Indian digital payments giant, Paytm has announced its expansion into the education sector on Tuesday, with Paytm Education. It is said to offer a bunch of services, across payments like in-app and educational centres, commerce like coaching, scholarships, test preparation, admission forms; financial support, including student insurance, educational loans, EMIs, smart cards and academic services.
It seems like Paytm is fully loaded with a wide casket of services, wntering into the edutech market.
Paytm to Help Students and Parents through Every Step of Education
Paytm will start with providing career guidance on options students have once they leave school. It will then provide them assistance with payments and support for coaching, obtaining scholarships, preparation for tests, getting and filling admission forms etc. It will also come up with related financial products like educational loans, insurance where required.
Even though there’re educational loan products available from the public sector banks, it is rather a tedious and time-taking procedure to obtain these loans. Banks demand too much documentation or take a long time to process these loans. Hopefully, Paytm can address some of these issues and make it simpler to get an educational loan.
It will also help in creating a more level playing field in the field of higher education. Lack of funds is one of the major reasons a large part of the deserving student community cannot pursue higher education.
Paytm to Stand Strong in the $101.1 Bn Education Market
Paytm Education is to tap all areas in partnership with educational institutions, both private and government. It’s going after private entrance tests as well as public university tests and government jobs. The list includes names such as Railway Recruitment Board, Maharashtra Public Service Commission, National Testing Agency, Indian Navy, Amity, VIT, Manipal, AKTU, Army Public Schools, Delhi Public Schools, Delhi University, IITs, IIMs, NITs, Aligarh Muslim University, AIMA, ICAI, Narayana Group, Career Launcher, Made Easy, Career360 and several others.
It will provide details on 25000 colleges, schools, courses and exams to facilitate payments, commerce and financial services. With a target to attract 3.5 crore users across 20,000 private schools, 1,000 higher educational institutes and 1,000 coaching institutes, Paytm is thoroughly working for it. At present, Paytm already offers fee payment services at more than 10,000 educational institutions across the country. In FY20, it plans to cross Rs 20,000 crore GMV through the education business alone.
The number of colleges and universities in India reached close to 40K in 2017-18, giving Paytm a huge market to grow into.
India Offers a Bright Market for EduTech Sector
When it comes to e-learning and online courses, India is the second-largest market after the US. and this sector is expected to reach $1.96 Bn by 2021 with around 9.5 Mn users in India. Surely, Indian education sector is far from saturated.
In 2018, the Indian edutech startups received close to $700 Mn in funding, which was an 85% jump from the $375 Mn funding in 2017. Around 3500 startups in India are catering to the education space, creating content in various formats and languages for students.
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