Online Education Market in India 2016-2020

Education now is much more than teacher talking to students. Online education has provided a new way of learning to develop a student’s mindset beyond schooling education. More than 370 million users are on internet in India helping online education to grow at a fast pace. E-learning market in India is estimated at more than 3 billion at present.

Online education provides information for every field of education at wide range. Byju, vedantu, educart and many more start up in India emerging fast in Indian online education market.

Online learning has helped most of the people in providing education in different languages of their choice. Massive open online courses aim at unlimited participation and open for all via web to deliver them education through different courses available.

Market Potential
Many new innovation and successful start up initiated in the field of online education in last 3 years. According to Technavio’s market research analyst prediction, online education market in India is growing at a CAGR of approximately 19% by 2020.

1.3 million users are from India out of 18 million registered learners according to recent analysis of Coursera, the world’s largest online education provider. Increasing interest in flexible, career-relevant online courses has resulted in a considerable rise in new registrations in India of 70 percent over the past 12 months. As per the survey India is the third largest market for online learning after US and China.

Government RoleIntroduction of new government policies has helped Indian online education market to have positive outlook in education industry. Government is making policies for expansion of digital literacy in India and to develop online education delivery infrastructure. Digital India Initiative with a long-term vision to provide quality and technologically aided education to all provides a major support in development of online education in India. This initiative aims to provide high quality service of internet across the country at affordable price for growth of online education in India. Government is also pursuing big companies like Qualcomm and Reliance to increase their horizon more in new technologies useful in education sector for better Indian education system.

Recent Investments

• Chan zuckerberg invested US$ 50 million in Byju’s, an education technology start-up providing online education in India.
• Bertelsmann India invests $8.2 million in Eruditus.
• Neev Knowledge Management Pvt. Ltd, offers online and classroom-based certification courses under the brand name EduPristine, has raised US$ 10 million from Kaizen Management Advisors and DeVry Inc.
• Tata Trusts of the Tata group has entered into partnership with web-based free learning portal, Khan Academy, and seeks opportunity to use technology as a medium to provide free education to everyone, anywhere in India.

Expert Speaks
Beas Dev Ralhan, CEO & Co-founder, Next Education India Pvt. Ltd quoted “According to a report by Global Market Insights, the global e-learning market was valued at over USD 165 million in 2015 and is expected to grow at over 5% from 2016 to 2023, exceeding USD 240 million. The statistics clearly indicate the growth that this sector has been experiencing, and this trend is expected to continue. Interestingly, the report also forecasts that the e-learning market in the Asia Pacific region, and particularly in India is poised to exhibit the highest growth within this period.

Just as in other parts of the world, technology has made huge inroads in India too, and today everything is available at the touch of a button. With laptops and tablets now at everyone's disposal, online learning is catching on in a big way. . Besides being low cost, online courses can be opted for anytime and anywhere, and fit well into the busy schedule of 21^st century denizens. Online classrooms also facilitate personalised learning. Whereas traditional classrooms fail to cater to the individual learning needs of students, sophisticated algorithms coupled with online lessons by subject matter experts can make learning more effective. With so many massive open online courses (MOOCs) available on a wide variety of subjects, education is truly getting democratic.
However, the flip side of this learning method is that students tend to drop out midway through the course. One of the reasons could be lack of interactivity in many online programmes. In a traditional classroom, students can approach the teachers anytime to clarify their doubts. However, this is not the case with all online courses. Hence, I see synchronous learning, where students and teachers are online at the same time and connect in real time, becoming as popular as or maybe even more popular than asynchronous learning, where students and teachers are not connected in real time.”

Raunak Jain, MD of Tula’s International School quoted “Online education is at its increasing slope and many institutes are trying to pitch in for online education by providing variety of courses. Trend is constantly shifting towards online education. Online education is cheaper and students can also pursue online courses while working. Certified institutions and government govern bodies like AICTE are helping in reduction of fake online courses.

Lot of student are coming from countries like Indonesia, Bhutan and Nigeria to study in India due to unavailability of up to the mark education. High cost of travelling stops parents to go to institution which creates less satisfaction but the best part for them is now everything is online to provide surety regarding institution. Online Education is also good for backward and rural areas families who cannot spend enough for regular courses.”

Shradha Kanwar, National Head of iNurture Education Solutions Pvt. Ltd. quoted"The potential of online education is huge in transforming the current learning ecosystem. Different variants of synchronous and asynchronous LEARNING impact the cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains thus engaging the learners and ensuring a long lasting impact."

Conclusion
Online education played important role in developing Indian education industry overall in terms of money as well as innovation. Most of the population are on internet and learn everyday something from it. Online education provides the medium for students to develop skills just by sitting home at free of cost. Innovators and investors kept on looking for better opportunities in online education as it is a growing industry and have scope of improvement in India.