Author / Li Wenjie
Edit / Xu Wei
A group of volunteers departed from the ancient Indian city of Kolkata. After a three-hour drive, they transferred to a half-hour boat and then bumped on a tricycle for an hour.
In this poor mountain village, people eat and wear all year round, and sick people rarely survive. But here, a group of children changed their destiny by a network cable-since 1990, the famous Indian professor Sukata decided to provide computers to poor villages in India, and use Internet education to connect poor children in India to the world, Karakati Village It is the first stop.
And this is just a microcosm of the rapid development of online education in India. In recent years, the Indian online education market is constantly exuding potential and even attracting many Chinese online education companies.
After e-commerce, games, short videos, and so on, China’s online education companies have also gone straight to India.
India changed by online education
Through the lush vegetation, push the dark brown simple wooden door, the “School in Cloud” in front of him looks unremarkable. A small wood-topped classroom is a typical Indian building surrounded by vermilion fences. A corner of the outdoor is stacked with colorful schoolbags, one of the dirty schoolbags, the “Facebook” logo is particularly prominent.
Through the huge glass floor-to-ceiling windows, seven or eight computer desks are placed in the classroom. The desks are full of children of different ages, and a video is playing on a hanging TV in the front of the classroom.
In the introduction narration of the documentary “Childhood in Other Country”, “This is more like an Internet cafe in the 1990s.”
However, a miracle is being born-every afternoon, the school will connect volunteers in a corner of the world to let children talk directly to the outside world; children who have never been educated and know nothing about the Internet , Learn how to input questions into search engines and retrieve answers on the website; in order to read English words on the Internet, they spontaneously formed groups to learn English together …
Online education has not only changed poor students in India, but also changed wealthYu International School.
In India ’s wealthiest Goa, the Internet is also becoming the most important teaching tool for students. Teachers in India said frankly, “Computers are already a part of the lives of this generation of children. You need to make them realize how to use computers in the best way, whether it is a book or the Internet, and learn to use resources.”
Cloud school in the documentary “Childhood in Other Country” filmed in the cloud school
Monica, who is in charge of Chinese teaching in the middle school at an international school in India, has been from China to India for half a year. She told Zinc Scale, “Indian students are deeply troubled by high housing prices, severe employment situation, and the caste system that lasts for thousands of years, and the uneven distribution of educational resources is very serious.”
Monica found that although India and China implement free and compulsory education, the education system is also divided into a public school system and a private education system. However, public schools in India lack teachers, have chaotic management, and have poor teaching equipment. Therefore, many Indian families even put their children in private schools in order to send their children to private schools.
“This is also the importance of online education in India. Access to educational resources to break down the class has become the reason why Indian students, including adults, choose online education, which is low cost and convenient.” Monica said that in her school, In addition to students, many teachers and parents of students, in order to take various civil service, engineering and medical examinations, have been studying related courses through online education platforms in recent years.
Policy guidance also plays an important role. Earlier, the Indian government put forward the concept of “Digital India” and proposed specific actions for e-education. First, all schools access broadband; second, all schools provide free wifi; third, open digital literacy; fourth, apply MOOC, develop Large-scale online open courses.
Under the government ’s attention, India ’s online education market has unleashed great potential. According to Technopak20, a well-known management consulting company in IndiaThe 16-year report shows that the total education market in India was 100 billion US dollars in 2016. Due to the rapid expansion of the digital learning market and the world ’s largest population of 6-17 years old, the Indian education market will grow to 180 billion US dollars in 2020, almost in 2016. Twice.
The continued optimism of capital has catalyzed the further development of online education in India. According to the Economic Times, the Indian education technology market has attracted a total of $ 1.5 billion. Institutions including Facebook, Tiger Global, Matrix Partners and GGV Capital have invested in at least one Indian education technology company.
According to a KPMG report, India ’s online learning market will grow 42% by 2021, and the market size will reach $ 29 million. The report pointed out that “English learners are the main promoters of online language learning.”
Chinese companies are rushing into the “Nuggets”
“Brother, Rohit teased me in front of girls. I can’t speak English. This is the most important war in my life. I can’t speak English at all.” In front of the camera, an Indian boy in school uniform Friends complained.
At this time, the boy named Rohit came over, took out his mobile phone, and showed him the secret weapon of learning English on the mobile phone-Netease Youdao Dictionary U-Dictionary Overseas Edition.
This is one of the works of the Youdao Dictionary short video contest marketing campaign. On Youtube, there are already 3.85 million views.
This nugget of online education in India has made many Chinese education technology companies see the hope of “early moon near the water tower”. Behind this series of marketing short videos, Chinese education companies voted for India look.
As early as 2016, NetEase ’s Youdao Dictionary entered the Indian market through the educational tool product U-Dictionary.
