for following on.
- Pre-Series A, 2020: about ₹22 crore, of which Sequoia India put in roughly ₹21 crore, as per RoC filings reported by TechPluto in June 2021.
- Series A, announced 22 June 2021: $6 million (about ₹44 crore) led by Sequoia Capital India with Jalaj Dani Family Office and existing angels (VCCircle). Filings show the tranche registered in June 2021 as ₹22.47 crore, with Smiti Holding and Trading Company, the Dani family vehicle, contributing ₹15 crore (TechPluto). Total raised after this round: $8 million.
- Series B, 10 May 2022: $16 million led by Sofina, the Belgium-based investment company, with Sequoia Capital India and Jalaj Dani Family Office participating (Entrepreneur India). Tracxn records the post-money at about ₹937 crore; Moneycontrol and Entrepreneur India report it as $128 million. Sofina brought a patient, family-controlled balance sheet used to holding consumer brands for decades, which fits a company that then went four years without a primary raise.
- Under negotiation, September 2026: ₹600–700 crore ($60–75 million) from Premji Invest, ChrysCapital and A91 Partners at ₹3,800–4,000 crore ($400–420 million), of which only ₹175–200 crore is primary capital; the remaining ₹400–500 crore is secondary, with Peak XV selling roughly $40 million of stock (Moneycontrol, 21 September 2026; terms not final).
What each backer changed: Surge gave the company permission and cash to pivot to the US at a moment when Indian VCs were funding India-facing D2C. Peak XV (the renamed Sequoia Capital India) funded the Series A that built the omnichannel US retail push into Walmart and Target. Sofina’s cheque paid for the product-line expansion from a handful of hits to some 200 SKUs. The 2026 round, if it closes, is less about growth capital than about giving a seven-year-old fund position an exit before an IPO the CEO has said is two to three years out.
How it makes money
The model is a vertically integrated, digital-first consumer brand. Money comes in from product sales; costs go out to Indian contract manufacturers, marketplaces, freight and, above all, marketing.
- Revenue streams: product sales made up 89% of the Indian entity’s operating revenue in FY25 (Entrackr, October 2025). Channels, per the company in November 2024, split roughly 70% online and 30% offline, with Amazon the single largest platform (Entrepreneur India). Online includes Amazon and Walmart.com in the US, and Amazon, Flipkart, FirstCry and the quick-commerce apps in India; offline includes Walmart, Target and Hamleys.
- Cost of goods: about ₹130 crore in FY26 on ₹659 crore of revenue, or roughly a fifth (Entrackr, September 2026). Products are paper- and board-based, made across about 25 Indian factories (Inc42, June 2021), which is what lets a card game retail at US prices with Indian input costs.
- Marketing: about ₹169 crore in FY26, 26% of total expenditure and larger than the cost of making the toys (Entrackr). This is the real cost of being an Amazon brand: sponsored placements, listing fees and performance advertising to keep a product on page one.
- Product engine: the company says it takes 2.5 months from idea to shelf, about five times faster than incumbents, and planned over 70 launches in 2024 alone (Indian Retailer; Entrepreneur India). Fast launches feed the marketplace algorithm with newness and let the company kill weak SKUs quickly.
- Where the margin sits: gross margin is wide; the money leaks below it. In FY26 the group spent 99 paise to earn each rupee of operating revenue, leaving an EBITDA margin of about 1.8% and a return on capital employed of about 5.1% (Entrackr). Reports around the 2026 fundraise cite margins of 5–7%; the audited FY26 net margin was 2.7%.
- The part people get wrong: Skillmatics is not “profitable in India and struggling abroad”, nor the reverse. The Indian entity showed a loss in FY25 because it houses the design team, much of the payroll and the marketing spend, while the sales that pay for them are booked in the US subsidiary. Only the consolidated statements describe the business.
The numbers
Because the company files both standalone Indian and consolidated group accounts, and quoted calendar-year figures in interviews before that, the series below labels each row. All figures in ₹ crore.
| Period | Basis | Revenue | Profit / (loss) | Source |
| FY20 | Standalone (Indian entity) | 14.82 | n/a | TechPluto, June 2021 |
| 2021 (calendar) | Company-stated, global | ~150 | n/a | YourStory, May 2022 |
| 2023 (calendar) | Company-stated, global | 290 | “profitable” | Mint, November 2024 |
| FY24 | Standalone | 74 operating | 0.4 | Entrackr, October 2025 |
| FY24 | Company-stated, global | 338 | n/a | Entrepreneur India, November 2024 |
| FY25 | Standalone | 103 operating | (2.5) | Entrackr, October 2025 |
| FY25 | Consolidated (RoC) | 490 operating | 16.86 | Entrackr, September 2026 |
| FY26 | Consolidated (RoC) | 659 operating | 17.57 | Entrackr, September 2026 |
- FY26 total revenue was about ₹667 crore including ₹7.52 crore of other income; total expenditure rose 36.1% to ₹652 crore, faster than revenue’s 34.5%.
