Covid-19 accelerated the education sector’s digital revolution in India. While India’s overall gross domestic product (GDP) contracted 7.3% in 2020-2021 due to Covid-19, the EdTech sector was an outlier, registering a phenomenal growth. The sector also received a surge of private equity/venture capital funding, from $325 million in 2019 to $1,833 million in 2020, i.e., an increase of 464%! This impressive spurt was largely attributable to Covid-induced lockdowns, the demand by traditional educational institutes for EdTech infrastructure, and the broader societal transition towards online education. It was bolstered by factors such as an ambitious expansion by industry leaders into tier 3/tier 4 cities, consolidation, acquisition of smaller platforms by larger platforms, and EdTech companies entering non-traditional segments, apart from K-12 education such as coding, gamification, and higher education.
The Indian Government’s National Education Policy, 2020 came at an opportune moment, providing fillip to the sector. It stressed the development of EdTech infrastructure and specifically envisaged the establishment of the National Educational Technology Forum, a platform for the free exchange of ideas on technology in education.
Please click here to read the full article by Gaurav G. Arora published in The Times of India.
Gaurav’s practice covers mergers & acquisitions, private equity, corporate structuring and restructuring, and general corporate commercial matters (including data privacy and white-collar crime investigations).