Ed-tech Companies and their Impact

Education is an investment in human capital that is essential in the new knowledge economy. Companies and governments around the world are searching for ways to enhance education. Such a case, thus, has led to the rise of Ed-Tech companies.

What is Ed-tech ?

The bold idea of ‘Educational Technology’ or Ed-Tech is nothing new. The industry has been through some rough times since its inception, but with the current crisis in American education, there is renewed interest and investment. Ed-Tech companies or startups are everywhere, with new and innovative ideas about how to improve public education and minimize cost. One success story in the EdTech companies’ industry is Pearson. It is one of the leading learning companies, having introduced its first EdTech accelerator program in February 2013.

The Telegraph from the U.K. mentioned that Pearson’s program links startups with business leaders and experts. The company gives instructions and mentoring to its clients throughout the program in order to develop best practices and improve educational outcomes. Diana Stepner, the Head of Future Technologies at Pearson, says, “The start-ups who are making changes in the industry are capitalizing on experience. A lot were students who are now applying their experience to a broader audience. The same applies to teachers; more than simply being consumers, they are learning about opportunities in digital technology and applying their expertise to the way that people learn.”

Ed-Tech Companies’ Categories:

Many companies are now venturing into the idea of EdTech. Following are some of the major categories of programs EdTech companies offer:

• Broad Online Learning – This category is for companies that focus on subjects like maths, science, photography and music.
• Learning Management Systems – These companies offer software platforms, that enhance the relationship between students, teachers, and parents. It also monitors the progress of the student, tracks assignments, shares content, and offers online discussion boards.
• Career Development – Many Ed Tech companies provide people and enterprises with educational content for professional advancements, such as financial training.
• Early Childhood Education – This is a huge group of companies that make educational toys and games for little children that can be used at the preschool or in the home.
• Language Learning – Language programs are huge, and run the gamut from in-school programs to self-teaching for children and adults of every age.
• Tech Learning – This may be one of the biggest categories for adults, with a huge number of private colleges and vocational programs that teach subjects like programming as well as updates in areas like security for professional development in the tech sector.
• Study Tools – These have become something of a trend, with many high schools, colleges, and vocational schools offering courses that prepare their students and customers to succeed with their educational programs. The theory is that “learning how to learn” is important for everyone.
• Course Materials – Many people outside the Ed Tech industry, don’t realize how important, or how large the revenues are, for those companies that provide classroom materials. Everything from Textbooks, to testing materials, adds up to a good-sized chunk of the educational pie.
• School Administration – It takes materials to run and administer schools, and you bet, there are companies that fill that need, from proctored exam services to digitized transcripts.
• Next-Gen School – These are the innovators who are looking for completely new educational systems, like schools that teach through games or other non-traditional systems.
• Learning Analytics – Big data is king, and with something as large and unwieldy as the worldwide education systems, this is a growth category that is only going to get bigger every year.
• Test Prep – Parents love them, students not so much. Test prep companies prepare students for the standardized tests and entrance examinations that students face, including tests like the GRE, GMAT, and SAT; as well as professional tests like the CPA, Series 7, and the Bar.
• Classroom Engagement – A lot of focus is being directed toward classroom engagement and products and systems that can help with this all-important area of teaching.
• Online to Offline – This may sound backward, after all, what is the purpose of online education in the first place, if you need a face-to-face mentor or tutor to help you through. The truth is, having someone there for personal face-time dramatically enhances the online educational experience. This category is for companies that offer platforms for students in order to have face-to-face offline tutoring.

International EdTech Companies: Following are some EdTech Companies that have attracted the most attention:

