How did 2020 change the EdTech Sector for better?

The countrywide lockdown in March, due to the pandemic, shut down schools and universities. This saw the emergence of many EdTech platforms and services and a rise in adoption of the same. While the whole business world was dwindling, the EdTech sector, that has been around for over 15 years, suddenly flourished. It saw major investments and spending by governments, schools, universities, students, and professionals globally. In July 2020, a study by KPMG predicted that the EdTech will grow at a CAGR of 52%. It also said that it will touch USD 1.96 billion by 2021.

In fact, several EdTech companies have witnessed a steep rise in subscribers. For example, in March itself Byju's registered 6 mn new students accessing free lessons on its platform. Unacademy, on the other hand, recorded 1.4 bn watch minutes while Toppr witnessed 100% growth in free user engagement in the month. August 2020 saw the education technology platform, Byju’s, owned by Think and Learn, acquiring the coding platform, WhiteHat Jr. in a $300 million deal. Making the most of this situation, several EdTech start-ups in the country have also raised funding.

How has EdTech changed in 2020?

Changing with the time

"2020 has been the year for the ed-tech sector", states Abhimanyu Saxena, Co-Founder Scaler Academy and InterviewBit. "It has indeed been an eventful year for us at InterviewBit and Scaler too. We started the year with a bang raising $20 million in funding in one of the largest Series A financings in the education sector."

He further adds that the year helped them expand the team to strengthen operations. We have seen significant traction through the year, resulting in our revenue growing by 2X as compared to Q1 of FY 2019-20. Given the enormous opportunity in the segment, we expect the same momentum to continue in the year ahead," he concluded.

Ms Payal Gaba, Founder & CEO of BeyondSkool says, "While the pandemic paralyzed the world, we at BeyondSkool found a big opportunity in the time of world crisis. With people being homebound due to lockdown, schools being shut and there being restrictions on personal meetings, we maximized the use of technology to build our business and gain an advantage. From building teams across verticals, developing learning content, further building a platform for customer engagement & on-boarding, we made it all possible in just a matter of months."

Talking about the revenue, she says, "Today we stand strong with 30+ BeyondSkool Edupreneurs. From no customer base to establishing a reach of 100,000+ customers, 2020 for us has been a year to thrive."

"WizKlub grew from 200 to 300+ learning centres before the onset of the pandemic. During the lockdown, we launched WizGear, a monthly programmable gadget for kids. Now, we continue to grow with investor interest and a newly launched HOTS olympiad for assessing kids," states Founder and CEO, Amit Bansal.

The segment proved B2B friendly as well

"Suraasa was founded to empower teachers and help them achieve career goals by leveraging technology & world-class-pedagogy, says Rishabh Khanna, Founder & CEO, Suraasa. "Interestingly, the pandemic pushed teachers worldwide to leverage technology, which led to many realizations and growth opportunities for the teaching community."

The realisations, he adds are, "First, many teachers realized their need for reskilling to engage students remotely, thus becoming our customers. Second, many who would have not trusted online upskilling programs started subscribing to us. Third, though we marketed only in Dubai, customers discovered us from far-away countries. Organic sales rose to 43%. Fourth, our first cohort of teachers, graduating during COVID, shared news of receiving promotions, better jobs, and appreciation.  Fifth, Schools that hired Suraasa trained teachers saw the difference in skills and outcomes and now want to recruit more Suraasa teachers. So, the placement offers for Suraasa teachers has seen exponential growth."

Rameswar Mandali, Founder and CEO of Skill Monks states that they launched the marketplace platform in February 2020. He said, "We launched and also managed the digital transition during the pandemic. During the year, we digitally on-boarded 130 training partners on the platform. These included marquee brands like Edureka, Digital Vidya, Endeavor, Simplilearn, TalentSprint, Testbook, and more. We also raised the first round of investment from an angel investor for INR 2 Crores." Talking about the revenue, he adds, "We achieved positive growth, gaining revenue of 7 million INR during the period, Feb-Nov 2020."

Better revenue rate

Ramandeep Singh Arora, CEO of Edwisor states, "We tasted a lot of success during the pandemic. Learners on the platform increased to over 2x the size we had earlier. Also, Live Learning lead to interactions with candidates and mentors increase from 20% to over 60%. This means overall better learning for candidates and assessment from mentors. Along with this, smaller cohort sizes in batches lead to an overall increase in completion rates for courses. Thus, creating better portfolios for students to have better jobs and increase their employability."

"We thrive on the vernacular story for Bharat, says Amit Agrawal, Founder and CEO of OckyPocky. "OckyPocky help kids learn English with help of their mother tongue on the app and the live classes. Due to COVID - digital boom happened in edtech and helped us accelerate and reach 100+ towns with our live classes. 100s of happy kids and happier parents every week! 100mn words taught to the kids and still counting."

"The pandemic has changed the way we live, learn and work," says Shreyasi Singh, Founder and CEO, Harappa Education. "We’re committed to helping people learn skills that’ll set them apart and hold them in good stead, now and always. So, we opened up our Embracing Change course for free enrollments in March 2020. 175,000 learners have enrolled for the course, nearly 10,000 have completed it and the average course feedback rating is 4.6/5."

She also says that the pandemic prompted them to launch the direct-to-learner segment. "Since March, we’ve seen a 167% increase in our daily active learner base and a 737% increase in learners each month! 37% of courses (one or more courses, activated by one or more users) are completed within a day of the course is started."

Helping teach through improved methods

"2020 has challenged the status quo in a way that no one comprehended," states Mr Jay Rathod, Founder, Goal2Learn. "The sudden wave of pandemic compelled every business to switch to the online mode of service and with the onset of digitization in the country, the digital marketing industry took a swift turn and its scope has widened ever since creating a demand for skilled marketers."

Talking about his venture, he states, "Goal2Learn has posed as a bridge-building the gap between the company demands and skills expected from marketing individuals through e-classes. Taking pride in its agency style training approach, Goal2learn has provided competent resources even during the pandemic. To ensure smooth teaching-learning process, our live lectures are conducted on zoom and we also provide pre-recorded videos."

"Pre-Covid, GuruQ focused majorly on Home tutoring in Delhi NCR while online was a secondary offering due to low demand. So our scalability was planned gradually & geographically. Due to Covid, we shifted overnight from home tuitions to only online tuitions PAN India resulting in huge successes, states Minal Anand, CEO & Founder.

Conclusion

The key development drivers propelling EdTech in India are the capacity to serve a large audience at essentially lower costs compared to traditional classroom learning, critical growth in internet and smartphone infiltration across India, steady growth in disposable income of the Indian families. Several educational institutions have resorted to various social media platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Skype, WhatsApp, e-mail, etc., to provide life and recorded classes to the students. These platforms are facilitating interaction between students and teachers allowing for the flow of information between the two parties.

While the growth has been tremendous, the industry suffers from challenges. These include scaling up rationally, defeating infrastructure barriers, and retaining growth. With that in mind, we still believe that the pandemic has brought plenty of momentum for edtech adoption in India. The above experiences are proof of that. Further, as more and more learning goes online, India will rely on virtual classrooms. Thus, leading to the adoption of edtech B2B services and products as well as enterprise tech tools has grown in the coming few years.

More stories coming up

Let the year 2020 end on some positivity and good stories. Follow this space to read more success stories of startups during 2020 in the coming few days.