India’s edtech battleground is heating up

The shopping philosophy of an online customer is hardly unique. There are two basic criteria: best deal and the best product. It doesn’t matter which site he or she is shopping from. Just like the e-commerce business, education technology, or the edtech space in India, is fast becoming a vast hunting ground for the best deals in online education courses as global giants and local players with deep pockets jostle to lure Indian parents, on whom the cost of education usually falls.

Recently when e-commerce major Amazon announced the launch of its online test-prep platform Amazon Academy in India to help students prepare for competitive examinations including the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE)—the entrance test for engineering colleges—many wondered the rationale behind such a move. Ankur Bisen, senior vice president, retail and consumer products, Technopak points out that Amazon had to make this move in order to get a higher share of the larger consumer spend. “Everyone is playing on price and some kind of a local connect. Edtech is a price sensitive market because a lot of students in the test prep industry are not from affordable and aspirational households. There are many from middle class and low income families,” Bisen says.

The full article was originally published on Fortune India