NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

$8.15 billion. That’s the amount global investors staked in edtech companies in the first 10 months of 2017.

Education used to be simple: there was a blackboard, a teacher and desks in a classroom. Today, a student can practice English online, upload homework through a portal and learn chemistry through 3D immersion — such is the rise of educational technologies. And nowhere is the advent of edtech climbing more quickly than in Asia.

In 2016, global investments in Chinese edtech companies rose to $1.2 billion, according to Goldman Sachs — to put that into perspective, that’s more than triple the amount raised in 2014 and comparable to Lyft’s most recent funding round. Going forward, the edtech industry in China is expected to grow 20 percent annually, while a joint report released by Google and KPMG estimates that India’s online education market will rise more than 6x to $1.96 billion over the next four years. The entire Asia-Pacific region is projected to represent 54 percent of the global edtech market by 2020.

Of course, you can’t always believe future valuations. But the underlying fundamentals are compelling — and they’re playing a major role in driving the acceleration of edtech in Asia.

Emmanuel Nataf is the CEO and co-founder of Reedsy, a curated marketplace that connects authors and publishers with editors, designers and marketers.