• EverFi – Provides extensive skills in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) , financial literacy, workplace harassment training, and diversity training. Tom Davidson is the CEO and co-founder of EverFi. The company is located in the United States.
• Pluralsight – provides video training courses for creative professionals, IT administrators, and software developers.
• Top Hat – helps professors energize college classrooms. It renews established teaching methods and organizes new approaches.
• Flat World Education – is an online platform that gives institutions and instructors the chance to personalize their educational content. Jade Roth is the CEO of Flat World Education.
• NeoBear – markets augmented reality mobile apps and toys that help children to learn languages and words.
• iTutorGroup – is the biggest English-language learning company in the world. It offers personalized and individualized learning experiences. The company is located in Shanghai.
• Echo360 – develops active education technology. It is located in Dulles Virginia
• Knewton – focuses on adaptive learning. Knewton created a platform to personalize educational content.
• AltSchool – is an educational startup founded in 2004. The company is made up of educators, entrepreneurs, and technologies which have developed a network of schools to prepare students. It is located in San Francisco.
• Entstudy – is an after-school tutoring platform in China. Zhang Hao is the CEO of Entstudy. Tencent Holdings, Kun Ling Capital, and Sharing Capital are its investors.
• Parchment – lets employers, educators, and learners, request, share and verify credentials using an advanced academic management system. The company is located in Scottsdale, Arizona.
• Xuebajun – helps high school and junior high school students master their classwork through a system of personalized monitoring and reporting.
• Galvanize – helps entrepreneurs and students access the knowledge and skills they need in order to level up and create an impact.
• XiaozhanJiaoyu – offers training courses for students preparing for entrance exams. It is located in Shanghai.

India’s Most Popular Ed-tech Startups:

BYJU’S:

India’s first edtech unicorn, BYJU’S offers a learning app, which was launched in 2015 and has learning programmes for students in classes IV-XII along with courses to help students prepare for competitive exams like JEE, NEET, CAT, IAS, GRE, and GMAT. Recently it has also collaborated with Disney to launch a learning app for classes I to III. The company reported its revenues for the financial year 2017-18 at $69.4 Mn (INR 490 Cr), a 97 % jump since the last financial year. It is looking to achieve a revenue target of (INR 1400 Cr) this financial year.

Doubtnut:

Currently catering to K12, IIT JEE, NEET students, Doubtnut is a multilingual online learning platform that uses AI and ML technologies for image recognition, natural language processing and proprietary machine learning algorithms to provide video-based solutions in response to students’ queries.

Gradeup:

Gradeup plans to make a deeper presence in K12 space by introducing one year and two-year programs for class XI and XII students preparing for JEE and NEET. Data analytics and tracking of the kind of engagement is key to the success of Gradeup, and the company intends to further enhance its capabilities applying data science to further help students improve their performance.

TestBook:

Testbook is an online preparatory platform for all kinds of competitive government examinations. Last few years they have got more than 35000 selections who are placed in different government jobs. The 200+ strong Testbook.com team headquartered in Kharghar, Navi Mumbai has successfully raised four rounds of investments. Recently the company raised INR 60 Cr as a part of its Series B round of funding led by Iron Pillar.Testbook claims to have turned profitable in April 2019, and clocked an annual revenue of INR 31 Cr in the last financial year, with an INR 45 Lakh EBITDA (earnings before depreciation, interest, taxes and amortisation).

Toppr:

Toppr caters to the individual learning styles of candidates and provides the widest K12 syllabus coverage with 1.5 million course combinations. It currently has over 10 million students on its platform and helps them prepare for various school, board, and competitive exams. It uses natural language processing to solve student doubts instantly. It also uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data to study student behaviour and create adaptive learning paths with infinite combinations.As per DataLabs analysis, test prep and K-12 edtech startups combined are estimated to be worth $1.3 Bn by 2021. Toppr is just one of the many startups looking to tap this burgeoning opportunity in the Indian market.

Unacademy:

This Bengaluru-based startup began as a YouTube channel in 2010 by Gaurav Munjal. In 2015, it was officially registered as an educational technology platform when co-founders Roman Saini and Hemesh Singh came on board. To date, it has raised $88.5 Mn.The company claims to have more than 10K registered educators and over 13 Mn learners. It also says it gets 100 Mn monthly views across its various platforms such as Unacademy, Unacademy Plus, Wifistudy, Chamomile Tea with Toppers, Unacademy Studios and The Solutionists.

