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Samreen Ahmad · · 4 min readWhy Indian edtech’s self-regulation move won’t stop govt intervention
Top Indian edtech players such as Byju’s, Unacademy, upGrad, Vedantu, and Simplilearn have come together to form a self-regulatory body called the Indian Edtech Consortium (IEC).
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Formed under the aegis of the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI), the consortium aims to make online education more accessible to all.
The formation of the IEC comes at a time when the Indian edtech industry is plagued with cases of bad behavior and predatory pricing, so much that these cases have reached the Indian Parliament.
Last week, the country’s education ministry said that it would be working out a regulation policy for the edtech industry, which has boomed amid the pandemic. There were reports that edtech companies were exploiting students with loans for fee-based courses.
“Students should not be lured to take loans by false promises from [edtech firms],” said the Indian Education Minister at the time.
An industry insider tells Tech in Asia on the condition of anonymity that the IEC was formed in response to this announcement by the government.
“In order to have the power to negotiate with the government, you need to have all the constituents on board as one voice rather than separate voices,” says the person.
However, the IAMAI denies this, saying that the framework had been in the works for the past six months. “This is nowhere in anyway a response to what the government is doing around edtech,” Bhanupreet Saini, head of public policy at IAMAI, tells Tech in Asia.
See also: Byju’s aims to be profitable by FYE 2022 despite acquisition spree
Concerns of going the China route
Regardless of when the framework for the self-regulatory body started, some see the timing of the announcement as a sign that edtech firms in the country are concerned. This is especially the case after China, a neighboring country to India, took a hard stand on its US$48 billion edtech sector.
The country introduced regulations turning these education firms into non-profit organizations, putting restrictions on foreign investment, and forbidding firms in the segment to go public, among other measures.
See also: Inside China’s crusade against the education sector’s excesses
The aftershocks of this crackdown are still being felt in China. Just this week, New Oriental, an online tutoring firm in the country, said it laid off 60,000 employees. Even TikTok parent firm ByteDance reportedly fired hundreds of employees working on its edtech platforms in August 2021.
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The formation of the Indian Edtech Consortium comes at a time when the government is mulling over an edtech regulation policy.
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