Despite many initiatives and a flurry of activity both in public and private sectors, there exist many challenges for mass adoption of tablets in the education sector. Key issues include the lack of digitized textbooks and course content for the formal education sector, fragmented course material for the informal sector, as well as copyright.
Lack of ubiquitous connectivity (outside of campus) and high 3G data pricing is another challenge. A key issue is technology-familiarity and comfort level of some of the stakeholders.
During research, Convergence Catalyst realized that while the management and faculty of K-12 institutes are comfortable in adopting technology, the faculties of higher education institutes are uncomfortable and relatively slow in adoption of digital technologies, content and devices.
The digital revolution in the Indian education sector has just started and there is scope for high growth for any player (with the right proposition) in this space. Although only 7% of over 1 million K-12 schools in India are private institutes, they cater to over 40% of K-12 students.
According to a research report by Indalytics (an education portal), in 2011 about 6.75 million school and college students in urban India had access to smartphones. These students are potential target audience for custom education tablets.
Currently, most players in this space are busy making their presence felt by offering their initial solutions (hardware/software/platform/content), partnering with whichever solution/business model is ready to be launched. We expect this clamor to continue for another few quarters.
But in the long run, to win in the digital education space players will need to integrate across the value chain in a structured way, offering a complete solution including content, connectivity and customized tablet. Convergence Catalyst also believes that in the digital education space, ecosystem-partner driven go-to-market strategy is sustainable in the long term as opposed to retail strategy.
Jayanth Kolla is co-founder & partner at Convergence Catalyst