CBSE evaluation row: Coempt Edu Teck faces fresh scrutiny over tender procurement, past record

The controversy over CBSE’s digital evaluation system has widened from student complaints over mismatched and blurred answer sheets to closer scrutiny of the company that supplied the platform — Hyderabad-based Coempt Edu Teck Pvt Ltd — including its ownership, past record, financial profile and the terms under which it won the contract.

Coempt Edu Teck, formerly known as Globarena Technologies Pvt Ltd, provided “Onmark”, the digital platform used by the Central Board of Secondary Education for its on-screen marking, or OSM, system for Class XII answer books. The system came under public scrutiny after students flagged alleged answer-sheet mismatches, blurred scanned copies and scanning-related errors during the post-result verification process.

The row has also triggered social media claims about Coempt’s alleged links with the Manipal group. Former Infosys CFO and investor T V Mohandas Pai rejected the claim on X, saying the company had “no connection with any Manipal group” and appeared, “from all accounts”, to be a Telangana-based company. Pai also clarified he was not the chairman of the Manipal company.

The clarification is significant because the debate has moved beyond technical glitches to questions of ownership and influence. Available public company records identify Coempt Edu Teck as a private, unlisted company registered in Hyderabad, with its earlier name listed as Globarena Technologies Pvt Ltd. Publicly available records do not establish a Manipal group ownership link.

What is known about Coempt Edu Teck

Coempt Edu Teck is an unlisted private company incorporated in April 2000 and registered with the Registrar of Companies, Hyderabad. The firm describes itself as an education technology company offering end-to-end examination solutions to certificate-awarding bodies.

Its products include Onmark, OneX, EzyTest and DigiTali, which it says are aimed at supporting examination management, assessment and digital evaluation.

VSN Raju as Coempt Edu Teck’s director and chief executive officer. Raju earlier headed Globarena Technologies and continues to lead the company after its name change. The company has said the change from Globarena Technologies to Coempt Edu Teck was part of a branding exercise in compliance with company law.

Past record under renewed scrutiny

Coempt’s earlier avatar, Globarena Technologies, has returned to the centre of the debate because of the 2019 Telangana intermediate examination controversy. The firm was linked to a data processing failure in Telangana after over 3 lakh students out of nearly 9.74 lakh who gave the state board Intermediate or Class 12 exams failed to clear it.

After 18 students were reported to have died by suicide in the week following the Telangana Board of Intermediate Education (TSBIE) results, the BRS government cancelled the contract with Globarena. Former TSBIE commissioner Syed Omer Jaleel told The Indian Express that Globarena, hired by the board to perform exam functions similar to the CBSE Class 12 test now, had used “untested and uncertified software”.

According to the TOI report a three panel expert committee was also set up at the time of the Telangana fiasco which found “systemic failures, procedural collapse, and glaring negligence” on the part of both the company and the board. Yet, academics point out, the company was never blacklisted.

As per a HT report, the RFP (Request for proposal) issued by CBSE for digital evaluation was also modified several times before the contract was eventually awarded to Coempt edu tech. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi has questioned the award of the CBSE contract, citing the company’s past record and seeking an independent probe.

Three tenders before vendor selection

The procurement trail has now become a major part of the controversy. According to documents reviewed by Hindustan Times, CBSE floated three tenders before finalising a vendor for the OSM system.

The first tender reportedly received no valid bids. The second round failed to produce a technically eligible bidder. In the third tender, issued in August 2025, CBSE relaxed several conditions before Tata Consultancy Services and Coempt cleared the technical round. Coempt later emerged as the successful bidder after financial evaluation.

This sequence is important because CBSE’s national rollout of OSM followed a tender process in which key requirements were changed before a qualified vendor was selected. Among the reported changes was a reduction in the minimum scanning resolution. According to the HT report, the requirement was reduced from “300 DPI and above” to “minimum 200 DPI with clearly readable content”.

The August tender also reportedly removed an explicit requirement for robotic scanner infrastructure. The relaxation remains relevant because it shows that the final tender was designed with broader eligibility than earlier rounds.
Penalties were reduced and restructured

The tender documents also show changes in the penalty framework. According to HT, the February tender prescribed Rs 20,000 for a wrongly or partially scanned copy and Rs 50,000 for an unscanned copy, with delay penalties capped at 30%.
The May tender substantially reduced these penalties.

It prescribed Rs 4,000 for a mismatched copy, Rs 8,000 for partial scans and Rs 15,000 for unscanned answer books. Delay penalties were also reduced to 1% per day, capped at 10%. The August tender then shifted the penalty architecture more toward operational deadlines.

Failure to scan the previous day’s answer books by the following day reportedly attracted a penalty of Rs 50,000 per working day, while delay in going live attracted Rs 10 lakh per week. This change is central to the current row because student complaints have focused on exactly the issues linked to scanning quality, mismatched answer sheets, blurred copies and incomplete scans.

Why was Coempt picked over TCS?

According to News18, CBSE awarded the contract to Coempt on December 5, 2025, and announced the nationwide rollout of OSM on February 9, 2026, around 66 days later. Officials cited in the report said Coempt and TCS both qualified in the final round, However Co-empot was picked over TCS because of their lower bid.

During the financial bid stage, Coempt reportedly quoted Rs 24.75 per answer sheet, including taxes, while TCS quoted around Rs 65 per answer sheet, including taxes. Officials said procurement rules required the contract to be awarded to the lowest qualified bidder.

CBSE has defended the award of the contract, saying the process followed government procurement rules. A senior CBSE official cited by HT said the suggestion that requirements were relaxed to favour any particular company was wrong and that the company was selected after due process.

Scale of the OSM rollout

The scale of the digital evaluation exercise was large. CBSE has acknowledged around 20 cases of answer-sheet mismatches, while maintaining that nearly 98 lakh answer books were processed and that errors can occur in both manual and digital systems.

According to HT, around 550,000 Physics answer books were scanned within a day, meaning the system would have needed to process around 380 copies every minute on a continuous 24-hour basis. For English, nearly 1.7 million answer books were scanned, which would translate to about 1,200 copies per minute over 24 hours.

CBSE’s defence and larger question

CBSE has rejected allegations over the contract and maintained that the procurement process was followed. The board has said it is examining how mismatches occurred and is working to make the system glitch-free. Officials have also indicated that scanned copies of answer scripts may be made available through DigiLocker from next year to improve transparency.

Coempt’s CEO VSN Raju has denied any breach in the platform and has maintained that the complaints were limited. He has also said that most students seeking scanned answer booklets received them. However, the controversy has now raised a broader governance question: how should a national examination board procure, test and audit digital evaluation systems before rolling them out at scale?