Byju’s’ acquisition of Aakash, Unacademy’s expansion into offline centres, Vedantu’s acquisition of Deeksha are all pointing to offline expansion as the big growth lever for edtech players. With this, it is a fair question to ask: Is it edtech at all if you go physical?
Just as Nykaa, Lenskart, Sugar and many more have cleverly leveraged physical expansion to create an omnichannel presence to tap into relevant customers, it is imperative that edtech players go where the audiences are. In a country like India where 30 to 40 million households (perhaps a little higher for education) are the core drivers of consumption, it makes sense to go where they are, and use offline if that is their preferred medium.
The offline presence is, however, married with tech, and leverages tech significantly, to help the startups onboard students effectively, track engagement and outcomes, thereby creating an enhanced ‘phygital’ product. This phygital product has the best of both worlds, delivering classroom engagement and effectiveness, and leveraging digital for notes and explainers, interactive quizzes and doubt-solving sessions etc.
We believe that the best businesses are born not in the times of frenzy, but often in the depths of gloom. It is times like these that separate what are genuine businesses that are solving customer pain with well-crafted products, from the rest.
For every few stories of failures, we are seeing several success stories as well. In times to come, we will celebrate their achievements.
To wrap up, we saw intense highs, and to some extent the correction was welcome. It was inevitable that it would correct once the pandemic effect waned. We should, however, not go the other way and declare that edtech’s days are over. In the background, we are seeing several founders and their teams quietly building away, frugally, passionately, addressing deep customer pain through their products. We can’t wait to see them emerge into the spotlight soon.
Pai is partner, and Reddy is co-founder and partner at Blume Ventures
First Published: Aug 03, 2023, 12:09
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