Based on primary research that covered 3,600 respondents over 27 cities, market research as well as insights from Google search, the report predicts a substantial increase in the number of paid users from 1.6 million to 9.6 million over the same period. According to the report, searches for online education have doubled in the past two years and there's been a fourfold increase in consumption of educational content on YouTube.
Growth in the industry is being fuelled by greater internet usage in tier-2 cities.The report identifies five major categories of online education —primary and secondary supplemental education, higher education, test preparation, reskilling and online certifications, and language and casual learning.
Utilising market research by KPMG and insights from Google search, the report also states that the number of paid users of online education services will increase by 6x from 1.6 million in 2016 to approximately 9.6 million in 2021.
'A large number of education-related search queries are now coming from tier-2 and 3 cities like Patna, Guwahati, Aligarh and Kota, which points to the opportunities that the growing penetration of smartphones and better internet connectivity have opened up,' said Nitin Bawankule, industry director, Google India.
Stating that women seem to be prefering online courses to offline courses, Sreedhar Prasad, partner, KPMG India, said, 'When it comes to online test preparation, the gender-wise figures of users stand at 44% (female) and 56% (male), which is encouraging as only 33% of Indian women are online in the first place.'
According to the study, over the last two years, online searches for education have doubled, with a 3x increase from mobile devices alone. In addition, 44 percent of education-focused Google searches are coming from areas other than India’s top six metropolitan cities, with a quadruple increase in educational content consumed on YouTube in the last year alone.