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Pandemic has created a seminal moment

in education evolution

By Arpan Sheth , Lalit Reddy , Aditya Shukla

Even though most edtech products
are priced at a premium, this has
not deterred parents from adopting
them.

Byju’s $300-million acquisition of
WhiteHat Jr. is a milestone in India’s
edtech space and the ascendance of
consolidation for a segment that can
transform the education sector. While
covid-19 forced institutions to explore
online teaching options, the accelerated
adoption of technology catalysed edtech’s
emergence, too.

India has over 330 million K-12
students—75 million of whom adopted
supplementary education. Our estimate
indicates another 30-40 million students
don’t have access to quality
supplementary education despite their
ability to afford it. Consequently, the
supplementary education market size is
about $15 billion with less than 5% digital
penetration. So, there is significant
headroom for edtech solutions to grow
and covid-19 has only expedited its
adoption.

Alleviating some early, but critical
challenges, such as lack of trust and
efficacy of digital solutions in education,
edtech players like Byju’s, Vedantu,
Toppr and Unacademy gradually scaled
up their presence.

With students experiencing a notable
improvement in performance, there was a
steady increase in digital penetration of
education in India, even before covid-19.