Vedantu:

It is a live online tutoring platform that enables personalised learning. Vedantu uses technology to bring together teachers and students on a single platform to enable live learning between them. Although Vedantu’s Android app is less popular compared to its peers, the startup is an apple of investors eyes. It has raised $59.9 Mn since its inception in 2011 and is backed by investors like Tiger Global Management, WestBridge Capital, Accel, Omidyar Network among others.It claims to have 500+ teachers on its platform with students accessing the platform across 1000+ cities and 30+ countries. Vedantu’s W.A.V.E platform has been granted an IP Patent for ‘Measuring the Effectiveness of An Interactive Online Learning System’ that helps teachers in identifying a student’s attention level, increases student-teacher interaction, doubt-solving, participation in gamified quizzes, and customization of teaching patterns owing to constant feedback. Owing to these capabilities Vedantu has achieved LIVE classes of 1 million hours till date.

How has the lockdown boosted innovation and investment in the EdTech Sector?

There are about 4,450 EdTech start-ups operational in the country presentlycatering various segments including K-12, vocational and professional training/skilling and school/college educational operations. While the K-12 and competitive examination segment is dominated by Indian players, the international players are focused on reskilling, vocational training, and certifications. Some successful international players are Coursera, LinkedIn Learning, Udemy, Edx, Khan Academy and Google Classroom.A lot of innovations have been experimented within the Indian EdTech industry to balance the dynamics of teachers and students from a traditional classroom to a virtual one. While these trends and innovations saw lower adoption in the pre Covid-19 world, many existing off-the-shelf technology and innovation saw wide adoption in educational institutes recently, to ensure that the academic flow is not impeded. Technology is turning teacher-centric education to a more teacher-student setup. Smart classrooms are making teaching more transparent and equal for every student in a close to real classroom like experience.There are various universities and colleges in the higher education space that have come up with innovative measures to cope with the impact of Covid-19. Certain universities have given students the option of what we can call ‘education on demand’ wherein students across the world can record their online classes (instead of attending it live) and watch at their own time and convenience. Due to the reduced personal touch for students, UGC has requested universities and colleges to follow some important measures to ensure psychological and mental well-being of students in these tough times.There are several private players providing online coaching classes and training for various higher educational, vocational and professional courses. Such private players could also tap into their resources and collaborate to share learning infrastructure and experience to provide a better online learning opportunity and technology to students.Boards in India are also doing their bit to ensure continuity of education. CBSE is encouraging schools to continue teaching and learning with the help of digital learning platforms and provide content to students online. They have also launched a podcast called CBSE-Shiksha which would assist schools in disseminating crucial information to their teachers, students and parents.The intention behind the launching of CBSE podcast platform (CBSE Shiksha) is the easy availability of up-to-date information regarding educational tools and initiatives can improve outcome. The Board also believes that the use of new, appropriate and user friendly technology ensure a proper spread of its directions. ISCE has partnered with television channel ABP Ananda to begin teaching Mathematics, English and Science for students in class four to twelve by airing the lectures on television.

Challenges:

While the sector is growing and India is currently home to the second highest number of EdTech companies, there is a lot of room to improve India’s market share in the EdTech space globally, which is only around 2.1 %. Factors such as tangled regulations governing the education sector, lack of uniform government policies, lack of financial incentives for research and innovation in the EdTech space, patchy internet connectivity especially in rural India and other socio-economic barriers are some of the impediments to the growth trajectory of this sector in India. The lack of central regulator for all aspects governing the sector and the lack of coordination between the centre and the state as well as various boards and institutes also remain major stumbling blocks, which warrants a sharper focus and attention from economic and regulatory perspective. That said, the EdTech sector is growing significantly and, with careful planning and legal assistance, investors can navigate through the web of legal and regulatory challenges in the sector and see significant returns on their investment.

Connecting to the Article:

Question for Prelims

Consider the following statement with reference to EdTech Companies:

1. Pearson is one of the leading learning companies, having introduced its first EdTech accelerator program in February 2015.

2. India is currently home to the second highest number of EdTech companies.

3. BYJU’S is India’s first edtech unicorn, which was launched in 2015.

Which of the statements given above is/are correct?

(a) 1 and 2 only
(b) 2 and 3 only
(c) 1 and 3 only
(d) 1, 2 and 3

Question for Mains:

“Covid-19 boosted innovation and investment in the EdTech Sector”, please examine the statement by putting the pros and cons of the Sector. What are the challenges Indian EdTech Companies have to face globally? What is CBSE-Shiksha? How it acts as a bridge between teachers, students and parents?