Building the Financial Model for an Edtech Robotics Startup

Keshav was assigned a pre-seed edtech startup based in Indore that built robot labs for schools. The company had raised a small amount of its own capital and was seeking two to three crore in external funding. The edtech sector was active at the time, and government policy around K-12 AI and automation education was supportive, making the pitch environment reasonably favorable.

He started by understanding the business from the ground up. The founder described the company as an edtech play, but Keshav recognized early that the capital structure did not fit that framing. Edtech companies typically carry low fixed capital; this company was building physical robot labs, which meant high fixed capital requirements and a very different funding trajectory.

He built the full financial model, working through revenue projections, cost structures, burn rate, and runway. For valuation, he used relative valuation as the primary method, given the pre-seed stage, and stress-tested the founder's growth assumptions against industry benchmarks. Where the founder's projections implied growth rates that no comparable company had achieved, he walked through the numbers to show why a more conservative assumption was necessary.

The model also surfaced a strategic insight: the two-to-three crore ask was likely insufficient given the capital intensity of the business. Keshav flagged to the founder that the addressable market extended well beyond K-12 education, and that subsequent rounds would need to be substantially larger. The founder engaged with that framing and acknowledged it as a direction worth exploring.

He also owned the pitch deck and coordinated with investors, including VCs, angel funds, and grant bodies. The grant applications converted successfully, and investor conversations progressed to a stage where the company was able to complete the fundraising process.