Online search for education rising in India

Having experienced the convenience of shopping online to booking travel tickets or job related searches, Indian consumers are now tapping more of education related websites online.

According to the recent study by Sulekha, an online search provider of local service needs and fulfillment, for the month of January 2017, the professional sports coaching category has seen a 150 percent increase in search, compared to the same period last year. This shows that Indians, especially youth have become more focused about professional sports coaching. Among the leading 8 metros of the country, Pune shows maximum interest in the professional coaching category with a city-wise growth of 277 percent, whereas Chennai sees the most number of sports coaching related searches for the month.

Similarly, the searches by the students approaching entrance exams have increased by 97 percent. Also, enquiries by students indicating strong inclination for professional education, engineering tuitions and GATE coaching have surprisingly increased by 117 percent. This emerging future trend of experiencing home coaching as a safer and more appropriate option for children can be noticed with the home coaching related enquiries increases to 1.6 times, compare to January 2016.

The overall trend shows that education in January 2017 has seen a considerable increase in demand, especially across three distinct categories. This encouraging move can be attributed to the government’s introduction of 350 online courses in the Budget 2017. The government has also allocated roughly Rs 80,000 cr for the sector, which is about 10 percent higher than last year.

Rising number of innovative Edtech startups is one of the major factors responsible for growth in online education in India. According to the December 2016 report by Google India, there have been 200 percent YOY growth in mobile development courses. The technical courses segment is the largest in the professional online courses market and is expected to grow at an impressive CAGR of over 21 percent by the end of 2020.

India is the third largest market for education in the world. The e-learning market in the country is estimated to be worth more than $3 billion. Overall, in FY 2015-16, the education market was worth about US$ 100 billion and is expected to reach US$ 116.4 billion in FY 2016-17. We have more than 1 million registered schools and 18,000 higher education institutions.