With more schools getting to digitize over the next five years, the School Digitization market, which is both ERP (enterprise resource planning) and content (sold directly to the school or through the school to the parents), is expected to grow around 20x to over $500 million, according to Redseer Strategy Consultants.

This push will take a larger population of children and schools to the next phase of modern education than edtech has done so far. Amidst the larger slowdown in funding and edtech businesses declaring poorer-than-expected results, school digitisation is one bright spots in the sector. 

“Over the years, the more affluent private schools, with higher capacity to pay, have been the first target of edtech players looking to convert schools to paying customers. However, a clear trend being seen is of players going after the Affordable Private Schools (APSs) - typically, schools with less than ₹2,500 monthly fees,” Aditya Agrawal, researcher with Redseer noted. 

Private schools are said to make up a third of the total schools and are set to educate more than half of India’s children by 2027. High fees schools are more open and willing to pay for digital solutions making them an obvious first choice for most edtech players. “Catering to the APSs is a difficult proposition though, and EdTech players are exploring Freemium models that try to monetize their customer base through customization, additional modules, or content,” Agrawal added.

As part of a study, Redseer interviewed over 50 Affordable Private Schools (APS) to understand the importance and need for digitization. Learning Management activities’ like digital content, live class delivery, and class management came out to be both important as well as in high need of digitization. Communication was identified as the most important need, followed by content and student learning data such as report cards.

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