Following a long list of acquisitions funded by high-cost private credit to scale the business, the Chennai-based education company Veranda Learning Solutions reported its first full-year net profit in FY26. In an interview, Suresh S Kalpathi, executive director and chairman, said the offshoring wave is driving demand for financial professionals in India. He discussed the rationale for the demerger of the company’s fast-growing commerce vertical, its strategy to profitably scale other verticals and how AI is rewriting the economics of the education sector. Edited excerpts:Why did you demerge the commerce vertical into a separate entity?We initially completed our acquisition phase to stitch together an education fabric spanning from preschool to postdoctoral programmes. After completing the last acquisition around Feb last year, we organized companies into four pillars: academic education (K-12 schools), Veranda Race for govt exams preparation, commerce and upskilling, which includes degrees through global partners. We had taken on expensive private credit as a bridge but closed off a substantial part of the high cost debt in July through qualified institutional placement. However, people struggled to build a financial model to understand our diverse businesses, which resulted in subpar market multiples. Demerging the commerce vertical gives it focus. It will operate as an independent listed company, which is expected to unlock value for our shareholders.What are the growth drivers?Offshore work is a massive catalyst for financial services professionals. Because of cost arbitrage and talent availability, we are now seeing an unprecedented influx of offshore financial and accounting work. GCCs are establishing themselves here, setting up operations that require tens of thousands of employees. This is driving demand for ACCA, CMA, CFA, and CPA professionals, which our commerce vertical is primed to serve. India’s economic growth and regulatory changes, including mandatory secretaries for companies exceeding a paid-up capital of `10 crore, are also key factors. Another area of growth is the B Com college space in tier-2 and tier-3 towns. Currently, many of these regional arts and science colleges lack specialised tutors. We bring our top-tier CA faculty to teach foundational accounting in these classrooms. We currently manage 17 colleges and are adding more this year. We expect the business to grow at least `500 crore in the next few years, with a long-term aspiration to achieve `1,000 crore revenue by FY30.What are drivers, growth expectations for other verticals, particularly govt test prep?Our govt test prep vertical, Veranda Race, is the market leader in TN. We are replicating this success in Kerala and plan to expand into Karnataka through local associations. The aspiration for govt jobs remains high. We project this vertical alone will cross `100 crore in profit within the next four years, becoming a zero-debt, independent growth engine.What are your plans and expectations?The ultimate goal for each of our four pillars is to achieve a minimum of `100 crore in profit independently. Once a business hits that profitability milestone debt-free, it can self-finance its own growth. By operating as a national brand rather than a localised centre, the business benefits from economies of scale. This allows us to reuse educational content across multiple locations and maximise the impact of common branding.Are you offering any AI programs for upskilling?Learning IT skills such as full-stack development meant a student was set for life. It used to be Edureka’s hottest-selling IT programme, but sales have been sliding over the last two years. When AI first emerged, people rushed to learn prompt engineering, but it went out soon. AI-assisted coding is changing the calculus as human roles shift from coding to deciding what to develop. Humans must provide the design, concepts, and specifications based on their experience and then utilize AI as an assistant to generate the final code. I am concerned that as people delegate cognitive and creative tasks to AI, we risk losing those fundamental human abilities.How is AI impacting business?We are using AI to drive efficiencies. Our content development costs have dropped by 90%. We are generating books and mock tests trained on our proprietary bank of 100,000 validated questions and introducing various safeguards, including human supervision to avoid hallucinations and issues. We plan to expand AI sales agents, and they will play a key role.