- Balance sheet at 31 March 2026: current assets of about ₹222 crore, including ₹75.5 crore in cash and bank balances (consolidated). The standalone entity held ₹45 crore of cash a year earlier.
- Standalone FY25 cost lines: materials ₹50 crore (44% of spend), employee benefits ₹24 crore (up 41%), advertising ₹18 crore (doubled), packing, storage and transport ₹8 crore, product listing fees ₹3 crore.
- Headcount: 278 employees as of May 2026, up 13% year on year (Tracxn); the company itself cited 300-plus staff across Mumbai, Palo Alto, Dallas and Manchester in November 2024.
Where the money comes from
- Geography (consolidated FY26): about 87% of operating revenue from outside India, primarily through the US subsidiary Grasper Global Inc, with North America the key market (Entrackr, September 2026). The CEO told Mint in November 2024 that more than 75% of revenue came from the US and 12–13% from India; Entrepreneur India in September 2026 put the US share at about 85%.
- India: growing at about 155% a year as of late 2024, with a company target of 30% of revenue within five years (Mint). Present in 3,000-plus Indian stores including Hamleys as far back as 2021 (Inc42).
- Other markets: UK is the third market; sales in 25-plus countries; stated expansion targets include UAE, Germany and Australia (Entrepreneur India, November 2024).
- Channel: roughly 70% online, 30% offline (company, November 2024). Offline was only built out seriously in the 18–24 months before that interview.
- Product: Guess in 10 alone has sold over 3 million copies (Entrepreneur India, November 2024); Foil Fun was a best-seller in Amazon US’s toys and games category (Indian Retailer, July 2024); the company claims 20 million-plus products sold in total (website, 2026). A restaurant partnership first disclosed in May 2022 put Guess in 10 sample packs into 18 million Chick-fil-A kids’ meals in the US (YourStory; Indian Retailer, July 2024), the largest single distribution event in the brand’s history.
- The surprise: the Indian entity’s own FY25 books show India as the majority of its sales (62%), the exact inverse of the group picture. Anyone benchmarking Skillmatics against Indian D2C peers on standalone data is looking at the wrong company.
The risks
- Marketing is eating the margin. FY26 marketing of ₹169 crore exceeded the ₹130 crore cost of goods, and profit grew 4.2% on 34.5% revenue growth (Entrackr). The mechanism is structural: on Amazon, the cost of staying visible rises with competition, and Skillmatics faces both Hasbro-scale incumbents and a wave of Chinese and Indian sellers copying its formats. A brand that spends 99 paise to earn a rupee has almost no buffer if advertising rates climb or Amazon changes fee structures. The 2026 round’s small primary component (₹175–200 crore) suggests investors see the business as self-funding, which is only true while that last paisa holds.
- Single-market, single-platform concentration. With 75–87% of revenue from the US and Amazon the largest single platform, Skillmatics is exposed to US consumer demand, dollar-rupee moves on a rupee cost base, US import tariff policy on Indian-made goods, and any change in Amazon’s treatment of third-party brands. The 16% drop in international sales booked through the Indian entity in FY25, whatever its accounting cause, shows how sharply a channel line can move. Diversification into the UK, Europe and India is under way but India was still 12–13% in late 2024.
- Category and adjacency risk. Card games and craft kits have low technical barriers; the moat is brand, review count and launch cadence. The company is now stretching that engine into adult games (Gouda Games) and baby care (Nintara Baby), categories with different buyers and different competitors. Founders’ capital efficiency has been a strength, but the FY25 standalone loss shows what happens when new spend lands before the sales that justify it.
- Exit-driven valuation. The reported ₹3,800–4,000 crore price is roughly 5.8–6.1 times FY26 revenue and 216–228 times FY26 net profit, set in a round that is mostly secondary. That is a price for growth and an IPO, not for current earnings; a listing in a weaker market would test it.
