In the interaction, ET Now opened by noting the flurry of developments in the past quarter – from an acquisition to new expansion plans – and asked how the second half of the fiscal was shaping up.Maheshwari pointed to a strong performance so far. “So overall, the first half looks very solid for us in terms of enrollment growth, in terms of revenue growth, like total revenue is up 29% in the first half and in the second quarter PAT is up 70%,” he said, adding that the cyclical nature of the business consistently makes the third quarter the strongest. According to him, EBITDA should increase to around 20% in the third quarter, compared to 15% in the second quarter. He expects the full-year picture to reflect “solid growth in sales and significant growth in profits.”
FY27: a year of meaningful gains
When asked about the journey to achieve a PAT positive annual result in FY27, Maheshwari underlined that the company is not aiming for a marginal break-even, but meaningful expansion in profitability. “That will be a substantial gain for FY27,” he said, noting that planning cycles start early due to the concentration of withdrawals in the first two quarters of each year.
He also highlighted an important milestone on the horizon: “Next year will be a unique year in which our offline, the entire offline business, will also become EBITDA positive.” Achieving profitability in both online and offline streams marks a change in strategy, especially after years of aggressive offline expansion.ARPU trends and business mixET Now also examined the difference in online and offline ARPUs, noting the decline in offline averages. Maheshwari attributed this to the introduction of short offline courses. “ARPU of offline is 4% lower as we have introduced many short-term courses in our offline learning segment,” he said. However, he emphasized that offline registrations have increased by 30% and sales have increased by 22%, making the trend “very, very healthy”.
On the online side, ARPUs grew 8% year-on-year. Maheshwari reiterated the company’s stand to keep high-quality education affordable: “We do not want to drastically increase our online ACPU as we stand for the highest quality education, which should be accessible to every student of India.” Doubling batch prices could accelerate EBITDA growth, he conceded, but would go against the company’s mission to serve Tier III and Tier IV students.
AI is at the core of the future strategy
AI has quietly become the company’s biggest operating lever. Maheshwari explained that the organization has invested heavily in AI since FY23 and now employs over 100 people in that industry alone. “AI Guru, AI Grader and AI Sahayak are a few AI products that already exist,” he said, adding that AI has solved “more than 10 crore doubts” and checked more than seven lakh handwritten answer sheets this year.
The company trains its own AI models using its vast student data pool, which it says provides a major benefit. He said engagement levels have increased significantly.
Reduce costs through automation
When asked how AI helps reduce costs, Maheshwari gave a clear example: “The cost of solving a doubt by AI is 5% to 7% of the cost of solving a doubt by a human.” With an accuracy of almost 88%, he expects that 80% of doubts will be handled by AI in the future, allowing subject experts to be shifted to offline centers. AI-generated test papers and automated evaluation of answer sheets, he said, now match human-level quality.
Turnover guidance for the second half of the year and beyond
The company has already reported a turnover of around ₹1,900 crore for the first half of FY26. When asked for guidance, Maheshwari said the second half would largely remain in line with the first. On profitability, he added: “As I said, the third quarter would be the strongest quarter, and overall you will see EBITDA from last year to this year will be almost more than four times.”
As offline profitability approaches, AI-powered cost efficiencies increase, and enrollment remains steady, the company appears poised for a pivotal FY27 – a year in which it hopes will mark a full transition to profitable, scalable growth.
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