Market Potential

According to a report by MarketsandMarkets, it estimates the global EdTech and smart

classroom market size is expected to grow from USD 85.8 billion in 2020 to USD 181.3 billion
by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 16.1% during the forecast period. The
major factors driving the growth of the EdTech and smart classroom market include increasing
penetration of mobile devices and easy availability of internet users, and growing demand for
EdTech solutions, impact of COVID-19 pandemic and growing online teaching-learning models
to keep running education system.

From classrooms to smart devices, the medium of education and learning in India has gone
through a paradigm shift. With over 665 Mn wireless internet subscribers, India has seen a
massive 14% increase in the addressable base for internet services in just one year. This rate of
adoption has meant great things for startups and digital products and services and has given rise
to personalisation and convenience when it comes to the school curriculum and off-classroom
learning.

The growing popularity of online learning has provided a major push to two of the top subsectors
in the edtech market— test preparation and online certification. To put this into perspective,
between 2014 to 2019, startups in test prep and online certification startups earned a whopping
88% ($1.6 Bn) of the total capital inflow in edtech.

Apart from test prep and online certification, another edtech subsector which is gaining
popularity is skill development. Related to online certification, skill development focussed on
updating the skills among young and experienced workers from non-digital to digital needs,
reskilling labour industries which need to be overhauled as well as building the talent pool for
new-age startups looking at technology such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, robotics, and
more.

Outside schools and colleges, the Indian education system is enmeshed within layers of entrance
tests and examinations across various national academic levels as well as for professional
courses. Among these, some of the popular ones are the JEE Main for admission in
undergraduate level engineering courses, CAT (Common Admission Test) for pursuing a masters
degree in business administration and UPSC (the age-old Indian favourite) which opens up the
doors to join the Indian Administrative Services as well as other lucrative government postings.
Apart from these, there are dozens of other examinations for seats in mass media, computer
applications and other courses.

To simply say that millions of students turn up for these examinations is to understate the rush.
For instance, in the JEE Main 2019 examination, the total number of registrations stood at 1.8
Mn, a 74% increase compared to the previous years — 1.04 Mn — for roughly 15K seats.
Limited intake and the growing number of aspirants are making competition fierce across all
national level examinations which means that the opportunity for capitalisation is growing as
well.
SWOT Analysis
Strengths

 Independence of access to time and place

 Impartiality
 Enhancing the individual and group participation.
 Exposure to Global standard of education

Weakness

 Absence of teacher
 Access to unsupportive information
 Students’ assessment and feedback is limited
 Being unsuitable for practical courses

Opportunities

 Enrollment of more number of students in Higher education

 Graduation without disturbing the Work-life Balance
 Time saving and cost efficient for learners.
 Education to all category of pupil.

Threats

 Threat to Uniqueness and consistency

 High implantation and maintenance cost
 Lack of technology and Infrastructure
 Security and authorization issues.
 Lack of computer knowledge

Operations
The company operates on 4 revenue models, that are

Freemium or Free Trial

This model helps consumers begin using your product for free, with an option to upgrade to a
paid version at a later stage. This could work in two ways, either through feature limitations
(freemium) or through time limitations (free trial). This model gives you the advantage of
gaining a lot of traction quite fast and make your product available straight to your end user
without intermediaries.

Top-down
A more traditional model of selling to schools through district leaders is the top-down or the
institutional model. Here, the market size is first estimated and the targeted market volume is
decided based on the anticipated penetration rate. The advantage of the top-down model is
that the districts will sign large contracts.

Bottom-up

EdTech companies can approach the consumers, this can be done via the schools that are
convinced to use a product for free. Then, if the families want to continue to use the offering
they can be charged for its usage at home. Here, schools act as lead generators for consumer
adoption.

This model works beautifully when there is a ‘product loop’ between school and home. The
teachers will engage the students and encourage students to use it in schools and then end up
recommending the same to parents. This is a great strategy and quite the win-win situation as
schools are all for free and quality products, which further creates user adoption and parents
tend to listen to the teacher’s recommendations.

Sponsored

A very interesting and unconventional model is where neither the school nor the parents pay.
Instead a corporate is brought into the picture that acts as a sponsor and helps pay for product
placement, which is generally as a part of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative.

The company can operate on all revenue models simultaneously depending on the target market
segment and type of clientele.