With the Covid-19 pandemic forcing the closure of educational institutions across the country, education moved to the online world. Preschools, schools, colleges and universities responded to this challenge by shifting to online teaching-learning. This huge disruption also stimulated edtech companies the world over to innovate ICT solutions to ensure that the teaching-learning process continues.
Consequently, the edtech industry experienced a huge boom with Indian edtech companies receiving investments of $2.2 billion. Rakesh Gupta, an alumnus of IIT-Kharagpur and Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, former management consultant with McKinsey & Co and currently managing partner of the Hyderabad-based LoEstro Advisors, which specialises in counselling clients on strategy, fund-raising and M&A in the education, healthcare and retail sectors says, “The entire edtech industry has got super accelerated growth in 2020. Whatever they were invigorating for the next 5 years has been delivered in this year itself. There has been new accelerated growth and new business models that have emerged. There have been completely new opportunities which have during this year. This will not only last long term but has transform the education system as well.”
Source: LoEstro Advisors
Schools were very slow in adapting to technology but this year there has been an entire transformation – they were forced to use technology and what they have adopted now is amazingly deep. There has been a significant change, says Gupta adding that “about a year back, people couldn’t think about online learning, coding classes, etc. but 2020 has made these very mainstream and are going to last for a long time.”
On a similar note, Dr. Akhil Shahani, Managing Director, Thadomal Shahani Centre for Management, Shahani Group and Ask.Careers says, “One of the very few positive aspects of COVID’s effects in 2020, was that traditional resistance to adopting edtech in the classroom by schools and colleges around the world was broken. Institutional faculty and administrators had to quickly adapt to new pedagogies to facilitate effective online education of their students. I believe that some of these advanced methods of teaching will remain even after physical classrooms restart in 2021.”
Kiran Dham, CEO, Globus Infocom observes “2020 witnessed the evolution of edtech industry. Covid-19 led the digital revolution of education industry & transformed the way education is delivered. By now, students and faculty across education have experienced and somewhat adapted to remote or online learning. Advanced technologies like Cloud-based learning, App-based learning, etc have helped students and teachers to not miss the classroom learning experience. Apart from K-12 education, professionals and students pursuing higher education have also turned to edtech for vocational training, skill up-gradation and several hobby-based learning courses, which has further added to the growth of the sector. Technology kept continuity in education while making it as engaging & interactive as possible.”
Also read:
The rise of online learning and other major education events of 2020
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