Bengaluru, January 13
Jayant Sinha, Member of Parliament (Lok Sabha) and Chairman, Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance, has welcomed the edtech companies’ move to form a self-regulatory body.
“Many aspects of competitive conduct, market conduct is best left to market participants to sort out for themselves. It is only when self-regulation and competitive conduct goes past ethical and other norms that you have to establish legal rules of the games...My only appeal to the industry will be to make sure that it is being done in a very genuine and thoughtful manner and it reflects the best self-regulation in the world and I hope they have benchmarked themselves to edtech companies around the world and other self-regulatory regimes that might exist globally,” Sinha said. He was speaking at the India Digital Summit.
Edtechs form self-regulatory body
On Wednesday, The Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) announced the formation of the India EdTech Consortium (IEC) that includes edtech majors such as BYJU’s, Unacademy, upGrad, Simplilearn, and Vedantu among others. The consortium has committed to adhere to a common ‘code of conduct’ and establish a two-tier grievance redressal mechanism for consumers.
Centre’s advisory
Last month, the Centre had released an advisory against edtech companies. The advisory noted that some ed-tech companies are luring parents in the garb of offering free services and getting the Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT) mandate signed or activating the auto-debit feature, especially targeting the vulnerable families.
In his address at the summit, Sinha said global listing raises visibility and enables start-ups to grow on the global stage. But on the other hand, the revenue leakage that goes along with that remains a concern, “we can’t have a situation where all India’s important economic activities are domiciled outside India,” he added.