Original data, 8 September 2026
The state of Indian preschools, 2026
India has 21,208 preschool, playschool and daycare centres listed on Preschools.club as of 8 September 2026, spread across 2,705 cities and towns in 35 states and union territories. Franchise brands run 17,003 of them, 80.2% of the total, and 4,205 are independent. Kidzee is the largest network with 3,483 centres; Bengaluru has the most of any city, 2,535.
Every table below is generated from our own listings database. The figures are free to quote and republish under CC BY 4.0 with a credit to Preschools.club and a link back to this page.
21,208
Centres listed
2,705
Cities and towns
35
States and UTs
101
Brands profiled
Coverage
How many preschools are there in India, and where are they?
Preschools.club lists 21,208 centres. Of the 2,705 cities and towns with at least one listing, 634 have three or more centres and get their own city page. This is a directory count, not a census: it covers the organised preschool market, so small neighbourhood creches that never advertise are under-represented.
| Measure | Count |
|---|---|
| Preschool and daycare centres listed | 21,208 |
| Cities and towns with at least one centre | 2,705 |
| Cities with three or more centres | 634 |
| States and union territories | 35 |
| Franchise brands profiled | 101 |
| Franchise brands with at least one listed centre | 76 |
Cities
Which Indian city has the most preschools?
Bengaluru does, with 2,535 listed centres, 12.0% of every centre in the directory. The top 15 cities together account for 48.6% of all listings, which is what a market concentrated in metros and the larger tier-2 cities looks like.
| # | City | Centres | Share of all listings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Bengaluru | 2,535 | 12.0% |
| 2 | Hyderabad | 1,363 | 6.4% |
| 3 | Pune | 1,144 | 5.4% |
| 4 | Chennai | 825 | 3.9% |
| 5 | Delhi | 753 | 3.6% |
| 6 | Mumbai | 739 | 3.5% |
| 7 | Kolkata | 489 | 2.3% |
| 8 | Gurugram | 484 | 2.3% |
| 9 | Noida | 334 | 1.6% |
| 10 | Ghaziabad | 314 | 1.5% |
| 11 | Ahmedabad | 307 | 1.4% |
| 12 | Lucknow | 302 | 1.4% |
| 13 | Navi Mumbai | 258 | 1.2% |
| 14 | Jaipur | 230 | 1.1% |
| 15 | Patna | 217 | 1.0% |
States
Which states have the most preschools?
Karnataka leads with 3,266 centres, just ahead of Maharashtra on 3,149. The five southern and western states at the top reflect both urbanisation and how early the franchise chains expanded there.
| # | State or union territory | Centres | Share of all listings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Karnataka | 3,266 | 15.4% |
| 2 | Maharashtra | 3,149 | 14.8% |
| 3 | Uttar Pradesh | 2,166 | 10.2% |
| 4 | Telangana | 1,760 | 8.3% |
| 5 | Tamil Nadu | 1,518 | 7.2% |
| 6 | West Bengal | 951 | 4.5% |
| 7 | Haryana | 941 | 4.4% |
| 8 | Gujarat | 913 | 4.3% |
| 9 | Delhi | 888 | 4.2% |
| 10 | Madhya Pradesh | 809 | 3.8% |
| 11 | Bihar | 661 | 3.1% |
| 12 | Rajasthan | 614 | 2.9% |
| 13 | Punjab | 468 | 2.2% |
| 14 | Andhra Pradesh | 461 | 2.2% |
| 15 | Assam | 396 | 1.9% |
Brand share
Which preschool franchise is the biggest in India?
