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Necessity is the mother of inventions, and amidst this
pandemic the Edtech sector has struck gold. They started with the provision of free
courses and lectures to attract more students, then presenting these courses at a feasible
rate ensured consumer retention and eventually increased its reach beyond their
expectations. The likes of Byju’s, Toppr, and Udemy have seen a sharp spike in
student engagement and inquiries on their platform.
UPSC preparation, Jee prep, IIT prep, and the list goes
on and the Edtech players have left no stone unturned to grab student’s
attention towards them; they activated hyperdrive mode to increase their
market base. Byju’s started live classes on its platform to support students in
their learning journeys.
Online Platforms-
This decade we have seen the rise of
online platforms, which has widened the scope of education and has transcended
it beyond classroom boundaries. We have seen individuals attending classrooms
without walls and benches, there is no time boundness, you can attend at your
will and one also can get notes if you have missed a lecture.
E-learning opens a Pandora box of
resources in front of students and teachers, the access to which they wouldn’t
have had earlier irrespective of their status and location. E-learning is
aggressively making inroads into the Indian education ecosystem and its impact
is not limited to schools and institutes of higher education.
According to a report, India has seen
maximum searches for online courses post lockdown showing a realization of
upskilling among users. Python seems to be popular among languages to learn and
Data Science and Machine Learning have been a trending topic over months. Now, coming to the rise of Edtech
companies, the rapidly rising graph of the Edtech sector has seen an increased
interest from investors. In the first quarter of 2020, Edtech emerged as the
baking sector with Byju's raising $400 million and Unacademy raising $100
million in a round led by Facebook.
The lockdown scenario has spurred the
growth of Edtech startups as there was much higher interest among users to
consume educational content online.
Companies that witnessed a major rise in
lockdown are as follows:
1. Unacademy -
The Edtech startup recorded a
massive growth for April 2020, breaking all its previous records – in terms of revenue, video views, watch time, etc. – as it leveraged the coronavirus lockdown with more users coming online to learn. The co-founder tweeted out - In April 2020, Unacademy will do more revenue than 2017, 2018, and half of 2019 combined.
2. Toppr -
The Mumbai-based firm, which was ranked 8th in the pre-COVID period till
March 18, has now grabbed the 4th position in terms of traffic post the
announcement of lockdown, according to data provided by market intelligence platform. Similar Web for 28 days till April 29. Globally-backed Vedantu, which was at
the top in the pre-COVID period, has slipped to 7th position. Among the Indian
startups, Toppr was only behind Byju’s in terms of monthly traffic. Zishaan
Hayath, the founder of Toppr said it had seen app downloads grow 2x, and paid
users grow 3x since lockdown, albeit at a lower-paid fee. “In general, more
schools are keen to collaborate with tech platforms like ours for digital
learning”, he added.
3. Vedantu -
Online learning has witnessed a
surge of 10X during the March-April end. Startups like Vedantu enjoyed
unprecedented growth in recent days, where they clocked 15% growth rate in
March and they estimated a 50% growth rate by April end.
4. Udemy -
The San-Francisco based company,
witnessed a 400% spike in course enrolments for individuals between
February and March. Business and government use increased by 80%, while instructors created 55% more new courses. The data also stated that Indian audience focused on communication skills and business fundamentals during
this period.
5. Government Initiatives -
While Edtech companies saw a significant rise in organic users, the Indian government’s digital initiatives have also come to the forefront in this crisis.
India's HRD ministry has noted in a series of campaigns that students
should utilize the lockdown by learning new courses or continue their on-going
courses online through MHRD’s various online learning and information and communication technology initiatives. Driving forces like SWAYAM, National
Digital Library, Virtual Labs, and Diksha; all portals are up and ready to serve their plates full of knowledge.
In the end, I will
like to add if there’s one big opportunity COVID-19 has enabled in the academic
space, it’s the untapped potential of teaching and learning through the digital
medium. The debate on the effectiveness of online learning has been a point of
contention for many. It’s been argued that the expertise of a good teacher
cannot be replicated in an online classroom where one-on-one observation of a
student’s behavior is not possible and even peer-learning becomes a
far-fetched concept. Yet, the coronavirus lockdown has forced the world to
experiment with online education.
Edited by - Bushra Makhdoomi
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