Westbridge-backed LEAD’s losses down 19%, revenue more than doubles in FY23

Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah, co-founders and CEOs of LEAD

Westbridge-backed school edtech unicorn LEAD's losses narrowed down in FY23 (2022-23) as the company’s revenue doubled during the period, the company said in a statement on September 11.

LEAD reported a net loss of Rs 321.9 crore against Rs 395.3 crore in FY22 (2021-22), according to its filings with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) accessed by Moneycontrol. The company’s revenue more than doubled to Rs 273 crore in FY23 from about Rs 133 crore in the previous year, the filings showed.

The school edtech unicorn has filed its FY23 reports only nine months after it reported its financials for the last fiscal in January.

The company's total expenses, however, also grew to Rs 614.2 crore during the year from Rs 521.6 crore in the previous fiscal. The company’s co-founder and CEO Sumeet Mehta earlier told Moneycontrol that LEAD's revenue has doubled from about Rs 133 crore a year ago, effectively crossing Rs 250 crore in FY23.

Founded by Mehta and Smita Deorah in 2012, LEAD works with more than 9,000 schools in towns and cities, including partner schools of its latest acquisition Pearson’s K-12 India business to make classroom learning technology-enabled.

This involves tracking teacher and student progress, managing school operations on the cloud, and providing digital resources to make learning more engaging. Other prominent backers of the company include GSV Ventures and Elevar Equity.

Over the past year, LEAD conducted two rounds of layoffs, letting go of nearly 200 employees, as previously reported by Moneycontrol.

The LEAD chief said in an earlier interaction that the company had to take these steps to adjust cash flows as many schools it catered to suffered with stressed balance sheets post-pandemic.