Ed-tech Startups in India Offering Professional Education

In 2020, the Asia-Pacific region represented a substantial 54% of the global edtech market, which shows the sheer potential of this market. India’s population of young people stands at a whopping 356 million, signifying the rising number of edtech players and acceleration of edtech investments. With COVID becoming a driving factor in contributing to unprecedented surge in job upskilling, a report suggests that India is likely to become an enormous USD 313 billion online education and skill market by 2030.

From April 2000 to June 2021, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) equity inflows in the education market stood at USD 6,154.87 million. Skill development is the most preferred edtech sub sector at seed stage. In this blog, we list out key edtech start-ups offering professional education, and with strong capital inflow.

Eruditus Executive Education

Valued at US$ 350.5M, Eruditus is a new entry into the unicorn club. The edtech start-up is led by Ashwin Damera. Among the leading edtech start-ups in India in 2022, Eruditus offers several management and leadership courses, apart from other professional curriculum for technology, data science, digital transformation, banking, and finance by collaborating with the top universities of the world. Its key skills include executive education programs, executing growth strategies, custom learning interventions, executive development programmes, and consortiums.

Simplilearn

This edtech start-up is one of the top digital skills companies in the world, claims the CEO. Pitched as world's #1 online bootcamp for digital skills training, Bangalore-based Simplilearn helps professionals in acquiring skills to strive in the digital world. It provides online training in Project Management, Data Science, Cloud Computing, Cyber Security, and Digital Marketing. Simplilearn offers certification programs, individual courses, and partnership with some of the top world universities.

Unacademy

Founded in 2015, Unacademy has its headquarters in Bangalore. It is also among the LinkedIn top startups 2021 list of 25 companies. This edtech startup bills itself as the “Netflix of education,” and offers courses across key skills like Customer Relationship Management, C++, and C (Programming Language). It has now become one of the fastest growing startups in the edtech space.

UpGrad

Headquartered in Mumbai, UpGrad was founded in 2015. The budding demand for upskilling and remote working became tailwinds for upGrad, which doubled its learners base starting from January 2021. upGrad is a unicorn edtech, which offers professional courses across common skills of C (Programming Language), Market Research, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). The startup enables learners to get degrees from some of the renowned world universities and colleges like Liverpool Business School, IIIT Bangalore, IIM Kozikhode, Wharton School, and IIT Madras among others. UpGrad works on a B2C model and earns revenue through upfront student fee for courses in which they’re enrolled, and contractual revenue through companies for training their employees.

Henry Harvin

Pitched as the competency development organization, Henry Harvin is a Delhi-based edtech startup that began operations in 2012.  It bills itself amongst the top 500 edtech companies in the world, and amongst top 100 edtech Indian companies. It has its customer base in over 97 countries. Henry Harvin offers learning solutions to academics and industry professionals across a wide range of courses. It works with some of the leading government entities, technology colleges, corporates, and management colleges to provide education and training courses.

We at present, are at the transformational time where education can be digitized industry-wide. The idea is not about adapting to the change to strive in cut-throat competition. It’s more about helping the education sector to continue its transformational regime by being the methodology that gives a helping hand to digitization.  It may appear daunting, but it is not impossible. A lot of you reading this are already prepared to take the leap. You already have the team that can take this existential challenge head-on. Talk to us to co-design a plan to explore thinking about your own edtech startup.