There is a useful distinction between a company that survives and one that merely continues to exist. The first understands that survival is not passive. It requires abandoning things that once worked, accepting losses that cannot be avoided and imposing order when growth itself has become disorderly. For S Chand, an education publisher that has lived through 87 years of changes in classrooms, curricula, technology and consumer behaviour, this distinction became painfully clear after 2018-19.
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By then, the company had done what many businesses spend decades trying to accomplish. According to Saurabh Mittal, Group CFO of S Chand, revenue had grown from roughly ₹100 crore in 2010 to about ₹800 crore in 2017-18. The company had raised capital, made acquisitions, expanded its…
