The Indian EdTech industry’s future valuation is pegged at US$30 billion— how much value foreign players can add to it?

Remote learning is gaining a lot of traction these days. As per the experts, the Indian education technology (EdTech) sector will become a US$30 billion industry over the next decade. According to the reports, development in the Indian EdTech industry will be supported by developing interest and reinforcing plans of action, helped by facilitative governmental policy. The New Education Policy, 2020, has also provided policy impetus to the EdTech industry by perceiving the role of technology in education.

Industry reports propose that the aggregate revenue of Indian EdTech startups has multiplied since FY 2018, and this rate is relied upon to only multiply. Combined with a remarkable ascent in the quantity of paid EdTech users (projected by KPMG to reach US$37 million by 2025), the Indian EdTech industry presents opportunities for foreign investors.

• Deployment of IaaS in Education IT Operations to Scale Up
• Expectation v/s Reality: Did the EdTech Sector Get Everything from the Union Budget 2022?
• Top 10 Robotic EdTech Companies Building the Future of Education

Indian EdTech Industry: A groundwork

As indicated by reports, the current market valuation of the Indian EdTech industry is US$2.8 billion, and it will reach around US$10.4 billion by 2025. As of now, there are 9,043 Indian EdTech startups. This trend is further expanded by factors like India’s prospering web economy – which recorded an all-out number of 743.19 million internet subscribers (as of March 2020). In 2020, there were around 700 million smartphone clients in India.

Categories of the digital learning market in India and major players

The digital learning market in India is categorized into the following segments: K-12, test preparation, online certification, skill development, and enterprise solution. The major growth drivers of these segments include a large addressable market, convenience, price advantage, as well as pandemic-led disruptions, aided with ever-evolving technology capabilities.

K-12

With the current enrolment of more than 250 million, the K-12 section is the biggest and most appealing portion for digital learning providers in India. In this section of e-learning, further, sub-portions incorporate smart class arrangements, online tutoring, online preparation for tests, reenactment and augmented reality, STEM learning, AR and mechanical technology, and evaluation. Prominent Indian players in this fragment are Cuemath, STEPapp, Whitehat Jr, and CampK12.

Test planning

It is one more arising EdTech section that has kept on developing in a couple of years, with a bigger number of clients depending on these stages to get ready for competitive exams like JEE, NEET, CAT, IAS, GRE, and GMAT. This is basically because of the comfort and cost adequacy of these platforms.

Online certificate

Employability is the key variable driving the prominence of online expert schooling. Big data, project management, mobile application advancement, cloud computing, and digital marketing are a few courses that are attempted by experts for upskilling. The unmistakable Indian players in this fragment are Coursera, upGrad, Eruditus, Simplilearn, Jigsaw Academy, and so forth.

Skill development

Indian EdTech startups are empowering quicker skill development, further upskilling, and reskilling of gig economy workers and those in passage-level innovation jobs. Moreover, they are updating specialists and programming engineers with the most recent and most embraced advancements. Central participants in this fragment incorporate Disprz, InterviewBit, Quizizz, Edureka, and Crio.Do.

Endeavor arrangement

This fragment has seen the most extreme development as organizations are coordinating such answers to stay reasonable in a pandemic world. The significant market players in this portion are Liqvid, Classplus, Foradian, Schoolguru, Byndr, and more.

Trends in the Indian EdTech industry

The education technology sector was already fast expanding worldwide before COVID-related disruptions accelerated its growth through almost overnight adoption of technology tools in the education sector. In fact, the COVID-linked Edutech boom has driven the growth of three Indian EdTech players (Eruditus, upGrad, and Vedantu), taking the total unicorn tally to five (following BYJU’s and Unacademy).

With new COVID-19 strains emerging at greater frequency and no clarity on when normalcy shall return, e-learning initiatives are going to be the default option for sake of disease control and convenience besides cost efficiencies.

Investment trends in the Indian EdTech Industry

India is among the main business sectors for worldwide venture capital funding in education, following China and the United States. Reports recommend that the Indian education area has gotten roughly INR 300 billion (US$4.04 billion) of subsidizing since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. As indicated by information from investigation firm Tracxn, between January and August 2021, EdTech players pulled in an astounding US$3.81 billion in funding.

Players in the Indian EdTech industry who sacked significant subsidizing bargains in 2020 were: Byju’s, Unacademy, Vedantu, Doubtnut, Embibe, and Testbook.com in the test arrangement classification; Lido in k-12 class; Coding Ninjas in the internet-based certificate classification; and Classplus in the endeavor skilling class.