Online education could become the ‘new normal’ in India as the COVID-19 pandemic forces schools, colleges and universities to shut down temporarily. With the uncertainty revolving around the development of COVID-19 vaccine and the lockdown extensions, students are now opting for online classes/courses to make sure that their learning isn’t interrupted. Several edtech startups have decided to provide some of their content for free. This has led to an upsurge in number of students enrolling for online courses.
Byju’s, for example, has seen its user base increase by 3x after it decided to offer free live classes for students. Currently, there are more than 4.2 crore registered users on Byju’s, according to its website. Gaurav Munjal, the CEO of Unacademy, tweeted that the revenue generated by Unacademy in April 2020 would be greater than the revenue generated in 2017,2018 and the first half of 2019 combined. Unacademy conducted around 120,000 live classes in April 2020 and got 165M video views on YouTube in the same month, as per his tweet. Several more edtech startups are seeing similar growth and are expecting to break more records in the upcoming weeks. We could expect edtech startups to go on a hiring spree for online tutors as the demand for tutors has increased significantly.
Several investors would be looking forward to invest in edtech startups as the demand for e-learning continues to soar among students across all age groups. Many of these startups aim at preparing students for entrance exams like JEE and NEET, which serve as doorways to receive admits from prestigious institutions. Students preparing for these entrance exams have no option but to turn towards e-learning as the uncertainty over the COVID-19 situation continues to grow. This, in turn, is expected to boost the revenue of edtech startups. With social distancing becoming an absolute necessity, online education is the only way out for all students.
The upsurge in number of users on online learning platforms is likely to continue for several months. This could be a huge boost for edtech startups. Many more students would know the advantages of online learning platforms and would be willing to avail the services of such platforms even after the pandemic comes to an end. For all edtech startups, this is an opportunity to demonstrate the advantages of e-learning and to increase their popularity among the student community.
