The new kid in town

Edtech products and companies are still looked at with suspicion by brick-and-mortar players in India's education space

Even as India grapples with improving its brick-and-mortar institutes, the new kid in town is the edtech (technology in education) sector that is making inroads into the country.
 
While working on a two-part series on this relatively unknown creature, I learnt to my absolute astonishment that in a span of less than a decade, a total of close to 4,600 startups have jumped into the fray. Venture capital in excess of $2 billion has flown into Indian edtech companies since 2014, far lower than in China (over $12 billion) and the USA (over $8 billion) but more than the European Union ($1.27 billion), as per data compiled by HolonIQ, a global intelligence platform for education.

 
But even as edtech firms try to find their feet and entrench themselves in India’s education space, there are many who are not convinced of the intent, content and applicability of the solutions offered by the players in the space. Let me elaborate.
 

Like any new industry in India, many fly-by-night operators, hoping to earn a quick buck are jumping in. Almost every day, a new venture is launched or a new tie-up is announced, most are bootstrapped and many disappear within a year of launch. While some are good ideas, not all can be translated into good businesses and the rate of failure is high.

 
In India, there are around 10 players, including a clutch of Bengaluru-headquartered companies like Byju’s, Un­academy, Vedantu, Simplilearn, i­Nur­ture, Educational Initiatives and others like Toppr (Mumbai), Extra Marks (Noi­da), Next Education (Hyderabad) and Merit Nation (Delhi) that investors have bet their money on. But even among those who have managed to corner the funds, analysts argue that companies are currently a bit like headless chickens, jumping into new segments based on a rival’s success and without doing their homework. Analysts are of the view that many players including the biggest, Byju’s, appear to be in it for the valuation game and less concerned with the value created (more on this in a separate column).

 
But even if one assumes that companies are there with the right intent, not everyone is convinced about the content on offer and its effectiveness. I discovered to my surprise that very few products on offer in the Indian market had any independent third party impact evaluation done on them and that includes Byju’s. Anita Kishore, chief of strategy for the company, told me that it “could consider having an independent impact study done” but confirmed that none had been done so far. On further research, I found only one credible independent impact evaluation study done on Mindspark (an adaptive learning programme developed by Bengaluru-headquartered Educational Initiatives) in after-school centres in Delhi. The Central Square Foundation — that tracks the ed-tech sector — confirmed that a couple of more third party evaluations are underway but the results are not out yet.

 
This failure or reluctance to conduct independent evaluations on the products they offer makes school principals, educationists, academicians and other operators wary of adopting the new products on offer and reduces their overall credibility. At least 10 principals I spoke to argued that the products on offer can at best marginally pique a student’s curiosity or occasionally clarify a doubt. The CEO of The Education Alliance, a not-for-profit that is working with governments to improve their schools, Amitav Virmani argues that till the newbies are unable to provide verifiable data and concrete evidence of improved learning outcomes, ed-tech solutions will continue to remain a “fad” or a “buzzword”.

 
What’s worrying is that users too tend to see the offerings as a “fad”. In a world exploding with choices and with attention spans plummeting, the latest fad or app takes the users’ fancy. Retaining the attention of subscribers on their platform — be it parents or students — is still a huge challenge for almost all the players. Many parents attest that even before the paid subscription runs out, their child has lost interest in the product and wants what his or her peers are using. An endless revolving door, there’s no guarantee that a subscriber who was with you in one year will be there in the next.

 
Where analysts and experts are by and large in agreement is that edtech can make a world of difference in bridging the gap in outcomes low-income communities typically face. But for that to happen, many barriers including language, affordability, awareness levels among others, have to be overcome. India is still a long way from that.