Kidzee, with 3,483 listed centres, or 16.4% of every preschool in the directory and 20.5% of all franchise centres. The top five networks together hold 50.7% of the market by centre count.
| # | Brand | Centres | Share of all listings | Share of franchise centres |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kidzee | 3,483 | 16.4% | 20.5% |
| 2 | EuroKids | 2,705 | 12.8% | 15.9% |
| 3 | Bachpan Play School | 1,950 | 9.2% | 11.5% |
| 4 | Little Millennium | 1,344 | 6.3% | 7.9% |
| 5 | Hello Kids | 1,265 | 6.0% | 7.4% |
| 6 | FirstCry Intellitots | 613 | 2.9% | 3.6% |
| 7 | Podar Jumbo Kids | 546 | 2.6% | 3.2% |
| 8 | Shemrock | 377 | 1.8% | 2.2% |
| 9 | Cambridge Montessori Preschool | 348 | 1.6% | 2.0% |
| 10 | Footprints | 347 | 1.6% | 2.0% |
| 11 | Little Elly | 303 | 1.4% | 1.8% |
| 12 | Kangaroo Kids | 296 | 1.4% | 1.7% |
| 13 | Makoons Play School | 296 | 1.4% | 1.7% |
| 14 | TIME Kids | 279 | 1.3% | 1.6% |
| 15 | Sanfort | 261 | 1.2% | 1.5% |
Franchise vs independent
How much of the Indian preschool market is franchised?
80.2% of listed centres carry a franchise brand name and 19.8% are independent. That split is higher than the market as a whole: branded centres advertise, publish centre locators and are easier to verify, so a directory sees more of them than a street survey would.
| Centre type | Centres | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Franchise or chain brand | 17,003 | 80.2% |
| Independent centre | 4,205 | 19.8% |
Directory growth
How fast is the directory growing?
These are centres added to Preschools.club in each month of the last year, not new schools opening. The first month is the bulk import that seeded the directory, so read it as a starting point rather than a growth rate.
| Month | Centres added |
|---|---|
| July 2026 | 20,649 |
| September 2026 | 559 |
Data completeness
How complete is each listing?
Not every centre has every field. Publishing the gaps matters as much as publishing the totals, so here is what share of the 21,208 listings carries each detail today.
| Field | Centres with it | Coverage |
|---|---|---|
| Street address | 18,277 | 86.2% |
| PIN code | 16,642 | 78.5% |
| Phone number | 15,949 | 75.2% |
| Linked to a franchise brand | 17,003 | 80.2% |
Fees and programs
What do preschools charge, and what do they run?
Fee bands and program lists are owner-declared fields, filled in when a school claims its listing or submits it through our wizard. Neither is populated across enough centres yet to publish a distribution, so we are not publishing one: an estimate built from a handful of claimed listings would be worse than no number at all. For fees today, use our city fee benchmark tables, which are researched separately from parent reports and published fee cards. This section fills in as claims come in.
Methodology
How this data is collected
Every number on this page is counted directly from the Preschools.club listings database on 8 September 2026 by a script that queries it and writes the results to a file the page reads, so the tables and the database cannot drift apart. Listings come from three places: franchise brands’ own published centre locators, submissions from school owners through our submit-a-school form, and manual research by our team. Every listing is de-duplicated on name plus city and moderated before it goes live, and owners can claim a listing to correct it.
What this is not: a government census or a survey of enrolment. It counts centres that are findable and verifiable, which means the organised preschool market. Small independent creches and home-run playgroups that do not advertise are under-counted, which is why the franchise share here reads higher than the share of Indian children who actually attend a branded centre. A brand’s centre count is the number of its centres we have verified, not the number it claims in its franchise brochure. City counts follow municipal city names, so Gurugram, Noida, Ghaziabad, Navi Mumbai and Thane are counted separately from Delhi and Mumbai rather than folded into a metro region.
The page is regenerated from the live database rather than hand-updated, so the generated-on date above is the true age of every figure on it.
Citing this data
Free to reuse, including commercially, under CC BY 4.0. Credit it as: State of Indian Preschools 2026, Preschools.club, 8 September 2026, with a link to this page.
Go deeper
Browse preschools by city, compare franchise brands, or read the fee benchmarks by city.