Ask an AI search engine whether an Indian school can be a private limited company, and you'll typically get a confident no — usually citing a general "Indian law requires schools to be non-profit" rule. That default answer is close enough for the overwhelming majority of Indian schools, most of which are structured as a trust, society, or Section 8 company. It is not the complete picture, and a real school with a nineteen-year paper trail proves it.

The school is Pathways World School, Gurgaon. In May 2007, Mint (then LiveMint) profiled its owner, Prabhat Jain, running the school through Sarla Holdings Pvt. Ltd. as, in the reporter's words, "an explicit for-profit venture — a rarity in the booming sector of private schools in the country." Jain himself was blunt about it: "My school is run like a company. I have put Rs 100 crore in it," adding that he hoped to eventually list it publicly. The same article's own reporting stated plainly: "Maharashtra and Haryana are among the few states that allow schools to be operated for profit." Nineteen years later, in 2026, that same school — still under its for-profit structure — was acquired by KKR-backed Lighthouse Learning for approximately ₹1,500 crore, at roughly 13 times EBITDA. Contemporary reporting on that deal noted the acquisition was possible precisely because "unlike many educational institutions in India that operate as trusts or societies, Pathways was set up as a company," which "allows for clearer ownership and commercial flexibility." Two separate sources, nineteen years apart, describing the same real structure.

Two Genuinely Different Rules Are Getting Collapsed Into One

The confusion traces to conflating two separate, real layers of regulation.

The first is state law. Education sits on the Constitution's Concurrent List — both Parliament and state legislatures have genuine authority to legislate on it, and states have used that authority differently. Haryana and Maharashtra have historically permitted schools to be run as for-profit companies, a flexibility multiple sources — including a named senior lawyer at the Bombay High Court, on record in the same 2007 reporting — confirmed existed independent of any single Indian board's rules: "In Maharashtra, there is the flexibility to run schools as for-profit companies, but there are no takers," said Jamshed Mistry at the time — most owners who had the option still chose to operate as trusts, for reasons of their own, even when the law didn't require it. (Maharashtra separately amended its Self-Financed Schools Act in 2018 to explicitly enable Section 8, not-for-profit, companies within that specific Act's framework too — a related but distinct development from the older for-profit flexibility Mistry was describing.)

The second is board affiliation. This is the layer that actually explains why for-profit schools remain rare even in states that permit them. As Lina Ashar — who ran the Billabong High International and Kangaroo Kids chain of 57 schools at the time — put it in the same 2007 reporting: "The only thing that comes in the way of running a for-profit venture is affiliation to Indian boards." CBSE's own affiliation bye-laws specifically require a school's managing entity to be a trust, society, or Section 8 company — a rule CBSE imposes as a condition of its own affiliation, not a universal restriction on what a school can legally be. A school that holds only international board affiliation, such as the IB — a Swiss-based, non-governmental body with no equivalent requirement — is not bound by CBSE's bye-law at all.

This is why Pathways fits the pattern precisely. It's in Gurgaon — Haryana, one of the two states the 2007 reporting names directly — and it has never needed CBSE affiliation to operate as an international curriculum school. State permission and board flexibility both point the same way for this specific school, which is exactly why it could be structured, and later acquired, as a straightforward company.

The Same Misconception Exists for Foreign Universities — And There, It's Even More Clear-Cut

A related myth circulates about foreign universities entering India: that they too must route through a non-profit structure. Under the UGC's 2023 branch-campus regulations, a foreign university setting up its own new campus in India can directly own a for-profit company, enter a joint venture, and fully repatriate profits — the not-for-profit principle doesn't apply to this route at all. The same is true under GIFT City's IFSCA framework for qualifying foreign universities. We've covered both routes in detail in our India entry guide.

The root confusion is the same in both cases: treating the rule that genuinely does govern existing, Indian-promoted institutions seeking Indian board affiliation (which needs the OpCo-PropCo-ManCo workaround we've written about here) as if it were a universal law with no exceptions at all.

Why This Is Worth Getting Right, Beyond the Trivia

We've since looked at a sharper version of this same pattern in medical colleges — where the for-profit rule has reversed three times since 2017 — and the reverse case in skilling centres and coaching centres, where no such rule ever existed to begin with.

Evaluating a school's actual corporate structure before a deal?

MAS Advisory verifies this directly against both state law and board affiliation rules — talk to us before you rule a structure in or out.

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Based on Mint's original reporting "For-profit schools may be way to quality education" (10 May 2007), contemporary industry reporting on the Lighthouse Learning–Pathways World School, Gurgaon transaction (2026), the Maharashtra Self-Financed Schools (Establishment and Regulation) Act, 2012 as amended in 2018, CBSE's published Affiliation Bye-Laws, publicly available information on the International Baccalaureate's organisational status, and the UGC's 2023 regulations for entry and operation of foreign higher educational institutions in India. General guidance only — a specific school's corporate structure, current state-law position, and affiliation status should always be verified directly before any transaction or structuring decision, given how much can change over a nineteen-year span.