India's Online Education Sector to Grow up to $1.96 billion by 2021: Report

According to the analysis of search giant Google and KPMG – a professional services firm, India's online education sector is expected to grow eight-fold by 2021. The study conducted by the two expert agencies state that online education industry will grow from $247 million in 2016 to $1.96 billion by 2021.

The primary research conducted by Google and KPMG covered 3,600 respondents across 27 cities. The study concluded that there will be a considerable increase in the number of paid users that access online education.

The five major categories identified by the research in the field of online education are higher education, primary and secondary supplemental education, test preparation, online certifications, reskilling, language and casual learning.

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Following are the highlights of the study conducted by Google and KPMG:

• The number of paid users who access online education will increase from 1.6 million to 9.6 million till 2021.
• Searches for online education content has also doubled in the past two years, stated the research.
• The consumption of education content available on YouTube has also increased fourfold within the past year.
• The percentage of educational searches coming from cities other than the six metros has also increased from 35% to 44% as compared to 2016.
• The number of education-based internet usage has increased tremendously in the tier-2 cities.
• Reskilling and certification are the two most popular courses of India’s online education market contributing up to 38% of the entire share.
• The research also indicates that the largest share will be contributed by primary and secondary supplemental education, i.e. up to 39% by 2021.
• The fastest growth rate in the online education sector will be achieved by the test preparation segment with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 64%.
• Of the total, 62% of the queries regarding test preparation come from tier-2 and 3 cities where laptops are the preferred device for usage.

Sreedhar Prasad, Partner, KPMG India, informed that among the online test preparation division, 44% of the candidates are female and 56% are male. He added that this is a commendable achievement as only 33% of India’s population are women.

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Patna, Aligarh, Guwahati and Kota are some of the tier-2 and tier-3 cities that lead in the number of education-based searches. This also indicates that the number of smartphone users has increased and the quality of the internet available in these cities has also improved, added Nitin Bawankule, Industry Director, Google India.