Evolution of Edtech in India
Indian Edtech: Everyone’s Teaching but Who’s Learning?
Whiz kids have been putting all their traditional education to use and disrupting classrooms as we knew it, with innovative new services. But where is all this leading to? Smart learning for the nexgen or online chaos?
From the venerated gurukul to a congregation under a tree to high-tech classroom and apps, if there is one sector that has gone all high-tech in India, it is the education sector. Education technology (Edtech), estimated to be worth $1.96 billion at the moment (according to a KPMG Report), has seen five phases of growth in India, and it continues to grow. The surveys are buoyant. As per a Gradeup survey, 70% of students said that they’d shift to online learning if they could access live online classes. The figures are promising — a recent count notched up around 4,000 edtech startups in India. So, how did it all start and where are we headed?
Phase One: Setting up an Education System
The Indian education system began with the teaching of Indian logic, religion, and Vedic mathematics. We had Takshashila (now a part of Pakistan) and Nalanda way before the era of Christ. According to pundits, the history of education in India harks back to 5,000 years. However, all this education was for the privileged classes only — a fact reinforced by the elitist British colonial rule. Unhappy with the communication issues that cropped up with a non-English speaking India, the British brought in the enactment of the Charter of 1813 — and a policy for ‘English’ educating India was drawn up. English literature and Western science took over the tradition-led syllabus, and India inherited the same upon Independence in 1947. Of course, over the years, we developed the 10+2+3 system (National Policy, 1966) and have modified the syllabus umpteen times, but the education system remains the same, though we often love to call it ‘modern Indian education’. Once in a while, we would also do a ‘literacy count’. Generations after generations went to school, wrote exams and went abroad to find good jobs and better lifestyles. While the world around it evolved, the schooling system in India took little initiative to adapt to it.
Phase Two: Technology in Education Becomes the Buzzword
Now, it isn’t as if edtech is new to India. For the past 10 odd years, Edtech has been a nursing baby, unable to grow due to lukewarm market response and zero mass following. Back then, edtech startups were forced to take the B2B route — remember EduComp Solutions? It was the largest education services company in India. It aimed to equip Indian classrooms with its range of digital classroom aids that gave teachers interactive multimedia content that they could use to supplement textbook-and-blackboard teaching. But no one was quite ready for this, and by 2011, EduComp was in a deep financial crisis.
With more players jumping into the fray, the edtech segment kept growing. But magnificent growth eluded them. Gradually, many edtech startups wrapped up because experts and parents believed — and still present a strong argument emphasizing — that physical classrooms offer interpersonal, social, and cognitive skills development that tech can never replace.
Phase Three: Not Content, but Marketing Drives Education
Aspirations of Indians continued growing, but the schooling system was becoming increasingly archaic. And along came Byju’s, putting together not content but a cracking marketing strategy, and perfecting an app. India entered the next phase of edtech, and Byju’s put India on the global edtech map and made app-based learning famous.
Buoyed by this success, a slew of other startups mushroomed — Unacademy, Digital Teacher, Extramarks, etc. They all functioned by disrupting established equations of teaching and learning by providing students with alternate methods of solving math and physics equations, and giving them different approaches to solving question papers (Indian students’ nirvana!).
However, in a bid to outsell each other and increase subscription base, these companies started offering more and more services. But what about content? No one gave that much of a thought at this point. What also happened was that all of them quickly figured out that their teaching methods and unboxed approaches to school curriculum were being weighed down by the very traditional, unbudging examination and evaluation systems of NCERT and CBSE board.
They quickly realigned their content marketing strategies, positioning themselves as unique by simply feeding on public demand. Byju’s started catering to Indian students’ and parents’ collective Achilles heel — NEET, JEE, and IAS, and other government exams. Unacademy, originally a YouTube channel for UPSC coaching, also began classes for JEE and NEET. Digital Teacher started offering offline coaching and Extramarks also went for JEE and NEET.
