7. The online supplemental education is a $65 mn market largely dominated by 6th-10th class courses

Published on: May 2018

The online supplemental education is largely dominated by 6th-10th class courses. Students usually try the free versions for 6-7 months before taking annual paid versions. The percentage contribution of competitive courses is highest in the JFM quarter as a huge number of student take short crash courses of preparation of competitive exams. While class 11th-12th courses are majorly taken in AMJ and JAS quarters.

8. The industry sees steady growth of user base across the quarters in 2017

Published on: Apr 2018

The ed-tech industry has seen a steady growth of user base (including paid and free users) across the quarters in 2017. The key reasons for this has been the aggressive marketing initiatives taken by the players and strengthening of lead generation team. Though majority of this increase came from free users; there was an increase in the paid users as well. This is a good news for the industry as free users on an average use the free version for 6-9 months before buying the paid services. So we can expect the effect of this to come in big time in 2018.

9. The industry sees free users getting more habituated with the platforms

Published on: Feb 2018

The ed-tech industry sees a significant increase in the average time spent by free users on their platforms from JFM-17 to OND-17. This is a good sign for the industry as it implies that the free users are getting more and more habituated with the good content available on the platforms and it is only a matter of time before they start using the paid services.

Free users on an average use the service for 6-8 months before buying the paid versions

Published on: Jan 2018

The EdTech industry takes time in converting free users to paid ones. This is due to the fact that parents do not want to buy a year-long subscription in the middle of a calendar year. Also, the unavailability of other options for parents makes the transition to becoming a paid user more challenging.

                                                      Time taken by free users to buy paid version

With the new academic year commencing in AMJ’17, all leading edtech players showcased a strong rise in revenue…

Published on: Jan 2018

Across players, key driver of revenue growth was the cyclical increase in paid user base occurring on account of the new academic year. However, revenue growth was also propelled by strong growth in ticket prices – which points to growing consumer appetite for edtech programs.

Doubts over disciplined usage of unsupervised internet is the key challenge: as reported by the Indian parents

Published on: Jan 2018

         Reasons for not buying online educational services by free users

Can players navigate the tricky road to monetization?

Consumers of free trials of online supplementary education platforms still need to be convinced of the value proposition of paid subscription: As of now, most of the subscribers going for Free Trials are primarily interested in getting access to material which is just an ‘add on’ to the material available on 100% free platforms (e.g. Youtube, Khan Academy). As a result, the benefit sought from Paid Subscription is not perceived to justify the cost.

However, consumers who go on to use the paid subscription report high satisfaction levels: RedSeer research shows that more than half of paid subscribers’ report positives outcomes after using paid modules and intend to renew their subscriptions with online supplementary education players.

Industry needs to make the case of paid subscriptions stronger for consumers: Access to a wider set of contents in free material and better demos of the paid offerings is crucial to drive faster adoption of paid subscriptions amongst free users.