Hyderabad-based Coempt Edu Teck Pvt Ltd has bagged the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) contract for digital scanning and e-evaluation of answer booklets, beating Mumbai-based Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) in the technical evaluation by two notches and submitting a financial bid that was nearly 60% lower than TCS, according to tender records reviewed by HT.
Complaints by students and residents about glitches in the OSM platform and delays in post-result services, including the launch of the reassessment portal, have led to scrutiny of the vendor and procurement process.
The Technical Rating Sheet shows that Coempt scored 91 points (out of a possible 100 points) in the technical round, compared to 89 points for TCS. The presenters were closely matched across several categories. Both received full marks for staff strength, and certifications including CMMI and ISO standards, solutions architecture, security and compliance, training and change management, disaster recovery and business continuity planning.
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According to the technical evaluation, Coempt received a score of 2 out of 5 for “average annual trading volume”, having scored more than $50 Crores but less than $60 crores during the last three financial years. The Hyderabad-based company says it has more than 25 years of experience in screening technology and employs between 51 and 200 people, according to LinkedIn. In contrast, TCS, India’s largest software services exporter with 584,519 employees and $Revenue of Rs 267,021 crore in 2025-26 received a perfect score of 5 from turnover.
Despite the difference in turnover, both Coempt and TCS received a maximum score of 15 for manpower, reflecting CBSE’s assessment that both companies have more than 100 people manpower to execute the project.
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The decisive difference appeared in the “previous experience of the presenter” criterion, where Quimpet received a score of 32 out of 35 compared to 25 for TCS. The largest gap came under the criterion of “Experience in scanning and distributing digital self-assessment answer booklets”, where Quibbit received a full score of 10, while TCS received a score of zero.
The assessment sheet shows that Coempt also received full marks of 10 for large-scale digital assessment projects and full marks of 5 for experience of dealing with multiple assessment centers simultaneously.
However, TCS outperformed Coempt in the Technical and Live View segment, scoring 14 out of 15 against Coempt’s 9. It also received a maximum score of 5 under the turnover criterion, while Coempt received a score of 2, reflecting TCS’s greater financial strength.
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While CBSE did not respond to HT’s queries. “The only discretion the board has in the technical round is regarding the bid and TCS has scored more marks in the bid than Coempt. This only proves that the bidding process was conducted in a completely objective and unbiased manner,” a senior CBSE official said.
Officials defended Coempt’s participation in the tender process, saying that the company met all the conditions stipulated in the offer document.
“The company has not been blacklisted by any state government or examination board. Eligibility and technical merit are strictly evaluated as per the conditions stipulated in the tender, and not on the basis of public perception,” the official quoted above said.
The financial offers revealed a much wider gap between the competitors.
According to the Bill of Quantities (BoQ) documentation, Coempt quoted rates ranging from $24.75 L $25.74 per answer booklet depending on the volume of answer books to be processed, while TCS prices range between $53 f $65 per booklet across the same size categories. The estimated bid value is approximately stated $38.46 crore to Coempt and $95.13 crore for TCS, a difference of approx $56.67 Crores.
CBSE has evaluated nearly 9.86 million answer books for Class 12 through its OSM.
The contract was awarded through the Quality-Cost-Based Selection (QCBS) method, under which technical results were evaluated at 70% and financial bids at 30%. Under the system, the bidder with the lowest financial bid (L1) receives the maximum financial points, which are then combined with the weighted technical score to determine the final ranking.
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The tender relates to digital scanning and e-evaluation of answer booklets for various CBSE exams, a project that has come under public scrutiny in the wake of recent disruptions in the Class 12 post-results processes and the on-screen marking (OSM) ecosystem, which the CBSE fully rolled out this year.
Under a QCF system, “the bidder with a marginal technical lead and a sharply lower price often gets a decisive advantage in the final ranking,” said a former central government official familiar with the procurement process.
Another CBSE official said the board followed established procurement norms while selecting the vendor.
“The selection was made strictly in accordance with the provisions of QCBS. TCS’s prices were significantly higher than Coempt’s for the scope of work sought by the board. The company was selected which fulfilled the technical requirements and emerged L1 as per the rules,” the official said.
Both Coempt and TCS did not respond to HT’s queries seeking comment on the tender.
Editor’s Note: Figures relating to the values of the bids evaluated have been corrected.
