Varun Gupta
Director, Digital & Technology Investment Banking, Avendus Capital“The pandemic has accelerated the shift towards digital learning which started 2 years back. We are seeing heightened adoption across pretty much every segment. While segments like K12 after school supplemental learning test-prep skilling have been growing strongly even before Covid segments which have been slower to adopt like schools high-stake test prep co-curricular activities have also seen forced adoption of tech based learning and a good part of this is unlikely to reverse. We have already seen almost 2 Bn of investments going into Edtech in India in this 2020 which is more than the aggregate of investments we have seen in this space in previous 5 years. As India is significantly lagging in education quality and infrastructure Edtech will help address many of these challenges on the back of increasing depth of capabilities and a wider pool of companies offering differentiated solutions and targeting different market segments. This will in-turn drive interest from investors who are looking to benefit from long-term value creation in this space.”
Ranjit Radhakrishnan
Chief Product Officer, BYJU’S“The COVID pandemic has been a powerful catalyst for the e-learning sector. It has triggered a period where all stakeholders - students parents professionals teachers and schools have been left with no alternative but to explore education technology products tools and content to continue the learning process. The benefits of e-learning has been demonstrated effectively in a short time frame and that has led to adoption and engagement rates that would have otherwise taken a few years to materialize.The EdTech sector is going to see a period of aggressive growth and consolidation. Learners in both the K-12 and Up-skilling segment will adopt the e-learning process in a big way and that will increase the TAM and monetization opportunities significantly. Companies that will enable schools to adopt technology holistically will also generate value. The sector will continue to see significant investment during the covid period and beyond. There is disruption possible in terms of formats of content platform technology pedagogy scalability and many other dimensions and hence edtech products and companies in varied forms will attract investment.”
