What is education and what is its purpose? To be precise, education is a process of commending the procurement of knowledge and its primary purpose is to guide the apprentice through the way to accomplishment, both personal and professional. The concept of education has been there since the archaic age. But, with advancing time, the process of disseminating information and implanting them in the students’ minds, kept on getting updated. Eyeing the rapid technological advancements, the education sector, like many other, is associating with technology, to offer a futuristic structure to the education system. This affiliation has given birth to the EdTech industry, which, today, is run by multiple EdTech start-ups and giants. These companies have introduced the concept of app-aided education, which is often considered to be highly impactful for students as well as teachers.
EdTech, primarily, aims to bring education to the masses by offering academic courses at affordable fees. Also, these online courses come with a flexible remote study mode for working students, who do not have time to physically attend classes or those who cannot afford to pay exorbitant college, and often, hostel fees. However, building a promising EdTech company requires significant research and substantial knowledge of the conventional education industry. Not merely a profit-gaining instrument, a strong business model is a channel to find creative solutions to the existing problems. Ideally, an EdTech business model should fetch measurable results, comprise personalized content and ensure better efficiency along with affordability.
The most popular revenue-generating EdTech business models are:
- Freemium Business Module
It makes an EdTech company offer a basic version of the web app/mobile app to the students, teachers and parents, for free. The idea behind the offering is to give, these stakeholders, a glimpse of the conveniences, that the app-based education system can bring in, and encourage them to buy the premium version, that comes with impressive features. An EdTech app can be a dedicated online classroom platform, where teachers can conduct classes, virtually, through webcams, and students can log in to the portal and access the provided code to join the class at the scheduled time. These apps often come with augmented features, that enable teachers to create an assignment, review it, share real-time feedback and organize a quiz. The free version of the account allows students to interact with the teachers, on chat boxes. However, limits can be set to free chats. The premium plans allow teachers to accommodate more students in their virtual classes. Also, it enables parents to have a one-on-one interaction with teachers to stay updated on their children’s progress reports. - On-Demand Business Module
This model is often considered one of the most infallible ways to run an EdTech company effectively. Adhering to the model, business owners can devise a teacher-on-demand app, on which teachers can list themselves so that students can find the required teacher by just using certain keywords. In such a case, each teacher has a different per-hour fee. Once a student confirms a teacher and his/her fee structure, a link gets generated, clicking which the session can be entered. The payment made by the student is initially held by the admin and on the completion of the session, a certain commission is charged by the admin before releasing the final payment to the teacher. The tutors need to pay a service charge, for using the in-built tools, while registering on the portal. - eLearning Marketplace
It is, technically, an app where tutors can create customised courses, using the learning management system and teaching tools from the platform. The admin lists the courses along with their curriculums on the app, from where students can select and purchase. In such a model, tutors can earn up to 97% of the total course price, if the enrolment took place because of their marketing efforts or reputation. In this case, when students purchase courses due to the app’s strategic marketing campaign, tutors can earn not more than 50% of the price. Students are often offered subscriptions to courses, which comprise multiple parts of the same topic. The subscription plans mostly offer courses at a considerably discounted fee. - Consumer Approach
This approach enables schools to use products like educational games etc., for free, but later charges the parents, whose kids want to continue usage at home. In such a scenario, schools act as the primary lead generators. As per this model, teachers use certain product/products in school and suggest parents continue using the product at home to ensure optimum mental stimulation of their children. - Pay Per Session Module
According to this business model, the platform or the app charges its students based on the content usage duration or number of modules accessed. Also, EdTech companies often advertise commissions to generate revenues.Summary:
To meet the ever-growing demand for simpler, convenient and economic learning modules, EdTech companies, these days, are constantly equipping the education system with magnificent learning solutions like live online tuitions, doubt clarification sessions, smart classes, exam preparation support, competitive exams classes and many more. However, an EdTech start-up, aiming for exponential growth, should consider taking clients’ feedback. Also, it should have certified educators onboard and push value-adding content like research papers and case studies, to fetch credibility to the brand and its offerings.