The takeaway
The transferable lesson is about choosing your market before your product finds it for you. Skillmatics spent three years and a ₹5 crore revenue line proving that India in 2018 would not pay for premium, paper-based educational games at scale. The founders did not lower the price or change the product; they changed the customer, took the same catalogue to the one market that already valued it, and stayed there long enough to become the single-largest Indian toy seller in the US by the company’s own account. Indian input costs, US prices and a marketplace that let a Mumbai startup reach an American living room did the rest. The cost of that choice is visible too: a business whose home filings understate it, whose profits are thin because it rents its shelf space from Amazon by the click, and whose next chapter depends on convincing Indian public investors to value a company most of them have never seen on a shelf.
Frequently asked questions
Who owns Skillmatics and where is it registered?
Skillmatics is a brand of Grasper Global Private Limited, incorporated in Mumbai on 23 August 2016 (CIN U74999MH2016PTC285055). US sales run through a subsidiary, Grasper Global Inc. Founders Dhvanil Sheth and Devanshi Kejriwal hold about 43–44%, with Peak XV Partners, Sofina and the Jalaj Dani Family Office among the investors, per Tracxn and Entrackr.
What was Skillmatics’ revenue and profit in FY26?
Consolidated operating revenue was ₹659 crore, up 34.5% from ₹490 crore in FY25, and net profit was ₹17.57 crore, up 4.2% from ₹16.86 crore, according to RoC filings reported by Entrackr in September 2026.
Why did Skillmatics report both a loss and a profit for FY25?
The ₹2.5 crore loss reported in October 2025 was for the standalone Indian entity, which carries much of the payroll and marketing. The consolidated group, including the US subsidiary where most sales are booked, earned ₹16.86 crore in the same year.
How much has Skillmatics raised and at what valuation?
About $24–28 million across a $1.5 million Surge seed in 2019, a $6 million Series A in 2021 and a $16 million Sofina-led Series B in 2022 at a reported $128 million. In September 2026 Moneycontrol reported talks for ₹600–700 crore, mostly secondary, at ₹3,800–4,000 crore ($400–420 million).
Is Skillmatics planning an IPO?
CEO Dhvanil Sheth told Mint in November 2024 that an India listing was likely within two to three years and that the company did not need capital to grow. No draft prospectus had been filed as of September 2026.
Sources
Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).
- Entrackr, “Skillmatics posts Rs 659 Cr revenue in FY26, profit rises marginally”, September 2026
- Entrackr, “Skillmatics slips into losses in FY25; revenue up by 39%”, October 2025
- Moneycontrol, “Skillmatics in talks to raise around $75 million from Premji Invest, ChrysCapital and A91 Partners”, September 2026
- Entrepreneur India, “Skillmatics in Talks to Raise USD 75 Mn”, September 2026
- Mint, “Skillmatics likely to go for India listing in 2-3 years: CEO Dhvanil Sheth”, November 2024
- Entrepreneur India, “Skillmatics: Creating Screen-Free, Sustainable Learning Experiences”, November 2024
- The Hindu, “Toy start-up Skillmatics eyes ₹500 crore revenue”, March 2024
- Indian Retailer, “How Skillmatics Became a Leader in Educational Games Across 20+ Countries”, July 2024
- YourStory, “With 200 pc growth in FY21, Sequoia-backed educational gaming startup Skillmatics eyes international expansion”, May 2022
- Entrepreneur India, “Skillmatics Raises $16 Million In Series B Funding”, May 2022
- VCCircle, “Sequoia Capital leads Series A funding in toy maker Skillmatics”, June 2021
- Inc42, “D2C Educational Toys Maker Skillmatics Bags $6 Mn Series A Funding”, June 2021
- TechPluto, “Sequoia backed Skillmatics raises INR 22.47 Cr in Series A round”, June 2021
- TechCrunch, “Sequoia reveals first cohort for its Surge accelerator program”, April 2019
- Amplify Tech (Substack), interview with Dhvanil Sheth, September 2020
- D2C Global on LinkedIn, “How Skillmatics built a >400Cr Global Consumer Brand in 5 years”, May 2023
- Forbes, 30 Under 30 Asia 2020 profile of Dhvanil Sheth
- Inc42 company financials page for Skillmatics (standalone FY24–FY25), accessed September 2026
- Tracxn, Grasper Global Private Limited legal-entity profile and Skillmatics shareholding page, accessed September 2026
- Nintara Baby and Skillmatics company websites (about pages), accessed September 2026
- Trading Economics, USD/INR rate, 18 September 2026
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