Bangalore: The next big thing in the Indian education sector is the online professional education market. Big opportunities are emerging in this space as the online professional education market in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of 30% to reach US$5.7bn by 2020. Currently, the online professional education market size in India is US$2bn. This is revealed by research report titled Whitepaper on the Digital Learning Market in India prepared by Technopak and Simplilearn. The report covers the most significant trends expected to impact the digital learning landscape in India.
Growth in the online professional education market in India will outpace the global trend as globally, this digital education market is expected to grow at compound annual growth (CAGR) of 14% from 2016 – 2020. The report mentioned that with the growing demand for skilled talent in the IT industry today, working professionals are increasingly looking to enhance their employability by up-skilling with online certification training.
The appetite for getting online certification and education in emerging technologies like Big Data, Cloud Computing and Salesforce, Project Management, Mobile App Development and Digital Marketing among working professionals is rising at a faster rate. Technological advancements in the IT industry have raised awareness about certification training, which is reinvigorating the Indian online professional education space.
The report highlights some emerging trends that have potential to grow multi fold in India. The gamification of learning and simulation as well as the implementation of augmented and virtual reality in education is one such area which is expected to surprise everybody. It states that the global market size of simulation-driven learning is ~US$4.4bn. With a share of 0.25%, the simulation based learning market in India is estimated to be worth US$13mn in FY’16, and is predicted to grow at a CAGR of over 100% in the next 4-5 years.
“Digital-Learning and online certifications open up a gamut of options for students looking to enter both traditional and non-traditional fields. Students get access to world-class content, faculty, pedagogy and certification – anytime, anywhere and at a much affordable cost”, says Aurobindo Saxena, Vice President at Technopak Advisors. Re-skilling and shift in skills driven by transformation in technology is creating huge demand for online certificate courses. This rapid demand is supported by the increasing requirement of skills such as data analysis, project management and digital marketing.
Krishna Kumar, Chief Executive Officer of Simplilearn said, “The whitepaper summarizes the different growth drivers of the Indian digital learning market, along with the opportunities and challenges they bring for the online education service providers. Keeping in mind the current skill-gap and the advances in Ed-tech, it’s indeed exciting to see how online certifications have opened up a gamut of opportunities for students and professionals in a world where technologies are changing every few years.”
The report also makes an attempt to cover the obstacles for adoption of Digital Learning education. Lack of content in regional languages and poor internet connectivity in smaller towns and semi-urban areas poses the key impediment towards widespread adoption of this technology-driven learning.
