Amazon pushing deeper into education with a new learning platform
India is home to the most valued edtech start-up in the world and has a burgeoning number of industry unicorns. In 2021, even Indian venture capitalists think it’s a market to look out for. And if that wasn’t enough, Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, is looking at India’s edtech market, apart from his already bullish e-commerce firm Amazon.
India’s education sector is poised to rise from the current $117 billion to $225 billion by FY25, according to a study by PGA Labs and IVCA. And the largest players are competing for clients, investments and moolah in order to get a slice of the pie.
- The education sector in India is poised to rise from the current $117 billion by FY25 to $225 billion.
- And the largest players are competing for clients, investments and moolah in order to get a slice of the pie.
- Here’s how the edtech market in India panned out for one day.
With the test preparation market, the multinational e-commerce giant made its entrance into the edtech sector. To help students study for the JEE (Joint Entrance Examination) to gain admission to engineering colleges, Amazon Academy was introduced. Amazon will include instructional resources, live tutorials and detailed tests.
Amazon Academy strives to provide everyone with high-quality, accessible schooling, beginning with those studying for entrance exams for engineering. Our goal is to help students attain their results while inspiring millions of students to be served by educators and content partners. Our primary emphasis has been on the quality of content, deep learning analytics and understanding of students. This launch will help young engineers train better and gain the winning edge in JEE,’ said Amol Gurwara, Amazon India’s Director of Education.
India, home to over 1.3 billion people, is an immense market. Over the last few years, Amazon has been expanding its activities in the region, which still has a comparatively nascent e-commerce sector compared to its neighbor China and countries in the West.
Reports say that Amazon currently hires more than 65,000 people in the country, but when CNBC attempted to validate the number, Amazon refused to comment. Amazon said last May that in order to fulfill Covid’s demand, it wanted to recruit 50,000 more temporary employees in India.
In December 2019, the Seattle-based tech giant opened a massive new office in Hyderabad with room for over 15,000 employees, which is supposedly the single largest building in the world for the sector.
The online jobs site for Amazon reveals that the company is searching for software development developers and front-end engineers in India to work on Amazon Pay, an Amazon-owned online payment processing service.
“We are following Sr. Engineers to develop a payment network that will provide our millions of consumers with new payment channels and allow the ‘cash to digital’ economy,’ one work ad reads.
It continues:’ Amazon India Payments has an ambitious vision for both online and offline purchases to become the most trusted, universally embraced payment solution on and off Amazon. Amazon India is investing systematically in local product innovation in the fields of payment experience, payment management, novel payment instruments and retailer solutions to implement this vision.
Similar Partnerships In The Past
A new field of opportunity has been found by Facebook, which attracts more people than any other foreign corporation in India, to further expand its tentacles in the second largest Internet market in the world.
In different phases, Facebook said it would have training. Over 10,000 teachers will be qualified in the first phase; in the second, 30,000 students will be coached. The three-week AR training will explore the basics of the nascent technologies and how to construct virtual reality environments using Facebook’s Spark AR Workshop.
In recent years, Facebook has expanded its efforts to raise awareness of the sick side of technology as its site faces the abuse of its own resources in the world. Last year, it collaborated with the telecoms giant Reliance Jio Networks to launch “Digital Udaan,” the “largest ever digital literacy program” for first-time internet users in the world, in which it will ultimately spend $5.7 billion. By user count, India is Facebook’s largest market.
Google partnered with CBSE, an Indian government organisation that supervises education in private and public schools in the country, to produce by the end of this year a “blended learning experience” across 22,000 schools in the world’s second largest internet market.
The Search giant, which also released plans to invest $10 billion in India over the course of five to seven years, said it will train more than 1 million teachers in India this year and offer a range of free tools such as G Suite for Education, Google Classroom and YouTube to help digitize the education experience in the nation, which like other countries, closed schools earlier this year to prevent the spread of COVID-19.
Google said that India’s education system faces three challenges: the consistency of digital content in Indian languages, the ability of teachers to use digital technologies, and access to smartphones and the Internet.
Google has supplied a number of schools in India, including Podar, Kendriya Vidyalaya, Nehru World and GD Goenka, with free education resources such as Google Meet and Google Classroom in recent months, she said.
The Android-maker has also revealed a new $1 million grant from Google.org, Google’s philanthropic arm, to the Kaivalya Education Charity (KEF), a foundation in India that works with partners to create education opportunities for underprivileged children.
Byju’s
The $12 billion BYJU’S is expected to purchase Aakash Educational Services for a whopping $1 billion from the brick and mortar preparatory services institute. When the transaction goes off, it becomes one of the world’s largest edtech transactions.
Aakash Educational Services Limited (AESL) announced that it is in talks with Byju’s to establish a close relationship, though BYJU’S declined to comment on the matter. We would like to state that AESL is on a journey to create the largest digitally-enabled, omni-channel education business in India to put these speculations to rest.