What does changing swimlanes mean?
We study the impact of EdTech online players going offline and vice-versa. Read an operator's view point on what the transition entails and will there be success?
Welcome back and welcome to the new subscribers, getting more and more people to read this blog keeps me going and writing more.
This post is a part of a 2-post series and is a follow-on to the below post where we covered why Indian online EdTech players are going offline and the reaction from offline players like Allen countering with Allen Digital. If you haven’t read it then give it a go.
So now that we have, hopefully, settled the debate on why EdTech players are going Offline and vice versa for offline players. We dig deeper into what does it take? So far we have talked about economics and student/parent preferences I want to dedicate the next section to student preferences - particularly in test preparation.
Let’s look at an Unacademy video. If you have 2 mins and 41 seconds then let’s do an exercise. Pick up a pen and paper and write down anything that comes to your mind when you see the people in this video.
Here are the words I picked up:
sacrifice sleep
shared accountability (pillow thrown)
family support (tea)
books
video lessons
harassment (in metro)
home town
co-learning
co-living
anytime learning
What’s your list? Share as a comment to the post, it will be interesting to compare notes. Post a photo/screenshot if you want to save some time.
So what is it that I make of the video? That test prep is an intense experience often done well with others (in a co-living or co-learning environment). There are several students who need to do it from their hometown, particularly girls, due to societal and safety issues - and while that is sad, the solace is that they at least get access to good quality education online. However, the video reminds me more of Kota, other local physical players like Aakash institute (bought by Byju’s) or FIITJEE rather than online education - this transition happens in the second half of the video but it’s still not complete.
I have led a large hybrid test prep business and am familiar with many of these preferences. It was EdTech before the word became popular. Our thesis was quite simple: people in smaller cities (and metros for that matter) either end up moving to big cities or commute several hours daily to attend classes to get access to high-quality teachers. We moved this business online by taking the teacher behind a camera - live- and provided access to as many as 5000 learners in a single stream. The pedagogical design made it very effective. We, however, had a network of centers as the internet wasn’t ubiquitous back in the day, and importantly student preference required proctored/designated learning environments. I was always surprised to see this going in the direction of digital but I see that the growth of this change has stalled with the pandemic, well, becoming a way of life and an endemic.
For those of you who are new to EdTech and are not well versed with pedagogy, I recommend that you read the below article on pedagogy to understand the broad difference between online vs offline. You can also come back to this later.
Let me take your attention to this slide from L.E.K Consulting in the report Navigating Investment Opportunities in Education, co-authored by two good friends among its three authors.
This slide is interesting as it mentions that the threat of digital disruption is low for K-12 and medium for test prep, and both fall under high short-term exposure due to COVID 19. So again no wonder that people are moving offline and incumbents need to react.
Let’s now head to the final section where we cover is it easy to transition and what does it take?
Any guesses of where the below picture is from?
It’s the cycle stand at Resonance, Kota.
What strengths and capabilities do offline players have? Here’s a list:
Infrastructure Management
Crowd Management (clear from the above picture)
Face-to-Face Teaching
Physical Pedagogy
Structuring peer group interactions
Student mobilization (less digital more physical)
Meeting parental preferences
Now let’s contrast that to the strengths of online players
Platform and app management
Multiple classes in the day
Online Teaching
Digital Pedagogy
Digital Doubt solving
Online Marketing
Appeal to student preferences
Given that both these are diametrically opposite how shall the two meet? It may sound like an easy transition but it’s not given that both are diametrically opposite and are embedded into the culture of organizations. While I see that many EdTech players are hiring relevant people to help move the needle it’s never easy to change the culture. While some people think that players like Allen who are flush with capital will be able to throw money at the problem - IMHO, they will find it very tough as so far burning capital has not been in their DNA.
We can dedicate another post to the detail if there is enough interest. But I will leave you with this.
This is a screengrab from the Unacademy home page. To be fair, they have created a separate page for their offline centers, a micro-site if you will. But the home page is still talking about a digital leaner experience.
Now, let’s talk about their positioning. Again, I refer to their website.
Not an easy shift and that too not overnight. Interestingly, Aakash started making the move to digital much before the pandemic and had the tablet. Before the pandemic, the digital product wasn’t opted for by its mainstream sales team - as it cannibalized the high fee physical classroom sale. But during the pandemic - as I hear - they sold digital because of lockdowns. Wonder how that’s fairing now? Would be great to hear some statistics around this. Anyway, Aakash may have a headstart in this transition. Their website seems to state that they have figured out how to make the two co-exist.
I would love to hear your comments on this post and ideas on anything else I should be writing about. I am also looking for co-authors on posts of interest that we can cover together. If you have an interest/idea that resonates with the blog's vision then reach out and we can discuss it.