So, did these startups change the Indian education system? No. All they did was ruffle the pattern and make new-fangled learning patterns costlier and more unaffordable for the common man — Unacademy’s IAS tablet at Rs 80,000 is not something most salaried parents can afford. Plus, they totally ignored — and still do — the non-English medium kids (only Extramarks serves Hindi medium students). But these companies had found their footholds, and subscribers, which prompted niche startups like White Hat Jr to jump into the fray. And no one gave a second thought to whether five-year-olds really needed to learn coding!
That is, till COVID-19 disrupted this comfortable pattern. Parents, students, and schools panicked. Teachers did their best to grasp the new normal of online classes, putting us all in the midst of a seminal moment in the Indian education system.
Phase Four: It’s a New Phase of Edtech in India
Now, online test prep and K-12 learning became the new buzzwords. Edtech firms saw a substantial rise in their subscriber base during the lockdown. The K12 segment subscriber base has increased from 45mn to 90mn in the last one year. Byju’s added 7.5 mn new users and Toppr disclosed a 100% growth in the paid user base. A NASSCOM survey shows that this has led to a significant rise in market size projections for Edtech in India — projected to reach $3.5bn by 2022. Edtech has stepped out of classrooms onto corporate boards, focusing on content creation, pedagogy, doubt solving and imparting life skills.
Notably, this phase also saw the rise of platforms for cohort-based-courses (CBCs). These are interactive and immersive experiences of learning with a community — something online education clearly needed to address at some point. Unacademy is pivoting Graphy to a CBC platform and Stoa School is making all the buzz in the alternative MBA space. Now, investors are also flowing capital into lifelong learning, marking a definite shift in the sector.
Indian edtech is now a global player, forging partnerships with top global universities for MBAs. Online platforms such as Upgrad and Simplilearn focus on enterprise learning, upskilling, and corporate skills. An entire array of custom-made curriculum awaits nexgen kids if they want to take it. This upsurge has also brought in tech-based learning management systems, school administration tools, and more.
Phase Five: The Way Forward and Consolidation
As unicorns Byju’s and Unacademy contend for the top spot, we’re seeing an emerging trend among edtechs — consolidation with big ticket acquisitions. A prime example is Byju’s deal with coding platform WhiteHat Jr. These acquisitions directly translate to reaching more segments and consequently, a wider audience.
As we write this, on one hand, Byju’s is all set to close a deal to acquire Aakash Educational Services for $1bn in what is being called the highest valued deal in edtech. On the other hand, Byju’s is also in talks with rival Toppr for an acquisition that will possibly take place at no premium.
Everything considered, with VCs vying to invest, edtech 5.0 is going to be an interesting phase for India. To keep up with the USA and to retain its number two position in the edtech hubs list, India needs to focus on emerging technologies, and focus on hybrid learning in a big way. While traditional schooling is here to stay and will never go away, smart parents are already looking at supplementing that with tech-based online learning.
The big draws in online edtech will be virtual reality-based learning platforms, where learning apps can offer an overall immersive experience for students of all ages. Realistic environments, real-time assessments, and fabulous UX and UI will score. Corporate customer journeys will be driven by training and simulation VR apps, artificial intelligence, and AR/VR-based hybrid lessons.
Moreover, Indian edtech has more at stake, thanks to the government’s new National Education Policy 2020. Underscoring the need to make education more inclusive, the Indian government’s ‘Education to all’ agenda is a good omen for edtech as it further roots for distance and digital education.
How Do We Consolidate This Lead?
India has already set global standards in funding (Byju’s tops the unicorn list), the number of startups, and more. To consolidate this further, Indian companies will need to build new solutions on subjects of interests to students that can be integrated with the NCERT curriculum. To cater to the surging demand for this hybrid model of education post corona, companies will need services-oriented partners. Mergers and acquisitions will drive the way forward (Byju’s has already bought Whitehat; Unacademy went for TapChief). This will mean that startups covering niche areas will have to now aim at scalability to survive.
What India really needs at the moment is quick action on the government’s part and a series of regulations to help the sector focus on providing quality education in sync with government education policies and school learning. If we don’t do that, we’ll be staring at a mindless acquisition race, a la social media, totally queering the pitch for traditional modes of education.
