Valued around $740M after the edtech downturn; dropped from unicorn lists in January 2024
The rise & fall
5 moments · 2012–2024
The key moments, with employee sentiment along the way.
2012
🌱
2012
Founded to fix affordable private schools
Sumeet Mehta and Smita Deorah build an integrated curriculum-plus-software system for India's low- and mid-fee K-12 schools.
TechCrunch
Jan 2022
📈
Jan 2022
The peak: edtech's $1.1B January$1.1B
A Series E led by WestBridge Capital and GSV Ventures makes LEAD a unicorn at the very top of the edtech boom.
TechCrunch
2022–23
2022–23
The edtech winter arrives
Pandemic-era enthusiasm fades and funding dries up across Indian edtech.
TechCrunch
2022–23
💬
From the inside · Glassdoor reviews, 2022–23
Glassdoor reviews from the downturn described repeated layoff rounds and pervasive job insecurity — a pattern many employees summed up as hire-and-fire, with some saying redundancies were presented as performance issues rather than cost-cutting.
Jan 2024
💔
Jan 2024
Slips out of the club$740M
Marked to roughly $740M and dropped from the unicorn lists — though it has since narrowed losses and steadied its core schools business.
TechCrunch
💬 entries paraphrase anonymous, unverified reviews posted publicly on Glassdoor ↗; dated facts carry their source.
How it happened
LEAD (formerly LEAD School) is an Indian edtech company that sells an integrated curriculum, teaching system and software to low- and mid-fee private K-12 schools. Backed by WestBridge Capital and GSV Ventures, it hit a $1.1B unicorn valuation in January 2022.
As pandemic-era edtech enthusiasm faded and funding dried up, its valuation slipped to roughly $740M and it left the unicorn lists in early 2024, though it has since narrowed losses and steadied its core schools business.
Source: TechCrunch / OfficeChai / ION Analytics (school-focused edtech selling an integrated curriculum-and-software system to K-12 schools; reached a $1.1B unicorn valuation in a Jan 2022 Series E led by WestBridge Capital and GSV Ventures; the edtech correction cut its valuation to about $740M, and it was removed from unicorn lists in January 2024)
