BENGALURU: India's online education industry is set to grow eight-fold by 2021 - from $247 million in 2016 to $1.96 billion - according to a report released by search giant Google and professional services firm KPMG.
Based on primary research that covered 3,600 respondents over 27 cities, market research as well as insights from Google search, the report predicts a substantial increase in the number of paid users from 1.6 million to 9.6 million over the same period.
According to the report, searches for online education in the past two years have doubled and there's been a fourfold increase in consumption of educational content on YouTube over the past year.
More importantly, 44% of the education-related searches are now coming from beyond the top six metros, up from 35% last year. This implies that the growth in the industry is being fueled by greater internet usage in tier-2 cities.
The report identifies five major categories of online education - primary and secondary supplemental education, higher education, test preparation, reskilling and online certifications, and language and casual learning. As of now, reskilling and certification courses account for a major part of the online education market with a share of 38%.
However, the report estimates that by 2021, the largest share of 39% will belong to primary and secondary supplemental education, due to a huge addressable student base. Additionally, the test preparation category will grow the fastest with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 64%.
Interestingly, 62% of the queries regarding test preparation came from tier-2 and 3 cities. Laptops seem to be the preferred device of usage.
"A large number of education-related search queries are now coming from tier-2 and 3 cities like Patna, Guwahati, Aligarh and Kota, which points to the opportunities that the growing penetration of smartphones and better quality of internet have opened up," said Nitin Bawankule, industry director, Google India.
Stating there seems to be a higher adoption of online courses among women viz-a-viz offline courses, Sreedhar Prasad, partner, KPMG India, said "The gender-wise division of online test preparation users is 44% female and 56% male, which is encouraging as only 33% of Indian women are online in the first place."