How Instrucko is building a sustainable edtech business, with praise from Kareena Kapoor Khan

Today, Indian parents are increasingly seeking personalised, teacher-led education for their children that builds confidence, communication skills, and global exposure; not just academic scores. This shift has opened up space for platforms like Gurugram-based Instrucko, which has grown steadily by focusing on meaningful learning beyond textbooks.

Founded by Devvaki Aggarwal in late 2020, Instrucko expanded from a small online English language learning platform into a global learning ecosystem. Today, it offers languages, communication, and life skills programmes, along with teacher training across private and government schools in India.

The startup has also received strong validation from celebrity parents, including Kareena Kapoor Khan, Genelia Deshmukh, and Riddhima Kapoor Sahni, who have publicly spoken about Instrucko’s immersive and confidence-building approach, with several sharing video testimonials.

“A child is more than a number. I wanted something that goes beyond the rat race of toppers and percentages,” says Aggarwal, CEO of Instrucko.

Building Instrucko during the pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic changed the world in many ways, including speeding up the shift to online learning, with parents becoming more accepting of online classes that offered more than rote learning.

Instrucko began rolling out its programmes in late 2020, starting with English and later expanding into languages, mathematics, public speaking, creative writing, entrepreneurship, and financial literacy.

The idea was simple: teach children through stories and real-life situations while building emotional intelligence. “We teach empathy, patience, and values through stories. These are the skills that truly matter,” Aggarwal says.

Instrucko had completed 300,000 minutes of lessons and had about 2,000 paying users within roughly six months of operation.

A hybrid model: B2C scale + rising B2B impact

The edtech startup now operates on a hybrid model, offering both B2C and B2B services.

On the B2C side, it provides personalised online classes for children aged 3 to 15, offering one-on-one sessions and small groups of up to six students.

While all teaching remains completely human-led, the platform uses AI only to match the right teacher with each child and to suggest what the student needs to learn next. “AI cannot teach a five-year-old,” Aggarwal says.

Instrucko now has more than 8,000 active students, an 85% trial-to-conversion rate from the last two years. That’s a 15% lead-to-customer conversion rate, much higher than industry norms. It also reflects a 4X increase in its active learner base since its inception.

On the B2B vertical, schools—including The Scindia School, Mayo College Ajmer, Sanskar School, Literacy India, and Mobius Foundation—use Instrucko’s content to teach public speaking, creative writing, emotional intelligence, and life skills.

Recently, it partnered with GD Somani Memorial School in Mumbai, Mayoor Chopasani School in Jodhpur, and Sri Barathi Vidyala in Tamil Nadu.

The startup has also begun licensing its content internationally, with its first partnership in Moscow, Russia.

Teacher-first, quality-first

Instrucko has a core team of around 10 members and a global network of 500 trained teachers. Every teacher undergoes a five-step selection and in-house training process before entering the classroom.

Parents can choose teachers from India or abroad, depending on preference and cost. “We don’t hire anyone who’s just working from home to teach online. They must be trained, certified, and aligned with our ethos,” Aggarwal says.

Since 2021, through NGOs such as Literacy India and Mobius Foundation, the startup has been training teachers across government schools in areas such as competency-based education, numeracy and literacy skills, storytelling-led teaching, and life skills development.

“We want a child in a village and a child in London to experience the same quality of learning,” she says.

In 2025, it trained nearly 5,000 teachers across multiple regions, including Satna and Khandwa in Madhya Pradesh, Aggarwal claims. In 2024, the startup had trained over 150 teachers.

Bootstrapped, sustainable, and steadily rising

Unlike many edtech companies that rode the funding wave, Instrucko remained disciplined. It raised about $1 million from friends and family between 2021 and 2022, and has not taken any venture capital.

The startup is now profitable and self-sustained; its current valuation is $17.6 million. “When everyone else was raising crazy capital, we focused on building a business that makes money. We didn’t want to chase valuations,” Aggarwal says.

One of the biggest challenges Aggarwal faced was building Instrucko during a period of extreme uncertainty in the edtech sector. When the pandemic-led boom faded, many edtech companies shut down, which made parents cautious and affected trust across the industry.

“Parents were scared, and many had lost money. At one point, everyone was saying ‘no edtech’. But we stayed, and the demand is very much there,” she adds.

The startup competes with players such as PlanetSpark, Bambinos Learning, and TalentGum, who offer similar communication and enrichment programmes for children.

However, Instrucko differentiates itself through its strong focus on personalised learning, foreign languages, and school partnerships.

What’s next for Instrucko?

Over the next year, Instrucko plans to partner with more than 100 schools across India and add new subjects and life skills courses. It also aims to expand its work in government schools, grow internationally, and further improve personalised learning using a mix of human teaching and AI support.

The startup sees strong growth in southern India and is growing steadily in the US, the UK, Singapore, Canada, and the UAE, mainly through word of mouth and without any marketing spend.

“For us, growth has never been about speed,” Aggarwal says. “It’s about building something that parents and children trust over time.”