Online learning has shown significant growth over the last decade. However, with COVID-19 outbreak, it has become more centric in people’s life than ever before.
The pandemic has forced schools, universities, and companies to remote working, and that has tremendously pulled the usage of online learning. Not only K12 and test preparation, platforms for language learning and skill developments have become very well in demand. Even the top tier universities are also democratising the learning by making courses available online. For instance, international universities like Stanford and Harvard are now giving access to online courses under categories of computer science, engineering, mathematics, business, arts, and personal development. Well, these are huge demand from people to learn online. No wonder, even before the pandemic, research and markets forecast that online education market is a hundreds of billion dollars market today.
In this piece, we take you through the key elements of the rise of online education in India, as drawn from the Google’s EdTech Summit 2020.
Brief stats on India education market
As per KPMG report, India’s edtech sector is worth over 15,000 crores now. The COVID-triggered lockdown has provided an immense opportunity to the edtech firms. It is said that since the lockdown started, it has seen a 30% increase in the time spent on education on average in India. According to Google, India education is an over $100 billion market today. While online education is just about $2 billion, this is said to be growing at a rapid CAGR of 50%. It is said that 65% of Indians are in the age group of 12-29 years of age, and about 7 million of those students are today using parents’ phone to access the online education. According to Google’s report, influx of funds has risen almost 7X year on year. While H1 2019 saw close to $100 million of funding, it saw about $800 million funding in the first half of 2020 alone. The report further said about 300 million students, 1.4 million schools, and 51,000 colleges in India are now dependent on the online education. Well, the government is also pushing the online education with various initiatives including eBasta or skill India program to help students.
Major segments in the Indian edtech market
There are 5 major segments in the Indian edtech market. According to Google, massive demand is coming in from users in each of the segment and they are all expected to see massive growth over the next few years. COVID has done only good to this that online education is now accelerated at a faster pace in 2020. The 5 major segments and the percentage of growing in each segment are given below:
- Primary and Secondary Supplement Education – 60%
- Test Preparation – 64%
- Upskilling and Online Certification – 38%
- Higher Education – 41%
- Language and Casual Learning – 42% CAGR
Google searches in different categories of online education in India
According to the Google, the searches on ‘online learning’ and ‘online courses’ saw spontaneous surge across the country, starting March second week. It saw massive 237% increase in search volume. It is said that language, professional and learning skills have caught people’s attention as well during the COVID time. Interest in language courses such as French, German, and Spanish across Google search and YouTube is said to have gone up by 100%, learning skills like drawing classes by 200%, and interest in app development and coding related courses by 50%.
Major happenings across different edtech segments in India
As per Google report, entrance test category has seen a major jump in the last few months, while other categories like K12 and skills have also seen an upsurge. It is said that in K12 segment, NCERT has seen a massive jump around April, May and June, with most queries around class 9, 10, 11, and 12 books. With new dates announced for exams like JEE and NEET, the flurry of activity has revived across NCERT, Engineering and Medical test prep. In test prep, administrative and bank exams queries are said to be climbing back after a dip, due to the postponement issues of SSC-CGL exams leading across the year until recently when UPSC took over.
Comparative education app usage in India and globally
As per App Annie, the mobile performance standard providing market data and analytic insights via its platform, mobile apps usage has surged in Q2 2020 to highest ever recorded – 25% quarter-on-quarter growth globally comparing time spent in Q1 and Q2 this year. It is said that amidst this high growth of time spent, education apps is among the highest growing category globally – 70% growth in downloads and 40% in time spent. Interestingly, according to the report, India is the #1 in education app market by downloads globally and is said to be still showing a strong growth.
According to the report, as shared by Yunde Yu, VP of Sales and Global Support, App Annie, COVID-19 has accelerated edtech adoption in India. It said there’s 50% quarter-on-quarter growth comparing Q1 and Q2. The biggest categories of growth here are said to be K12 apps and facilitation technology driven by mainly apps like Google Classroom. Yunde said edtech was already growing well in India even prior to COVID. He said in last five years, more than 1.8 billion dollars have been invested in the Indian edtech startups, and these startups have broaden their offerings into several sub categories like K12, language learning, test prep, upskilling, etc. Talking about user acquisition practice among Indian edtech, App Annie found that a lot of Indian edtechs use video advertising in their apps. Instasolv and Vedantu are said to be two top video creative on app in India. Also disclosing how top edtech apps in India measure up against top global education apps in terms of usage stickiness, App Annie found two apps from India figure in the segment amongst all the global education apps, and they are Doubtnut and Instasolv.