“India is currently the most demographic dividend emerging sea market. The market is in a period of rapid growth, and many industries have not yet formed a stable competitive landscape. This is an important opportunity for U-Dictionary.” NetEase Youdao The relevant person in charge told Zinc Scale that in India, quite a lot of people are desperately progressive. They need to acquire knowledge to achieve the leap in class, and English is one of the fastest ways. Therefore, there is a huge consumer market for English education in India.
According to the user portraits provided by Youdao, half of the users are between 18-24 years old, and most of them are from third- and fourth-tier cities. They hope to learn English to get a simple job or upgrade their skills to get better. Job opportunities.
In the short video U-Dictionary’s interface
“Our experience in the domestic market and the success of U-Dictionary in India have given us confidence.” The above-mentioned relevant person in charge said so.
In fact, NetEase Youdao is just a little wave of the Indian wave this time.
According to Zhixiang.com, many Chinese companies have recently entered the Indian online education market. Ape Counseling, YY and other companies have begun to explore the Indian market by establishing overseas teams, investing in online education institutions, or expanding their product business.
Among them, the ape counseling strategy invested in a K-12 online tutoring platform called ape seal, the investment amount has not been disclosed.
It is worth noting that according to Qixinbao ’s business information, the Indian headquarters of Ape India is located in Bangalore. One of its founders is the senior director of the Meituan Diandian business group Liu Can, and he and the team developed the product ODA Class It went online in November 2019.
The former head of gogokid, a product of byte beat benchmark VIPKID, also revealed to the media that byte beating has also made a product similar to the job gang in India. Insiders in charge of the byte-beating education business said that in the byte-beating overseas education market, India is currently doing relatively well, and the products are still incubating and have not been officially announced.
The road to sea is full of thorns
Some data and examples prove the correctness of the selection of these Chinese education companies-the local operation team of Youdao Dictionary, working in a shared office space in Delhi for 9 months, has created more than 30 million in India. User data.
Li Yong, founder of Ape Coaching, once said, “ODA Class has harvested over 1 million subscribers in 50 days, proving the possibility of team success.”
The emphasis on sinking markets is the common denominator of these education companies marching into India. It is for this reason that, although American companies were the first to reach Internet users in India, Chinese companies have quickly captured the user base of third- and fourth-tier cities in India and occupied a broader market.
But the road to sea is not as easy as expected.
In spite of the growing number of competitors, Byju ’s, India ’s homegrown online education platform, is still dominant, and companies from other overseas countries such as the United States are also pouring in. What do China’s online education teams need to face directly from this competition?
”India ’s local online education platform Byju ’s
The formation of the overseas team is a big problem. For NetEase, which requires localized operations, “In India, talent recruitment is indeed a big difficulty. The Internet talent market in India is not as mature as China, which also brings great difficulties to our localized operations. . “
The relevant person in charge of Netease Youdao told Zinc Scale, “The online education market in India and China is still very different, including cultural differences, the intricate language usage and network environment in India.”
“India is the slowest 4G country in the world, with a 4G penetration rate of only 21%, far lower than the 44% penetration rate in Asia over the same period; and the tariffs for traffic are higher than other developing countries.” It is said that the investigation team found that most users in India will use it for a whileAfter uninstalling the app, because the phone memory is small, if you want to use other apps, you must first uninstall the previous software and download it when you use it next time. “For this reason, U-Dictionary compressed the installation package to 4M at that time, and all languages are available. Offline word packs, turn around whenever you want, and are not restricted by the network. “
A more serious reality is that most Chinese online education companies going to India believe that the Indian online education market is still in a very preliminary stage, and the online payment habits of locals have yet to be cultivated.
The data more intuitively shows that despite the great market potential, online education in India has not yet been able to speak of an “outbreak.” According to Inc42, the Indian education market is worth US $ 101 billion in 2019, and the online education market is worth US $ 563 million, accounting for only 0.56% of the entire industry.
“Some Indian parents, like Chinese parents, worry that their children will be exposed to electronic products and waste time playing games, which hinders the popularization of learning platforms.” Monica also told Zinc Scale that the average or lower economic level Areas, even the Internet has not been popularized, and many students and parents do not yet know the existence of online education.
It can be seen that the road to sea for Chinese education companies is still long, but under the constraints of capital chase, increased competition in the domestic market, difficulty in obtaining domestic customers, and peak flow, etc., they entered India, which is similar to China’s national conditions, and then explored a larger scale of going overseas The way is their only way.
It can be seen from the current path of these companies to enter India. With the deepening of globalization, Chinese online education companies will inevitably face many problems when going overseas. Therefore, in the process of exploring the road to the sea, relevant companies still need to think about how to improve their international competitiveness and solve the problems of localization.