Non-regulated coaching, pre-schooling and certification courses are offering huge business opportunities to entrepreneurs in the current state of highly regulated education industry in India. More number of education institutes have been partnering with companies to keep up with the industry requirements. Simultaneously, the individualization concept of coaching is also gaining momentum among companies. Thus, briefing about current state of education industry, colleges and corporate collaboration, individualization concept of coaching and the future move of education industry towards online Gaurav Golwalkar, Co-Founder, Buytestseries.com spoke to Educationbiz.com.
Do you think that the education system in India is very complex?
Education is a complex and highly regulated space for schools and colleges. But as far as coaching, pre-schooling or even certification courses are concerned, it is a very good space for entrepreneurs as a business opportunity. To run school and colleges you need a lot of money and a long gestation time to actually make money. The ongoing cases of colleges shutting down are phenomenal. The mortality rate in this space is a lot and from investment perspective it is not a very viable option.
Can you please explain the difference between content creator and content seller in education space?
Flipkart or Amazon sells CD DVD for tuition or coaching class called Plancess or even a Buy Test Series. Plancess has its own content and the seller is different. Earlier this was not the case as coaching institutes use to sell and marketise their own contents and now there is a difference between content creator and the seller. There are not many pure play aggregators in the education space like Buy Test Series, but there are broader based aggregators like Amazon.
Why do you think that Indian curriculum is always outdated?
The curriculums will always remain outdated and can never catch up with what industry wants. Industry sets the base and academia will always have to follow. In all spheres of life any technology or knowledge piece is getting outdated in 6 to 12 months. The only way to solve this is that the industry will start taking up or training the last semester or the last leg of the students.
How can academia be acknowledged of industry requirement?
We have been observing that the partnership is happening between colleges and companies. The industry stakeholders visit colleges as faculties and enlighten students about industry requirements and predicting further, there will be broader industry academic collaboration.
But one thing we need to understand is always there should be a fine line between where academia ends and corporate begins. The reason being is academia is more ideal driven and corporate are more profit driven. Corporate train the students because they want to reduce costs and basically don’t want to train them on their salary.
How can individualization concept of coaching further lead to better outcome?
Individualization ensures adaptive learning with more practice in particular subject and technology makes it possible without incremental cost. The individualized service can be imparted through technological means. The concept is already in play, there are a lot of companies working on it, but just that monetizing it has been difficult. The Indian customer is actually very stingy when it comes to actually paying for this.
Currently how big is the size of education industry and what could be the future?
Currently the education industry in India is pegged at $120 bn with CAGR of 10-15 percent. Five years down the line growth will be in the non-regulated coaching space while regulated space is going to struggle. Government spending in regulated space can be the only driver. The total industry will be $170-$180 five years down the line.
There will be more focus towards online learning fuelled by internet service providers like Reliance Jio offering high speed internet at reduced cost of data. This will ensure that people across remote areas will have access to the quality content.
